When Mao called the U.S. a paper tiger he was incorrect but now, sixty-nine years later it is the term that comes to mind when thinking about NATO.
From 19fortyfive, February 25:
The NATO Dilemma for Ukraine: On February 25, 2022, one day after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, President Biden declared that “Putin’s aggression against Ukraine will end up costing Russia dearly — economically and strategically. We will make sure of that.” When the war is over and its history written, Biden concluded, “Putin’s choice to make a totally unjustifiable war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger.”
Three years later, with Biden off the world stage following his defeat in last year’s presidential election, Putin and Russia are poised to win the war against Ukraine, despite the massive support given by the U.S. and NATO, and will end in a much stronger position.
How could this be? After the United States and Europe gave such extraordinary amounts of money and machines to Ukraine, after 40 nations assembled to support Ukraine against Russia, how could Ukraine have failed to win and how could Russia gotten stronger? Though there are a number of practical reasons, the core reason for this failure is as embarrassing as it is alarming: NATO bases its policies on a narrative while Russia based its policies on ground truth realities.
Lesson number 1 that NATO and the U.S. needs to learn is that wars don’t give a damn about your morality or values. In the minds of most European leaders and establishment figures in the United States, Ukraine was and remains in the moral right; in their rendering, Russia is evil and abhorrent. Russia, therefore, must lose and Ukraine must win, based solely on the mental construct that Russia = evil and Ukraine = good. Yet while European and American establishment figures and mainstream media live in that space, bombs, bullets, and bayonets could care less.
The weapons of war, the balance of power between opposing parties, and the ammunition are apolitical and amoral. They have no regard for anyone’s nationality, absence of concern about who owns what territory, or what any party to a conflict believes “ought” to be. When a bomb or missile or rocket detonates on target, it will explode and everything in the blast radius will be killed or destroyed. The side with the most air power, air defense, drones, rocket forces, ammunition, industrial capacity, and above all the most trained soldiers, will most often win a war between two sides.
When comparing the two main protagonists in this war in late 2021 and early 2022, any rational military analyst would have immediately concluded that the balance of power was overwhelmingly in Russia’s favor. Preferences and emotions aside, the physical realities of the two sides should have led the United States and NATO to have recognized it was a losing prospect to set as an objective the defeat of the Russian Federation.
Such a recognition should have led the alliance to council accommodation by Ukraine in the fall of 2021, taking NATO membership off the table, and instead pursuing economic integration with the EU and perhaps bilateral agreements with various European states to help Ukraine modernize its armed forces so it could defend itself. Absent NATO membership, an unemotional NATO analysis would have revealed that Russia would likely never have invaded absent a promise of eventual NATO membership....
....MUCH MORE
This is similar to what Professor Mearsheimer was saying as far back as 2015:
“The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path & the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”—John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago
and his proposal back then was to build Ukraine economically rather than pushing NATO membership.
But the Western plan was regime change in Moscow and the strategy was to bleed Russia economically until the UK or CIA could get a color revolution going.*
It didn't work.
Instead we got the half-a-loaf/permawar approach we were decrying as early as April 2022. Here are a couple posts from those days:
August 1, 2022None of the electorate in the NATO countries voted for another of these inconclusive, forever wars, so profitable for a select few and so costly in life and treasure for regular people. Surely no one in the developing nations signed on to pay for sanctions with their food budget. It is time to figure out a) What our goals are and b) What the hell we are doing, period and in furtherance of those goals. This isn't some game of RISK with let's try this, or let's try that and no consequences at the end of the night. Since the Maidan coup in 2014 the West has had eight years to plan for this.
Do it or don't do it; because trying to finesse a halfway reaction is nuts.
As the philosopher asked the generals and armaments producers some time ago:"When was the last time you b****es won a war?"
"No holidays for Ukraine: Financial needs increase"
The EU has to either go all-in or call a halt to what they are currently doing.December 21, 2023This halfway stuff does not work for anyone but the arms merchants and is just plain evil in terms of lives lost and livelihoods ruined. As the BSD's used to say: "Go big or go home."....
Industrial Disease: "The U.S. Can Afford a Bigger Military. We Just Can’t Build It"
For at least six months after it became apparent the Western strategy for Ukraine was to dribble enough armaments into the battle to slow the Russian takeover of the eastern third of Ukraine, but not enough for Ukraine to win, we were posting on this weird approach to war....
Oh My God, What Are The Ukrainian Generals Doing?
They are ordering their men to attack defense-in-depth without air cover and 1/10th the artillery the troops need....
The U.S. Is Implementing The RAND Corporation Strategy To Cripple Russia
First up, a refresher, from February 8, 2022 (pre-invasion):
The RAND Corporation Blueprint For Forcing Putin To Over-Extend Himself
I hope that the U.S. or NATO or whoever commissioned this study didn't pay a lot for it, it's basically the strategy that Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came up with in the early 1980's although the details do differ. The tactical components of the RAND plan are:
1. Arming Ukraine ;
2. Increase support for jihadists in Syria;
3. Promoting regime change in Belarus;
4. Exploiting tensions in the South Caucasus;
5. Reducing Russian influence in Central Asia;
6. Rivaling the Russian presence in Transnistria.
....MUCH MORE
The study is from 2019, its basic idea is to get Russia to overextend itself both militarily and more especially financially.
On January 12, 2022 Victoria Nuland showed this approach is top-of-mind in the Biden Administration. From Interfax Ukraine:
Nuland: I'm going to let Russians speak for themselves how long they can financially back placement of troops near Ukraine
U.S. Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland did not make assumptions about how long the Russian Federation can afford to keep a large grouping of forces near Ukraine.
"I am going to let the Russians speak for themselves," she said, answering a question at a State Department briefing about "how long you think Russia can financially back the placement of troops along the Russia-Ukrainian border."
Nuland also said the transfer of a large group of forces to the border with Ukraine was not a cheap operation.
"These kind of deployments, hundred thousand troops out of barracks and on the Ukrainian border are extremely expensive, as is the deployment of this kind of weaponry in the cold winter," she said.
The U.S. goal is not peace in Ukraine.
The U.S. goal is regime change in Moscow, and in furtherance of that objective the U.S. is ready to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Finally from Professor Niall Ferguson (who is developing a consultancy practice. he's a history professor, that has to be a unique challenge)* at Bloomberg Opinion, March 22, 2022.....
