Storm Clouds of Steel
Looming War in Ukraine Continues Looming
Western powers are signaling their belief that conflict is imminent in Ukraine. US President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan briefed that Americans should leave Ukraine immediately. This evacuation is as Anglo-American diplomatic efforts with Russia see a breaking down earlier this week and “Macron’s Moment” flopped.
In an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Holt asked if there’s a scenario if Biden would send the military to evacuate US Citizens. Biden replied: “There’s not. That's a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another.”
Biden is correct here – the presence of US troops in a conventional war between Russia and Ukraine would be a hostile act by the United States against Russia. I know I don’t have an American ex-pat in Ukraine following, but please heed the warning.
Meanwhile, many Americans on the political right are struggling to realize that the political right has no genuine concept of foreign policy other than “ice cream man bad, dictator bad.” Reflexively calling for conflict with Russia or incentivizing Russian invasion by putting red-line weapons systems in Ukraine is a bad idea. However, many of these takes come from the “experts” in foreign policy.
Sanctioning Nord Stream 2 leaves conflict as the best option on the table for Russia. Russia wants to knock out Ukraine’s middle manning on the gas pipelines while preserving its strategic interests and protecting the Russian minority. All these objectives have diplomatic options. Should we spite the people of Ukraine, Russia, and Germany for the sake of Ukrainian oligarchs? No. Up until armor rolls, diplomacy must continue.
Although diplomacy may have failed.
Earlier in the week, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. It didn’t go well as Lavrov walked out in the middle of a press conference. Both parties said neither listened to one another, and the tone seemed petty. Truss probably looked the worse of the two parties, which will have political fallout in her career. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under siege by his own party’s Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, vies for power.
I wonder what the political incentive is to look particularly tough in these diplomatic events with Russia. I only can speculate; however, I imagine the pressure is immense to preserve the appearance of doing something. One of the more significant questions I’ve asked and tried to answer before is, “why haven’t the Russians attacked already?”
Given the inability of the United Kingdom or the United States to stop an invasion, Russia believes they can win the contest outside of a direct military offensive. Perhaps diplomatically even. On the other hand, this scenario is where the United States and the United Kingdom win if there’s no further conflict escalation and the borders of Ukraine are preserved. But there won’t be a meaningful resolution to the initial crisis of Ukraine’s absorption of the EU/NATO sphere and the internal divisions within Ukraine.
However, the specter of conventional war looms.
Patrick’s point is one I’ve made in the past several times. The Ukrainian irregular and B/C-tier units won’t be able to match Russian A-tier units in a maneuver fight. They need to dig in, deep. There is a tendency to overlearn the lessons of conflicts like World War II, Iraq, and others. Basic soldiering skills are going to be vitally important.
One of the most toxic parts of the rhetoric around Ukraine is the official news punditry’s efforts to lobby the American government to do particular actions. The second part of the toxicity is when they make America appear as if it is not doing other actions. Taking the despicable Malcolm Nance as an example above, he pushes that the US needs to send shoulder-fired anti-armor and anti-aircraft weapons. The United States and our allies are pumping a tremendous amount of these kinds of weapons. What makes someone like Nance more perfidious is that he knows how fundamentally corrupt the powers in Ukraine are, meaning that the question of high-tech weapons proliferation becomes a problem, especially longer the antebellum period goes on. Just evidenced by the sheer lack of basic military equipment, there needs to be a public inquiry by the US-UK on where military aid and money have gone over the last few years. Remember the United States regularly pumps covert aid into countries like this too.
Meanwhile German news reports that the Russian invasion begins on Wednesday, not Superbowl Sunday. We’ll see.
