Tag Archives: war

Ukraine down the drain.

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            In November 2022, about a year into the Russo-Ukraine War, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said publicly that neither side could win a decisive victory.  He argued that a negotiated peace offered the best hope for peace.[1] 

            This was emphatically not the advice that people wanted to hear.  The Biden administration chose a different course.  In essence, the United States has provided (and has encouraged European allies to provide) arms that could be used in a struggle to recapture the territories lost to Russia since the initial Russia seizure of Ukrainian territory in 2014. 

However, for most of the last two years the Biden administration has rejected any measures that would put the United States at risk of a war with Russia.  Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO.  Biden refused repeated requests from Ukraine for long-range weapons that would allow it to strike Russian forces and military sites within Russia itself. 

Now the Russians are driving the Ukrainians back in parts of the front lines.  Now they have been joined by 8-10,000 North Korean “volunteers.”  Now Ukraine has lost about 57,000 dead and many others wounded.  Now the Ukrainian army is finding it hard to replace such losses.  Now the danger of a collapse by the exhausted and increasingly demoralized Ukrainian army grows.  Essentially, events have proved General Milley correct.  A negotiated peace, or at least a cease-fire, is the logical step if Vladimir Putin will settle for half a loaf.  

            As Biden’s term staggers to a close, some administration defense and foreign policy officials have suggested that the United States do what it has not done so far.  Specifically, they have allowed Ukraine to use longer range missiles; they have committed to provide Ukraine with anti-personnel mines[2] to shore up the sagging front; and they are pushing the remaining authorized military aid out the door before President Trump can stop them.   The weapons “are unlikely to change much on the battlefield” and “it will be difficult for Ukraine to regain the ground that Russia has steadily seized over the past few months” authorized leakers in the intelligence community told the New York Times. 

So why do it?  Administration sources offer the rationale that better terms for a cease-fire or peace can be obtained if Ukraine can slow the Russian advance and punish Russia in the final stage of the war.  Moreover, any cease-fire or peace will be at risk of violation by Russia.  Building up a strong defensive capacity could deter or defeat any new Russian attack. 

This seems nonsensical.  If Russia is exhausting the Ukrainians now, why not keep going until they totally collapse?  NATO membership is the only thing that might deter Russia. 

At the same time, the despised Trump administration looms.  The Biden administration is hurrying to issue $2.1 billion worth of contracts for arms to be delivered to Ukraine.  They have two months to go before the Trump administration takes office, although “normally” it takes four to nine months to issue such contracts.[3]

Is the Biden administration trying to encumber the path of the new administration?    

[1] Helene Cooper, Andrew E. Kramer, Eric Schmitt, and Julian Barnes, “Trump’s Vow Leaves Kyiv With Few Options,” New York Times , 22 November 2024. 

[2] Neither the United States nor Russia have signed the Ottawa Treaty outlawing landmines, but Ukraine has signed and ratified the treaty.  List of parties to the Ottawa Treaty – Wikipedia  Who could blame them for breaking it? 

[3] It is good news that one can cut all the red tape at the Pentagon if you want to cut it.   

Decisions.

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            “War is pure Hell.  You cannot refine it.”—William Tecumseh Sherman.  Peace in the Russo-Ukraine war is desirable.  Under the right terms. 

Under what terms is “peace” with Russia desirable for Ukraine?  Should Ukraine give up the territory that Russia already holds in exchange for peace?[1]  Should they try to keep fighting with whatever aid the European Union can provide, even if the United States does a bunk?  Should they try to extract commitments for the West in exchange for ceding territory to Russia and halting the fighting?  Such commitments might involve reconstruction aid, modern arms for a post-war Ukrainian military, and membership in the European Union and NATO.  What if Russia’s terms include demands for Ukraine’s “neutralization” and disarmament so as not to “threaten” Russia in the future? 

Under what terms is peace desirable for Russia?  It would take extreme pressure to make Russia give up its territorial gains.  Vladimir Putin’s long-term goal appears to be the reassembly of the Soviet Union.  Any peace that leaves Ukraine functionally independent marks a defeat.  In terms of manpower, Russia has a big edge.  At the moment, it profits from an alliance of convenience with China, North Korea, and Iran.  Putin may calculate that he can keep the pressure on Ukraine until the front lines cave in.  If that happens, Russia could be in a position to take much more than anyone else is contemplating at this moment. 

Under what conditions is peace desirable for the United States?  This question involves asking other questions.  First, where does Ukraine figure in America’s global strategy?  The United States faces multiple dangers simultaneously.  The Far East is the most important of these challenges.  Then there is the Middle East.  The key concerns here are the oil, Iran’s forward policy, and Israel.  Then there’s Europe.  Putin’s ambitions pose an eventual danger to the former “satellite states” and to the Baltic countries.  How soon would it become an actual danger?  Russia’s attack on Ukraine has prompted a revival and expansion of NATO.  Putin’s “allies” all have a strong interest in keeping the eyes of the world focused on Ukraine (and Gaza).[2]  At the same time, a consciousness of danger is poking the Europeans to look to their own defenses.  This will take time to develop. 

Second, to what extent can the United States make good its global commitments?  It operates from a weakened position compared to the past.  The United States military’s command structure has ossified, the defense industrial base has eroded for decades, and the human manpower base is in poor shape.[3]  It is by no means guaranteed that the United States can fight and win multiple simultaneous wars.  Rearmament is going to take time and cost money even IF the political will exists to rearm. 

            What’s best for Ukraine?  Only they can decide. 

            What’s best for the United States?  Only they can decide. 

            What’s best for Russia?  Only Putin can decide. 

            Where, if at all, do those decisions overlap? 

[1] See: 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine – Russo-Ukrainian War – Wikipedia 

[2] Someone once observed that Bismarck was the kind of guy who would set fire to your barn so that he could sleep through the night. 

[3] The country has a high rate of obesity, with attendant illnesses.  Wegovy in boot camp? 

“God is on the side of the big battalions”–Voltaire.

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            Russia and Ukraine have been “at war” since 2014.  Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and supported “rebellion” in two majority Russian “oblasts” in eastern Ukraine.  Then, in February 2024, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  They missed their punch.  Since then, the Russians and Ukrainians have been engaged in a prolonged war of attrition.  Recently, a Ukrainian offensive ground to a halt without reaching its ambitious goals.  Since then, the Russians have mostly been grinding away on the Ukrainian lines in the Donbas.  Western observers predicted that the Ukrainian defense would hold as Russian bodies piled up in “No Man’s Land.”  Moreover, the Ukrainians launched their own minor counter-offensive in the Kursk region.  The intent was to seize Russian territory and force the Russians to shift soldiers from the Donbas, blunting the Russian offensive. 

The West has provided Ukraine with far more “lethal” aid since February 2022 than it did before then.  That aid has come with restrictions however.  In particular, Western governments seem to have wanted Ukraine to bleed Russia white until Vladimir Putin would agree to negotiate a reasonable settlement.  On the other hand, they didn’t want Ukraine risking an expansion of the war toward a threshold where Putin might use nuclear weapons.  So long-range weapons that could reach deep into Russia have been off the table.  Ukrainian President Zelensky has kept asking all the same. 

The trouble is that there are more Russians than Ukrainians.  Specifically, there are 143 million Russians and 38 million Ukrainians.  The Russians have suffered between 400,000 and 600,000 military casualties dead and wounded since the invasion began almost three years ago; Ukraine has lost perhaps as many as 80,000 dead and 400,000 wounded.[1]  However, the Russians have managed to dredge up 25,000-30,000 replacements per month.  Now they have managed to recruit 8,000 North Korean soldiers.  (There may be more to come.)  In contrast, Ukraine is just running out of soldiers.  It is the one being “bled white.” 

As a result, Russians managed to contain the incursion near Kursk while still attacking in the Donbas.  Now the Russians are moving forward against the Ukrainian defenses in both the Donbas and Kursk.  On the Ukrainian side, the fighting men are becoming exhausted and “morale is eroding.” 

People sympathetic to Ukraine ask “Why must Ukraine keep fighting with one hand tied behind its back?”[2]  Because NATO countries do not want to go to war with Russia directly.  Hemingway has one of his characters explain how he went broke: “Gradually and then suddenly.”[3]  The same thing is true for Ukraine now.  Ukraine is going to have to make a deal with Russia.  Shrewd, realistic thinking says that Ukraine will have to accept the loss of the territory that the Russians have conquered.[4]  Ukraine will have to settle for some guarantee of its future security, coupled with financial aid for reconstruction.  Membership in NATO, or just fair words and promises from Putin, may be that guarantee.

[1] See: Casualties of the Russo-Ukrainian War – Wikipedia 

[2] The Observer, quoted in “Ukraine: A grim reality sets in,” The Week, 15 November 2024, p. 15.

[3] Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926).  And Jackson Browne counsels “don’t think it won’t happen just because it hasn’t happened yet.”  The Road and the Sky (Remastered) 

[4] Richard Haas, quoted in “Ukraine: A grim reality sets in,” The Week, 15 November 2024, p. 15. 

Remaking the Middle East 7 October 2024.

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            It is a moment of great uncertainty in the Middle East.  Many people fear the expansion of Israel’s war with Hamas and Hezbollah into a larger war involving Iran and the United States, one which has no certain outcome.  For others, however, visions of sugar plums dance in their head.[1]  A Saudi Arabian journalist[2] wrote that Israel’s deadly attacks had done so much damage to Hezbollah that “even if the group were to live on, it would most likely be a caricature of its former self.”[3]  Lebanon may be able to free itself from the thirty-year death-grip of Hezbollah.  A British journalist judged that, in spite of the Biden administration dragging on Israel’s coat, “Israel is likely to see the current moment as too good an opportunity to miss.” 

Opportunity to do what?  One answer is to strike at the nuclear weapons program that threatens the survival of Israel.  Another answer is both more ambitious and ill-defined.  An American journalist reported that “Many in Israel see a ‘once-in-a-generation chance’ to remake the Middle East to Israel’s advantage.”  Naftali Bennett, a former Prime Minister of Israel, sees “the biggest opportunity in the past 50 years” to reshape the region.[4] 

Reshape how?  Destroy Hamas entirely?  Destroy Hezbollah entirely or, at least as a significant force in regional conflicts?  Gravely damage Iran’s nuclear program and force it to accept long-term international supervision?  Topple the Islamist regime in Iran entirely in hopes of something better emerging?  Forge an alliance with Saudi Arabia over the Iran conflict and relegate the Palestinian question to Israel alone?  Redraw the map of the Middle East to unite all Kurds not under Turkish rule into a sovereign state?  Redraw the map of the Middle East to assign the Sunni part of Iraq to Jordan?  “Transfer”[5] the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank to the Shi’ite portion of a partitioned Iraq?

            What does History tell us about once-in-a-generation opportunities? 

            In the early 19th Century, “Nationalism” meant that all people speaking the same language and sharing the same culture should live in a single independent country.  Germany were split into 30-plus states; Italy was split into half a dozen states; the Austrian Empire smooshed together people from many different latent-countries.  Many people saw Nationalism as the wave of the future.  Austria saw it as a death sentence.  One of these Believers was the French Emperor Napoleon III, the nephew of the great Napoleon I.  France should lead this remaking of the map of Europe. 

            Napoleon III started with Italy, concluding a secret deal with Count Camillo di Cavour, the prime minister of the Italian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardina.[6]  If Cavour would provide a war with Austria, Napoleon II would furnish the French army to win it.  Then, the Austrians would be expelled from Italy, and Italy would be “united” in a loose federation.  Piedmont would expand to dominate northern Italy; central Italy’s small states would join together under a ruler to be supplied by France; the backward southern Italian kingdom of the Two Sicilies would join the confederation; and the Pope’s lands would be much reduced, but the Pope would become head of this loose confederation. 

            Cavour did what he said that he would: he provoked Austria into declaring war.  Napoleon III did what he said that he would: his army thrashed the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino.  Then the wheels came off, badly and at high speed.  First, the French were appalled by the casualties suffered in battle and tried to crawfish on Piedmont by striking a deal with the Austrians.  Second, Italian popular nationalism surged up on the enthusiasm of victories won by others.  Popular revolts led to demands for the unification of all Italy north of the kingdom of Naples, regardless of promises made to Napoleon III.  Third, then the Italian nationalist and republican adventurer Giusseppe Garibaldi led a small expedition (with or without the knowledge of Cavour?) against the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.  The kingdom collapsed like a house of cards.  Garibaldi led his army north toward Rome.  Faced with the danger of a republican revolution overwhelming a monarchical revolution, the king of Piedmont met Garibaldi face to face.  The great man surrendered to the little king, at the price of southern Italy being included in the new nation. 

            France hadn’t wanted a united Italian peninsula unified under a centralized government.  The northern Italians hadn’t really wanted the inclusion of the backward Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in their new nation.  Garibaldi hadn’t wanted a monarchy, but a unified and centralized republic.  No one got exactly what they wanted. 

            Nor did they clearly foresee the long-term effects. The unification of Italy made the unification of Germany (against and without the Austrian empire) the next pressing question in European affairs.  Nationalist victories in central Europe then accelerated the spread of nationalism into the great multi-national empires of eastern Europe and the Middle East.  The Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman empires all succumbed during the First World War. 

            Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman and leader of German unification, was a temperamentally conservative and cautious person.  He spent a lot of time thinking about all the possible scenarios, but he didn’t go looking for “once-in-a-generation” chances. 

            Of course, other people are more time-bound and fixated on one outcome as the only possible outcome.  That is, they feel a burning need to accomplish some great mission in their lifetime.  Both Lenin and Hitler were that way. 

[1] Marc Champion wrote in Bloomberg that the blows suffered by Iran offer a tempting chance for Israel to inflict serious harm on its avowed main enemy.  Champion acknowledged that an Israeli attack would force Iran to choose between humiliation for the regime and a war with a surprising adversary and the possibility of American involvement. 

[2] A place where speech is never free, but often inspired. 

[3] Faisal Abbas, quoted in “Lebanon: Can Hezbollah survive the death of its leader?” The Week, 11 October 2024, p. 15. 

[4] All quoted in “Israel vows retaliation after Iranian attack,” The Week, 11 October 2024, p. 4. 

[5] At the end of and after the Second World War, many ethnic Germans fled the advancing Red Army or were driven out of places like Poland and the Czech Sudetenland.  These and other population movements were sometimes referred to as population “transfers.” 

[6] Derek Beales and Eugenio Biagini, The Risorgimento and the Unification of Italy (2003).  It’s an update of an earlier work.  But, if you have the time, there are a series of classic older books by Denis Mack Smith. 

“The System Is Blinking Red” 2.

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The Armed Services Committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate created a “Commission on the National Defense Strategy.”  Eight people were appointed to the Commission by both parties in both committees.  The Commission examined both the current and foreseeable threat environment facing the United States and the military preparedness of the United States to address that environment.  The study makes grim reading.[1] 

First, the threat environment is familiar.  In first place is China; in second place is Russia; and in third and fourth places are Iran and North Korea.  All are aggressive tyrannies.  All devote a much larger share of their national resources to the military than does the United States.  All have grown closer to each other—formal or informal allies—over the last few years.  All are deeply aggrieved with the “rules-based order” fostered by the United States after the Cold War.  “The good old rule sufficeth them, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can.”[2]  One is already fully at war, one is using its proxies in war, and the others are using military power in an attempt to intimidate their neighbors, who are American allies.  In short, “the United States faces the most challenging and most dangerous international security environment since World War II.  It faces peer and near-peer competitors for the first time since the end of the Cold War.”  Once upon a time, such actions would have met a powerful American response as a matter of policy.[3] 

Now, “[the] consequences of an all-out war with a peer or near peer would be devastating.  Such a war would not only yield massive personnel and military costs but would also likely feature cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure and a global economic recession from disruptions to supply chains, manufacturing, and trade.” 

Why is this?  The Commission finds American power much reduced and hobbled, all by our own doing.  First, “The Commission finds that DoD’s business practices, byzantine research and development (R&D) and procurement systems, reliance on decades-old military hardware, and culture of risk avoidance reflect an era of uncontested military dominance.”  As a result, “the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” 

Second, “the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and munitions needs of the United States and its allies and partners. A protracted conflict, especially in multiple theaters, would require much greater capacity to produce, maintain, and replenish weapons and munitions.” 

Third, “today’s [DoD workforce and all-volunteer force ] is the smallest force in generations. It is stressed to maintain readiness today and is not sufficient to meet the needs of strategic global competition and multi-theater war.”  “Recent recruitment shortfalls [for the all-volunteer force] have decreased the size of the Army, Air Force, and Navy.” 

Fourth, we aren’t spending on–or raising money for–defense the way we used to when we were conscious of danger.  On the one hand, defense spending as a share of GDP has roller-coastered: in 1965, 6.9 percent; in 1967, 8.6 percent; in 1979, 4.9 percent; in 1983, 6.8 percent; in 1999, 2.9 percent; in 2010, 4.7 percent; and in 2025 it is projected that the US will spend 3 percent.  On the other hand, “Defense spending in the Cold War relied on top marginal income tax rates above 70 percent and corporate tax rates averaging 50 percent.” 

The Commission concludes that “The lack of preparedness to meet the challenges to U.S. national security is the result of many years of failure to recognize the changing threats and to transform the U.S. national security structure and has been exacerbated by the 2011 Budget Control Act, repeated continuing resolutions, and inflexible government systems. The United States is still failing to act with the urgency required, across administrations and without regard to governing party.” 

It offers a series of urgent recommendations that are well worth considering.  But not for too long.  Our enemies can see all these things.  They may not wait. 

[1] See: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/nds_commission_final_report.pdf  The Report was brought to my attention by Walter Russell Mead, “U.S. Shrugs as World War II Approaches,” WSJ, 17 September 2024. 

[2] William Wordsworth, “Rob Roy’s Grave.” 

[3] Bing Videos