There is a growing consensus among military experts that Russia has already lost the Ukraine War it had planned to have. This is not to say Ukraine is “winning,” but that the original Russian plan — a quick strike to topple and replace the government — is now irretrievably out of reach. So Russia now seems to be determined to bomb, destroy, and besiege Ukraine into oblivion. Once the cities are destroyed and most of the population has either fled or been killed, then the Russian boots on the ground can march and seize control of territory. See How Putin Bungled His Invasion of Ukraine at Foreign Policy.
And this is all because Vladimir Putin doesn’t dare admit defeat in his vanity war. Russian leaders who are defeated tend to get deposed.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said yesterday that the Russian invasion was stalled.
Austin shared his assessment during an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that aired on Sunday. Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Austin said the situation has “had the effect of him moving his forces into a wood chipper.”
“The Ukrainians have continued to attrit his forces and they’ve been very effective, using the equipment that we provided them, and armor weapons and aircraft weapons. And again, significant resolve on the part of the Ukrainian people,” he added.
The U.S. Defense Department estimates that about 7,000 Russian troops have been killed so far, with tens of thousands injured.
It’s very frustrating to watch a mass atrocity happen and not do more to stop it, even though the reasons for standing back are valid. The Wall Street Journal reports that “The U.S. is sending some of the Soviet-made air defense equipment it secretly acquired decades ago to bolster the Ukrainian military as it seeks to fend off Russian air and missile attacks, U.S. officials said.” Well, that’s something.
The Ukraine War ought to have caused a whole lot of people to re-evaluate a whole lot of assumptions. But I don’t think it has. Instead, it has weirdly brought the pro-Putin MAGA heads and the democratic socialist Left closer together in the same ball park, although they’re sitting in different sections.
On the Right, you’ve got Christian nationalists who see Putin as an ally — he’s a homophobe, after all — and who think the Ukraine War is a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (see Those Who Look to Big Daddy Putin). And you’ve got those in love with authoritarianism who want America to be led by a white macho dictator who will restore white male hegemony. And then you’ve got people who just reflexively use whatever is at hand to bash Democrats. War in Ukraine? It must be Joe Biden’s fault, because he’s weak. And even with all the atrocities and inhumanity being displayed in the news day after day, I don’t see them budging from those views.
What’s really terrifying is that Francis “end of history” Fukuyama was on teevee last week saying that no way would Vladimir Putin resort to nuclear weapons. This means it’s a good time to build a bomb shelter and stock up on iodine pills.
But I am also fed up with a lot of Lefties who believe that this war must be America’s fault, somehow. Before the invasion I heard people ask “Why is Joe Biden trying to start a war?” Huh? Apparently warnings from the administration that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent was “war mongering,” while the Russian troop buildup around Ukraine was not. I also saw much speculation that the CIA was somehow behind Russia’s invasion.
Many are still blaming NATO. I learned only recently that the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America for some time had called for the dismantling of NATO.
To me, the DSA official position on the Ukraine War just plain reeks of privileged naïveté.
There is no solution through war or further intervention. This crisis requires an immediate international antiwar response demanding de-escalation, international cooperation, and opposition to unilateral coercive measures, militarization, and other forms of economic and military brinkmanship that will only exacerbate the human toll of this conflict.
DSA reaffirms our call for the US to withdraw from NATO and to end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict. We call on antiwar activists in the US and across the world to oppose violent escalations, demand a lasting diplomatic solution, and stress the crucial need to accept any and all refugees resulting from this crisis. Much of the next ten years are coming into view through this attack. While the failures of neoliberal order are clear to everyone, the ruling class is trying to build a new world, through a dystopic transition grounded in militarism, imperialism, and war. Socialists have a duty to build an alternative.
I want them to go stand in the streets of Kyiv and read that. See how Ukrainians react.
Eric Levitz writes at New York magazine,
Within the small world of self-identified American leftists, however, the DSA’s substantive positions are far from marginal. Indeed, a large contingent of prominent left-wing writers, activists, and organizations have argued in recent days for ending indiscriminate U.S. sanctions against Russia, withholding military aid from Ukraine, and immediately dismantling NATO. This contingent’s perspective deserves to be taken seriously. For one thing, its analysis spotlights many inconvenient truths that few other American political factions wish to acknowledge. As importantly, however, the weakness of some of its arguments reflect genuine pathologies within the U.S. left’s foreign-policy thinking — above all, an ideological rigidity that leaves American socialists ill-equipped to interpret the emerging multipolar world order, and therefore, to change it.
The “many inconvenient truths” appears to refer to the Maidan Revolution of 2014, which was either a U.S. backed far-right coup or the Ukranian people ousting an authoritarian pro-Russian government, depending on whom you choose to believe, I guess. I wasn’t there; I have no idea. It’s fairly clear that the enormous majority of Ukrainians don’t want to be part of Russia now, and that’s what I know.
And then there is NATO. NATO expansion is to blame, we are told. Poor Vladimir Putin didn’t have a choice but to invade Ukraine because someday it might join NATO. And it’s true that a lot of foreign policy experts way back in the 1990s warned that former Soviet nations joining NATO was unnecessarily provocative to Russia. Even the likes of Thomas Friedman and Henry Kissinger (and when did the Left listen to Friedman and Kissinger?) warned us about this. Eric Levitz continues,
It is perfectly natural for foreign-policy “realists” like Kissinger to disdain heedless affronts to Russia’s “sphere of influence,” or to insist that Ukraine must give Putin’s kleptocratic regime veto power over its foreign policy. But socialists do not generally recognize the legitimacy of imperial orbits, nor counsel acquiescence to relations of domination for the sake of conflict avoidance.
In particular:
Meanwhile, the notion that Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion was rooted in its “legitimate security interests” — as a segment of leftists routinely avow — is hard to credit. Surely, a nation’s only legitimate security interests are defensive ones. And Russia’s nuclear arsenal was always sufficient to deter the threat of an invasion (as we are now seeing, that arsenal is menacing enough to stop Western leaders from entertaining so much as a no-fly zone for Ukraine, never mind an offensive invasion of Russian territory).
In brief,
But if the Putin of 2022 believed that invading and occupying Europe’s second-largest country was a good idea, then there was no basis for believing that Western imperialism was the chief obstacle to a diplomatic resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Well, yeah.
America could not cajole the Zelenskyy government into suicide. If Putin wanted to install a puppet regime atop Kyiv’s ruins, then decrying “U.S. brinkmanship” and NATO’s “imperialist expansionism” would not qualify as a remotely serious response to the crisis. Thus, when the DSA IC condemned those forces in a late January statement — which included not a single criticism of the Kremlin — the committee also lambasted the “sensationalist Western media blitz” that was “drumming up conflict” through its histrionic predictions of an impending Russian invasion.
When Putin actually invaded, then, how did the DSA respond? It hasn’t changed its position blaming the U.S. and NATO at all. Eric Levtiz points out that many eastern European leftists “consider NATO a vital bulwark against their republics’ subjugation to a reactionary autocracy, a conviction that became difficult to dismiss once Putin launched a war of imperial conquest.” And by now it should be plain that Putin is the one with imperialist ambitions.
“Instead of grappling with these complexities, however, many leftists have simply pretended that they do not exist,” says Levitz. Further, “In the actually existing Russia-Ukraine conflict, however, it is a Russian military victory that threatens to plunge a nation into ungovernability and civil strife, irrespective of U.S. policy.”
To me, the “Russia had to invade because Ukraine might join NATO” argument never held water, for the simple fact that Ukraine has been trying to join NATO for a very long time, since at least 2008, and I don’t see that anything had changed that made a NATO membership for Ukraine any more imminent in 2022 than it was in 2009. What is different now from 2009 is that Donald Trump spent four years in the White House working to undermine NATO and kiss Putin’s behind, and according to much data Joe Biden is weak and unpopular. And Trump might very well be re-elected in 2024. To Putin, it probably seemed just the right time to do something he’d been wanting to do for years, which is take back Ukraine. It was now or never.
There probably is a legitimate discussion to be had about whether U.S. and E.U. attempts at using “soft power” to exert influence in Ukraine was a good idea. However, I can’t imagine Putin would have respected neutrality. He wants a pro-Russian government in Ukraine, or he wants Ukraine, period.
See also A Note from Finland at Talking Points Memo. The link should get you through the subscription firewall even if you aren’t a subscriber. The writer, from Finland, explains how Russia set us up to not get in the way of his plans.
I understand you would like to see your heroic country as the navel of the world and as the main focus of any operation, but I am sorry to inform that, in this case, you are only cheap tools. You had to be weakened (and Britain manipulated to Brexit etc) in order to facilitate invasions to Ukraine, Belarussia and a list of other neighboring pieces of land in Putin’s future Menu.
So, as a KGB officer would plan, they came exactly from the opposite direction than where they were expected. They professionally built an operation web among the rural redneck cowboys, evangelical christians, the NRA, the most republican of all republicans, your law enforcement, some military people, big business etc etc. They popped up to the surface from within the “core americans”, but their long dive before that was planned and had started from the Kremlin’s operation board.
They nearly succeeded with Trump/GOP in January 6th, by focusing and coordinating the heat of seemingly “spontaneus”, “random” protest movements and legal tricks and corrupt politicians like a welding flame to the same point and to the same moment. They just barely failed – for the time being!
Had Trump succeeded to keep in power, the march of Putin to various targets in the Eastern Europe would have been more like an easy summer parade. Nato would be partally paralyzed by his loyal friends in the White House (who likely would have got their personal share of the profits).
That’s not nearly as crazy as believing the invasion of Ukraine is part of biblical prophecy.
One thing worth noting is, a no fly zone would require sorties into Russian airspace, because most planes will attack from outside the border, using cruise missiles, etc.. It was an easy answer in Iraq, who wasn't in any position to retaliate. I believe it worked well, because the Kurds already had military folks and equipment to stop a ground based attack, so, without air power, the attacks stopped.
I also saw a bit where the Russians were said to have enough artillery in place that stopping air strikes isn't a big priority – the artillery can do far more damage.
That said, every piece of Russian equipment that can be damaged or disabled leaves the Russians more vulnerable in the field, and makes the war cost more.
Ukraine never wanted to be a part of Tsarist Russia.
Ukraine also didn't want to be in the Russia-dominant USSR.
Stalin didn't take that news sitting down.
Somewhere around 4 million people starved to death in Stalin's 1932-1933 man-made famine: The "Holodomor."
Stalin forced 4+ million people to starve to death.
Starve to death on the most nutrient-rich soil in the world.
Did Stalin win?
Today, the great-grandchildren of the Holodomor are still fighting back.
Putin can win.
But he'll never rule.
I'm pretty far left and don't hear many on the left blaming NATO or Ukraine for their dance. I mean, I do recognize that Putin attacking Ukraine isn't significantly distinct from Cheney attacking Iraq, both providing fake rationales. Both utilize gulags too.
And on the one hand, proximity is a logical comparison to the Cuban Missile crisis.
But Lithuainia and Latvia already joined NATO and they touch Russia's border too. So Nazis or NATO don't really wash as Putin motives.
It still all seems tied to moving oil, natural gas and wheat to market. Or reasserting the capacity to sow chaos in US and EU politics. And first in Chechnya, then in Ukraine in 2014, Putin's either been working on improving his economic status or rebuilding the old USSR. Ukraine provides him more economic assets than any other non-NATO country, so that – to me – is the biggest driver of his aggression.
And I'm like Bernie, a Social Democrat. Not fully socialist but I doubt there's many US residents left of me.
A really good post with depth. Some friends from DC are anti-war activists who spout the Kremlin line that the invasion of Ukraine is defensive because NATO and US Imperialism. I don't think they know their own minds well enough to realize they are not anti-imperialism. They are anti-US Imperialism.
It's like opposing a particular serial rapist (yeah, the US, unfortunately) to the degree rape by any other rapist is permissible. And they really don't and can't see it.
Regarding NATO – I'd prefer non-military solutions to international conflict But NATO does not have a record of invading or assimilating non-NATO countries. The US does not have clean hands – but NATO does! Look at the Russian bear by comparison. What countries has Russia/USSR absorbed since WWII? Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia.
After the end of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO as well as the Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. None of these countries were invaded by NATO or coerced into accepting membership.
The bubble of communism burst unexpectedly in 1991 and Russia's grip lost its strength. Once released, these former Warsaw Pact countries decided that they 1) Did not want to return to satellite status if/when Russia recovered and b) saw membership in NATO as the best way to ensure their independence.
The main argument from Moscow is that once in NATO, Ukraine would have nukes at the border with Russia. According to this article, NATO does not have nukes in ANY of the former Warsaw Pact – now NATO countries. There are no nukes in ANY of the NATO countries that share a border with Russia.
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/03/how-likely-use-nuclear-weapons-russia
For the record, I do not KNOW that NATO hasn't secretly stashed nukes in the Baltic States, but the claim is that they have not. I haven't seen any evidence that NATO has been aggressive in that manner. Nor do I see a military or geopolitical reason to make Russia think NATO harbors a first-strike strategy against Russia. (It would be stupid.) IMO, the argument we owe Russia a"sphere of influence" to buffer against nuclear strikes argument is pure horse manure.
What NATO has done is cage the bear. Russia can not expand westward into Europe. The only former Warsaw Pact countries that are NOT protected from Russian invasion are Ukraine and Georgia. Ukraine has requested NATO membership. (And Georgia is on the path to join NATO since 1994 – so much for the suggestion that NATO is rushing to provoke a confrontation.)
It's difficult to measure wars that do not happen. Europe has known a LOT of really ugly wars. Early US political philosophers celebrated that the US could be free of the perpetual military conquests. Since the end of WWII and the inception of NATO, the conflicts have been much smaller and contained (relative to Napolean, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, and Mussolini) Is it because of NATO? (I think it's a major reason.) Suppose NATO was gone. What restrains the ambition of petty dictators (Lukashenko of Belarus or Orban of Hungary) who might otherwise invade their neighbors? Right now, they know they'd get their butts kicked by NATO. (Hungary is in NATO, but so are the neighbors Orban might invade.)
I know, it's wonkish stuff but facts are the only guideposts in problem-solving. I see no facts that support Russia's right to assimilate other countries. For Russia to say, "We don't intend to assimilate them, we just want the neighboring countries we've previously conquered and abused to be defenseless." is an announcement of the intent to invade. It's no longer academic – Russia has invaded in force and they are murdering civilians in shelters.
Russia, baring divine intervention, has won. The USA needs to adjust to a new world order.
In my opinion, that is a lot of b.s. loaded into two relatively short sentences.
What has Russia won? What can they win beside a guerrilla war against them from inside Ukraine? What can they win beside continued crippling economic sanctions from most of the world? How can Russia ‘win’ unless NATO gives in to Putin’s mania?
Speaking only for myself, I am NOT ready to adjust to a 'new world order' where Putin continues to use force in an attempt to establish a new/old Russia where he is the Czar. Ukraine is the first step of Putin's desires for a new Russian Empire and it will be far from the last if the US and NATO give in on Ukraine.
The use of force to impose the political will on a country is not limited to overseas. I also am not ready to adjust to a new American order where the white supremacists and christian supremacists rule this country.
I agree, if only because conquering a nation, and holding it, are two different things. Also, with sufficient quantities of explosives, no asset left in Ukraine will be safe.
I admit to a morbid curiosity about this. The US fought in Vietnam because they didn't like the results of a pending election. That meant, starting off, before anyone suffers, more than 50% of the populace are against the US. Most people are on the side of "can we all stop shooting each other?" and it wasn't the native Vietnamese who brought the fighting.
I'm not suggesting most Vietnamese would have taken up arms against the US, just, there's so little you can control if the population doesn't support you.
If native fighters try to perform sabotage, I'd expect more people to look away. If there's local information that's important to the war effort, I'd expect far fewer people to bring it up. Native fighters will have far greater access to people willing to share food, or store weapons, or treat injuries, and they can keep a lot of those supplies distributed more broadly.
Next, add in how the Russian military has a lot of conscripts who won't like being "the hated occupier," and most of whom probably realize they really *don't* want to die over this BS.
Earlier, I mentioned explosives: this might be a key difference between the ability of locals to resist. Iraq showed how roadside bombs can take a deadly toll, but the Ukrainians won't necessarily be restricted to IEDs. Finally, the less happy the populace is to have you around, the less restriction there is on an attack against the invaders. Something that might have been impossible in Iraq, say, might be easily possible in Ukraine.
Without the nuclear threat, if there's sufficient unity around the world to punish Russia, I'd bet on the Ukrainians to outlast the attack, with Putin bitterly forced to admit he just can't *afford* it any longer.
You must be commenting from an alternative universe. Nobody's going to win this. Russia may eventually gain temporary control of Ukraine territory, but it won't be able to hold on to it.
Hi, Boris.
Allow me to ask a question and I'm not being rhetorical. Inquiring minds want to know.
WHAT is the "New World Order" you perceive with such great clarity and what are the limitations?
Let me supply the parameters of my curiosity. Is this simply, "Might makes right.", the idea that force is its own justification. Are you suggesting we all must cower because Putin has nukes and might use them? Ergo, the world must surrender to Putin whatever he wants to avoid nuclear conflagration? That's an interesting theory but given that Russian plutocrats have raped their own people without mercy for the last 20 years, what do you expect the treatment of foreign countries and people to be? Do keep in mind that civilians are being slaughtered in identified shelters leaving many of us to conclude it's intentional. As I implied in an earlier question, do we cede only the former territory of the USSR (and the people who have spent decades aligning with NATO to avoid that assimilation)? If we cede to Russia that as long as they have an arsenal of ICBMs and a madman in power, they can have anything they want, do you propose we cede all of Europe to being in Russia's sphere of influence? It's my opinion that greed is a hunger that can not be satisfied. So if Russia can have not only Ukraine but Georgia, the Baltics, and all of Europe, will Russia demand tribute from the US to not be subjugated (even though paying that extortion is subjugation)?
Here's my view:
We have been here before, though not in my lifetime. My parents saw that the world waited years too long to oppose Nazi Germany. Chamberlain was played by Hitler. No one wanted to consider the depths of cruelty a despot is capable of. Ukrainian civilians are being rounded up and shipped to Russia against their will. Do you doubt that women and children in Putin's gulags are not bargaining chips for future negotiations? Is that OK with you?
The situation is ugly now and getting worse – but there's no other way short of global capitulation to a despot. With the sanctions in place now, Russia faces economic ruin. If the Ukrainian resistance can continue to inflict damage with very portable Stingers and Javelins, the procession of body-bags back to Moscow can continue even if Keiv falls and Moscow puts up a puppet regime. The cash cost of the war to Moscow so far is way beyond the budget plan. (Echos of Rumsfeld and the invasion of Iraq.) The loss of equipment in combat is huge – tanks, planes, and helicopters (not to mention six to ten thousand soldiers.) Russia will be in no shape to mount a campaign against anyone for years. The "New World Order" is a staggering defeat for Russia if they 'win' as long as the sanctions and resistance continue.
The end game, if Europe and the US hold firm, is certain – a change in power in Moscow. Putin might 'retire' or die of mysterious causes or possibly fail in an election. (That's in the order I consider most likely.) Moscow will withdraw completely from Ukraine and try to keep Crimea. If sanctions are maintained, Europe can demand the return of all POWs and civilian hostages as a condition of any relaxation of economic punishment. In other words, Russia can be defeated as an example of the power that democratic countries have to demolish despots who cross their own borders to conquer others.
Nato is a defensive pact organization not an offensive one. If nato is threatening Russia why isn't China a threat? A thousand mile border,nukes, largest army in the world and expansionist economy at very least. No Putin just doesn't like democracy.what a ridiculous little man trying to blackmail the world with his nuclear button. Me thinks he protestith too much.