I was thinking the same thing, Tom. It doesn’t matter what amazing weaponry you have, if you can’t get it to the front into the hands of troops with trained junior officers and NCOs. Numbers mean nothing without training and discipline, and even Putin’s elite troops have shown a profound dearth of both. It’s going to take more than conscripts and the liberal application of the knout to turn this brutal invasion around. If you can’t even feed the troops you do have, what the heck are another million surly, resentful mouths going to eat?
Yes. I suppose there's a misapprehension out there about WWII. The 1943-45 Red Army was unique for its simultaneous size and effectiveness. Stalin relinquished significant control to get that result, which then had to be re-imposed at significant cost when the war ended. The opposite relationship to Western societies, where wartime means more restricted, followed in peace by relaxation. Totalitarian systems are always on a war footing, in effect. That's part of their make-up.
Anyway, what's happening now is far more reminiscent of 1905 and 1917, or the 1939-40 Finnish war. The first case led to a revolution of sorts, the second to two revolutions and actual disintegration of the regime. (Something similar happened 1917-21 to Ottoman Turkey.) Unlike the Stalin period, Russia today is a creaky, pseudo-modern society that has more in common with the creaky, on-their-last-legs autocracies of the late 19th century, especially Russia and Turkey.
The "realist" preachers of "great power rivalry" laid an egg: Russia isn't a great power any more. Modern societies and governments aren't defined and don't act this way. And the modern world has collective security (or better, cooperative security), or it has no security at all. The old "realist" balance-of-power world is gone forever. It was destroyed by the world wars and the industrialization of warfare.
“Others, perhaps the majority, may simply find it impossible to believe that a major world power, armed to the teeth, can be defeated in war by a much smaller country.” (Thomas M. Gregg)
Anyone who finds this impossible to believe has never paid attention to the defeat of the United States by the Vietnamese or the more recent defeat of the United States by the Taliban.
Ah, but this was different. In the case of the natcons (whom I mentioned), the myth of Putin the Mighty, Defender of Traditional Values & Etc., blinded them to reality—and still does. When they're not trying to change the subject entirely, they're decrying Ukrainian "corruption" and asking where all the money went. (Answer: downrange in the direction of Russia.) Most observers and pundits, however, simply fell victim to Conventional Wisdom (I capitalize because it's a syndrome), taking Putin's propaganda and tough talk at face value. I don't so much fault these people for being wrong—to err is human, after all—but they've been noticeably resistant to the idea that Ukraine might win this war.
Thomas, I don’t doubt that there are some national conservatives who, disgusted by secularism, elite enthusiasm for gender bending, rampant criminality and progressive racism see Putin as an antidote and would like to see him win. But I suspect far more NatCons detest Putin and would like to see him lose and lose in as humiliating a fashion as possible.
What concerns them is that once again, uniparty warmongers (which most globalists are) are squandering American resources over a matter largely irrelevant to American interests. They have a point.
The war is being almost entirely financed by the United States. True to form, a European problem has been outsourced to Americans while the EU and our NATO allies stand on the sidelines obnoxiously calling balls and strikes. Compare levels of American aid to Ukraine to that of our European “allies” to see what I mean.
If what we read in the press is true, the equipment we’ve provided has left our own stocks seriously depleted. Our petroleum reserves, tapped by President Biden to lower gasoline prices, are at their lowest level in decades. Why were gasoline prices escalating out of control? It all goes back to the February invasion.
We are well on our way to spending $75 billion on Ukraine since February, 2022. If the war goes on much longer, as it surely will, the cost will be well north of $100 billion. Most of this money is created out of thin air in the form of debt. It contributes to an inflationary environment that is eviscerating American spending power in much the same way as excess domestic spending does. One reason that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates so aggressively is that it gets no help in taming inflation from fiscal policy. Ukraine expenditures are part of our hyperkinetic fiscal follies.
In 2022 the Government will spend more on the Ukraine War than on border security (building a border war would have cost a tiny fraction of what’s been spent on Ukraine). It will also spend more on the war than it spends on the NIH and the NSF combined. The Ukraine War is also costing more than the entire NASA budget. I could go on and on.
Sadly, the consequences of the war that Biden went out of his way to instigate, extend far beyond its budgetary implications. The economies of the developed world are being devastated by the war. While Europeans may not exactly freeze this winter, the cost of energy is causing factories to close and supply chains to dry-up. All this makes inflation worse. Europe was not exactly doing well before Putin invaded; I think that there is a very real chance that the war has put the final nail in the coffin of European influence on world affairs (though frankly, that might be a good thing).
Have you watched the currency markets since the war’s inception?Stirling is approaching an all-time low versus the dollar and the Euro has collapsed. The Yen is in the toilet and the currencies of most developing economies are doing even worse. The impact this has on the personal finances of average people can’t be overstated. There are two countries who’s currency is stronger than ever; one of them is the United States while the other, ironically, is Russia.
The Putin/Biden war has also contributed to political instability in the Western Democracies. Britain is a red hot political mess and France is doing only somewhat better. Political stability in Germany is sure to decline as energy prices increase. Italy is about to elect a far-right Putin-loving government and Sweden already has. The West was in bad shape politically before the war; at the very least, the Ukraine imbroglio has made things worse.
Then there’s the price for Ukraine itself. As gratifying as it’s recent battlefield victories have been, prospects for Ukraine have never been worse. A huge percentage of its population has fled and has been welcomed elsewhere in Europe. The likelihood that these Ukrainians will ever return to a devastated country is low. Not only has Ukrainian infrastructure been decimated, but every battle that the Russians lose inspires Putin to destroy the countries infrastructure even more aggressively. Power plants, dams, bridges, factories will all be within his sights.
The question many NatCons are asking is not whether Putin is their redeemer, but whether the whole thing is worth the costs to the entire world. If you view Russian behavior as potentially apocalyptic as deluded globalists do, you come up with one answer. If you view brave Ukrainians as heroic figures living in a marginally important country that unfortunately borders a behemoth you come up with a different answer.
As for me, the question I’m asking is why the Biden Administration did everything it could to motivate Putin’s invasion. It refused to take NATO membership off the table and it insisted on supporting Ukraine’s right to membership in the EU. I think Biden wanted Russia to invade because he was nostalgic for the heady days of an American led international order like we had during the Cold War. Biden actually said it, “America is back.” So passionate was he about reversing the Euro-sceptic policies of Trump that he didn’t give a fig about increasing the probability that Putin would march into Ukraine.
America is not stronger as a result of the Ukraine War, we are weaker. Europe is not stronger as a result of the war, it is collectively weaker than its been in centuries. With his battlefield reverses, Putin may not be winning, but he’s not the only loser in this war. What makes that so sad is that there was a chance at least, that the whole thing could have been avoided.
On the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine—why should V. Putin have been given a veto? His claims that the alliance posed an aggressive threat to Russia are plain lies—indeed an inversion of reality. We can plainly see who the actual aggressor is, can we not? And we know, because Putin has told us in so many words, that his objective is not the defense of Russia but the destruction of independent Ukraine on the grounds that it's a fake country with no right to exists because it rightfully belongs to Russia.
The idea that taking Ukraine's membership in NATO off the table would have prevented this war strikes me as absolutely fanciful. Remember, the ultimatum we received demanded NATO withdraw to its pre-1992 boundaries, leaving all of Eastern Europe to Russia's tender mercies. To believe Ukraine's prospective NATO membership was the true casus belli requires something more than taking Putin at his word (which would be foolish enough), it requires ascribing to him a motivation far *more* reasonable than his word. And it requires ignoring everything we know about his regime, its rhetoric, its behavior going back *years*--a vast body of evidence that contradicts this theory.
I don't know why WigWag is so determined to believe that Biden wanted this war: You can--as you're showing, Thomas--be a determined critic of the Biden Administration while refraining from ascribing to him a motivation that requires you deliberately to ignore every bit of evidence about the disposition of a genuinely dangerous American rival. Partisanship becomes suicidal if you see every aspect of the world as an extension of American domestic politics. We have, in Russia, a dangerous enemy, one with a will and agency of its own. To understand what Russia is doing, the right place to look is *Russia,* not Biden. It isn't all about us.
I think in the past months I've published more than ample evidence that Russia's motivations are *genocidal.* They are not doing what they're doing because they object to having NATO on their border. That's simply not the explanation that best fits truly a massive amount of evidence.
Russia isn't the US, and doesn't behave as we would. That we can't personally relate--that we find it hard to understand why Russians would wish to extinguish Ukraine as an independent nation and Ukrainians as an independent people with their own culture--doesn't mean we can safely ignore the evidence that this is why they invaded Ukraine. It's *what they say.* We would do well to believe them.
'Partisanship becomes suicidal if you see every aspect of the world as an extension of American domestic politics.'
This should be carved in granite. It's the besetting sin of American political discourse at this juncture of our history, e.g. "Why are we in NATO when we can't even secure our own borders?"
I thought that Trump had a point when he complained that other NATO countries weren't pulling their weight. But instead of employing quiet forms of diplomacy, he ranted about the problem on Twitter & etc.—a counterproductive procedure, to put it no more pointedly. After all, a war in Europe would be fought on European soil. For the US, "forward defense" means fighting our wars in other people's countries.
Also--"Compare levels of American aid to Ukraine to that of our European “allies” to see what I mean." I sometimes wonder, WigWag, if you're reading what I write? Per capita, at least half of Europe is providing more aid than we are: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/notes-on-the-news-quiz. As I wrote:
"Estonia tops the list for support to Ukraine, per capita, and by a good bit, too. ... Estonia is providing five times as much support to Ukraine, per capita, as the United States, with Latvia providing almost as much, and nine European countries providing more.1
"It’s important because I’ve heard Americans say that since Ukraine is a European problem, Europeans should be stepping up more to support Ukraine. Now, first, Ukraine is a global problem, and emphatically a problem for Americans. If you’re worried about uncontrolled migration over the southern border now, just wait until 'food insecurity' in Latin America and the Caribbean becomes 'famine.' But this point aside, it’s unfair to suggest that Europeans aren’t pulling their weight. It’s true that some European countries aren’t. (Apart from the UK, Western Europe is a disgrace, and I was surprised that Finland’s contribution was nugatory compared to the other Baltic states.) But most are contributing roughly as much or more, and since some of these countries are much poorer than the US—Bulgaria’s per capita income in 2020 was US$23,780, in PPP dollars, compared to the US’s US$66,060—this contribution represents a much larger burden per citizen. Now add to this the assistance Europe is giving to six million Ukrainian refugees: It just can’t be said that Europe is letting the US do everything.
"You could argue that the recession or even the depression Europe will suffer because of the energy price shock is Europe’s own damned fault—and Germany’s fault, in particular—and you’d be right. But it’s nonetheless a major burden that Europeans have undertaken to support Ukraine. It’s better late than never. It means that the average European citizen feels the cost of supporting Ukraine much more than the average American. (There’s nothing wrong with this. It is a European problem.) But it’s unfair to intimate that Europeans are failing to do their duty. Estonians are doing it many times over."
Much of what you say is true, but also beside the point. By this I mean, for instance, that the Russo-Ukrainian War and US border security are two completely separate issue. To say that the Biden Administration is derelict in its duty to secure the borders of the US, is well and good. But what has it got to do with V. Putin's war of aggression? Nothing. In my opinion, Biden's wrong on border security but right on Ukraine. You will find few critics of Biden more scathing than me. But when he happens to do the right thing, I'm not going to look around for reasons to deprive him of the credit.
The idea that the war in Ukraine is making America weaker is to me fanciful. What would weaken the United States and NATO would be a Russian victory in Ukraine, i.e. the successful conclusion of V. Putin's first step on the road to a revived Russian imperium. So as long as the Ukrainian people are willing to fight in defense of their country, they deserve our support.
By the way, Thomas, you made the point that NatCons seeking to justify Putin’s invasion obsess about Ukrainian corruption. There may be some who do that, especially in the pundit class, but most I think are far more worried about American corruption. They worry about the Biden family’s entanglements with Ukrainian energy firms especially Hunter’s. They worry about Mitch McConnell’s entanglements with China, especially Elaine Chao’s and they worry about what appears to be insider-trading (legal though it may be) by the likes of Senator Richard Burr and Nancy Pelosi’s family.
It’s a caricature of NatCons to suggest that they view Ukrainian corruption as justifying Putin’s invasion. Some do. But I think most are far more worried about corruption in their own government to spend a lot of energy worrying about Ukrainian corruption.
Which brings to my pea brain the apparent fact that the barbarian doesn't even have a Fredendall to sack (over far more than Kasserine Pass) and bring home to do a creditable job of training soldiers.
The barbarian's new strategy seems to center on attriting Ukraine's ammunition supply faster than they can reload.
The real question here is the continued timidity of the West, ably led by our own Joe Biden, in the face of the barbarian's nuclear threats.
The current crew is far from ideal. But they will do on this issue. For them, it's a half-remembered script from the 1940s from which they mumble most of the lines. But they know it's serious and requires some sort of response.
I would add, thanks primarily to the Ukrainian government, armed forces and people, who've stood up against the malign spirit of Putinism. If not for their resolve to defend their country, V. Putin would have gotten away with his aggression. Not to overstate the case, but to a degree America and NATO were shamed into supporting Ukraine.
With other managers (I won't call them leaders) than Macron, Scholz, and Biden, I could be as optimistic as you.
However, we have these, and that gives me pause.
Scholz continues to decline to send the Ukrainians serious weapons--like tanks--under the two excuses that a) it would take those dumb Slavs too long to learn how to drive a German tank, and b) he doesn't want to go first with armor transfers. Which brings to mind Sallah.
And we have Biden, who expressed his timidity repeatedly by refusing to send serious arms to Ukraine before the barbarian's invasion because doing so might angrify the chieftain, and who slow-walked sending serious arms after the invasion whenever the chieftain nattered on about his nuclear weapons. And who still won't send HIMARS, et al., in serious numbers, or allow their use in destroying the barbarian's staging areas just across the Russian border. Russia must be held out as a sanctuary state. Which brings to mind earlier Presidents' reluctance to hit Cambodia and Laos for so long in an earlier war (excuse me, police action)--because sanctuary--at such great cost.
And Macron. He speaks for himself, and that speaks for itself.
And none of them are willing to send serious anti-aircraft weapons in serious numbers, so the barbarian can continue to lob destruction into cities far from the front just for vandalism's sake, and none of them are willing to transfer fighter aircraft so the barbarian's air power can be destroyed. Might angrify the chieftain....
There are other national managers who are failures in this arena, as well, but these are key.
There are no half loaves when national existence is in the wind.
The only acceptable imperfection is that Ukraine will get no reparations from the barbarian, no financial or material (viz., factories, farm tractors to replace the destruction; no mine detection equipment, etc, with which to defang the lethal booby traps with which the barbarian has sowed Ukrainian farm land) repayment from the barbarian.
I was thinking the same thing, Tom. It doesn’t matter what amazing weaponry you have, if you can’t get it to the front into the hands of troops with trained junior officers and NCOs. Numbers mean nothing without training and discipline, and even Putin’s elite troops have shown a profound dearth of both. It’s going to take more than conscripts and the liberal application of the knout to turn this brutal invasion around. If you can’t even feed the troops you do have, what the heck are another million surly, resentful mouths going to eat?
Yes. I suppose there's a misapprehension out there about WWII. The 1943-45 Red Army was unique for its simultaneous size and effectiveness. Stalin relinquished significant control to get that result, which then had to be re-imposed at significant cost when the war ended. The opposite relationship to Western societies, where wartime means more restricted, followed in peace by relaxation. Totalitarian systems are always on a war footing, in effect. That's part of their make-up.
Anyway, what's happening now is far more reminiscent of 1905 and 1917, or the 1939-40 Finnish war. The first case led to a revolution of sorts, the second to two revolutions and actual disintegration of the regime. (Something similar happened 1917-21 to Ottoman Turkey.) Unlike the Stalin period, Russia today is a creaky, pseudo-modern society that has more in common with the creaky, on-their-last-legs autocracies of the late 19th century, especially Russia and Turkey.
The "realist" preachers of "great power rivalry" laid an egg: Russia isn't a great power any more. Modern societies and governments aren't defined and don't act this way. And the modern world has collective security (or better, cooperative security), or it has no security at all. The old "realist" balance-of-power world is gone forever. It was destroyed by the world wars and the industrialization of warfare.
“Others, perhaps the majority, may simply find it impossible to believe that a major world power, armed to the teeth, can be defeated in war by a much smaller country.” (Thomas M. Gregg)
Anyone who finds this impossible to believe has never paid attention to the defeat of the United States by the Vietnamese or the more recent defeat of the United States by the Taliban.
Or, a while ago, the incident at Cannae, or earlier, the action at Marathon and outside a seaport.
Eric Hines
Ah, but this was different. In the case of the natcons (whom I mentioned), the myth of Putin the Mighty, Defender of Traditional Values & Etc., blinded them to reality—and still does. When they're not trying to change the subject entirely, they're decrying Ukrainian "corruption" and asking where all the money went. (Answer: downrange in the direction of Russia.) Most observers and pundits, however, simply fell victim to Conventional Wisdom (I capitalize because it's a syndrome), taking Putin's propaganda and tough talk at face value. I don't so much fault these people for being wrong—to err is human, after all—but they've been noticeably resistant to the idea that Ukraine might win this war.
Thomas, I don’t doubt that there are some national conservatives who, disgusted by secularism, elite enthusiasm for gender bending, rampant criminality and progressive racism see Putin as an antidote and would like to see him win. But I suspect far more NatCons detest Putin and would like to see him lose and lose in as humiliating a fashion as possible.
What concerns them is that once again, uniparty warmongers (which most globalists are) are squandering American resources over a matter largely irrelevant to American interests. They have a point.
The war is being almost entirely financed by the United States. True to form, a European problem has been outsourced to Americans while the EU and our NATO allies stand on the sidelines obnoxiously calling balls and strikes. Compare levels of American aid to Ukraine to that of our European “allies” to see what I mean.
If what we read in the press is true, the equipment we’ve provided has left our own stocks seriously depleted. Our petroleum reserves, tapped by President Biden to lower gasoline prices, are at their lowest level in decades. Why were gasoline prices escalating out of control? It all goes back to the February invasion.
We are well on our way to spending $75 billion on Ukraine since February, 2022. If the war goes on much longer, as it surely will, the cost will be well north of $100 billion. Most of this money is created out of thin air in the form of debt. It contributes to an inflationary environment that is eviscerating American spending power in much the same way as excess domestic spending does. One reason that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates so aggressively is that it gets no help in taming inflation from fiscal policy. Ukraine expenditures are part of our hyperkinetic fiscal follies.
In 2022 the Government will spend more on the Ukraine War than on border security (building a border war would have cost a tiny fraction of what’s been spent on Ukraine). It will also spend more on the war than it spends on the NIH and the NSF combined. The Ukraine War is also costing more than the entire NASA budget. I could go on and on.
Sadly, the consequences of the war that Biden went out of his way to instigate, extend far beyond its budgetary implications. The economies of the developed world are being devastated by the war. While Europeans may not exactly freeze this winter, the cost of energy is causing factories to close and supply chains to dry-up. All this makes inflation worse. Europe was not exactly doing well before Putin invaded; I think that there is a very real chance that the war has put the final nail in the coffin of European influence on world affairs (though frankly, that might be a good thing).
Have you watched the currency markets since the war’s inception?Stirling is approaching an all-time low versus the dollar and the Euro has collapsed. The Yen is in the toilet and the currencies of most developing economies are doing even worse. The impact this has on the personal finances of average people can’t be overstated. There are two countries who’s currency is stronger than ever; one of them is the United States while the other, ironically, is Russia.
The Putin/Biden war has also contributed to political instability in the Western Democracies. Britain is a red hot political mess and France is doing only somewhat better. Political stability in Germany is sure to decline as energy prices increase. Italy is about to elect a far-right Putin-loving government and Sweden already has. The West was in bad shape politically before the war; at the very least, the Ukraine imbroglio has made things worse.
Then there’s the price for Ukraine itself. As gratifying as it’s recent battlefield victories have been, prospects for Ukraine have never been worse. A huge percentage of its population has fled and has been welcomed elsewhere in Europe. The likelihood that these Ukrainians will ever return to a devastated country is low. Not only has Ukrainian infrastructure been decimated, but every battle that the Russians lose inspires Putin to destroy the countries infrastructure even more aggressively. Power plants, dams, bridges, factories will all be within his sights.
The question many NatCons are asking is not whether Putin is their redeemer, but whether the whole thing is worth the costs to the entire world. If you view Russian behavior as potentially apocalyptic as deluded globalists do, you come up with one answer. If you view brave Ukrainians as heroic figures living in a marginally important country that unfortunately borders a behemoth you come up with a different answer.
As for me, the question I’m asking is why the Biden Administration did everything it could to motivate Putin’s invasion. It refused to take NATO membership off the table and it insisted on supporting Ukraine’s right to membership in the EU. I think Biden wanted Russia to invade because he was nostalgic for the heady days of an American led international order like we had during the Cold War. Biden actually said it, “America is back.” So passionate was he about reversing the Euro-sceptic policies of Trump that he didn’t give a fig about increasing the probability that Putin would march into Ukraine.
America is not stronger as a result of the Ukraine War, we are weaker. Europe is not stronger as a result of the war, it is collectively weaker than its been in centuries. With his battlefield reverses, Putin may not be winning, but he’s not the only loser in this war. What makes that so sad is that there was a chance at least, that the whole thing could have been avoided.
It’s a chance Biden didn’t want to take.
On the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine—why should V. Putin have been given a veto? His claims that the alliance posed an aggressive threat to Russia are plain lies—indeed an inversion of reality. We can plainly see who the actual aggressor is, can we not? And we know, because Putin has told us in so many words, that his objective is not the defense of Russia but the destruction of independent Ukraine on the grounds that it's a fake country with no right to exists because it rightfully belongs to Russia.
The idea that taking Ukraine's membership in NATO off the table would have prevented this war strikes me as absolutely fanciful. Remember, the ultimatum we received demanded NATO withdraw to its pre-1992 boundaries, leaving all of Eastern Europe to Russia's tender mercies. To believe Ukraine's prospective NATO membership was the true casus belli requires something more than taking Putin at his word (which would be foolish enough), it requires ascribing to him a motivation far *more* reasonable than his word. And it requires ignoring everything we know about his regime, its rhetoric, its behavior going back *years*--a vast body of evidence that contradicts this theory.
I don't know why WigWag is so determined to believe that Biden wanted this war: You can--as you're showing, Thomas--be a determined critic of the Biden Administration while refraining from ascribing to him a motivation that requires you deliberately to ignore every bit of evidence about the disposition of a genuinely dangerous American rival. Partisanship becomes suicidal if you see every aspect of the world as an extension of American domestic politics. We have, in Russia, a dangerous enemy, one with a will and agency of its own. To understand what Russia is doing, the right place to look is *Russia,* not Biden. It isn't all about us.
I think in the past months I've published more than ample evidence that Russia's motivations are *genocidal.* They are not doing what they're doing because they object to having NATO on their border. That's simply not the explanation that best fits truly a massive amount of evidence.
Russia isn't the US, and doesn't behave as we would. That we can't personally relate--that we find it hard to understand why Russians would wish to extinguish Ukraine as an independent nation and Ukrainians as an independent people with their own culture--doesn't mean we can safely ignore the evidence that this is why they invaded Ukraine. It's *what they say.* We would do well to believe them.
'Partisanship becomes suicidal if you see every aspect of the world as an extension of American domestic politics.'
This should be carved in granite. It's the besetting sin of American political discourse at this juncture of our history, e.g. "Why are we in NATO when we can't even secure our own borders?"
I thought that Trump had a point when he complained that other NATO countries weren't pulling their weight. But instead of employing quiet forms of diplomacy, he ranted about the problem on Twitter & etc.—a counterproductive procedure, to put it no more pointedly. After all, a war in Europe would be fought on European soil. For the US, "forward defense" means fighting our wars in other people's countries.
Also--"Compare levels of American aid to Ukraine to that of our European “allies” to see what I mean." I sometimes wonder, WigWag, if you're reading what I write? Per capita, at least half of Europe is providing more aid than we are: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/notes-on-the-news-quiz. As I wrote:
"Estonia tops the list for support to Ukraine, per capita, and by a good bit, too. ... Estonia is providing five times as much support to Ukraine, per capita, as the United States, with Latvia providing almost as much, and nine European countries providing more.1
"It’s important because I’ve heard Americans say that since Ukraine is a European problem, Europeans should be stepping up more to support Ukraine. Now, first, Ukraine is a global problem, and emphatically a problem for Americans. If you’re worried about uncontrolled migration over the southern border now, just wait until 'food insecurity' in Latin America and the Caribbean becomes 'famine.' But this point aside, it’s unfair to suggest that Europeans aren’t pulling their weight. It’s true that some European countries aren’t. (Apart from the UK, Western Europe is a disgrace, and I was surprised that Finland’s contribution was nugatory compared to the other Baltic states.) But most are contributing roughly as much or more, and since some of these countries are much poorer than the US—Bulgaria’s per capita income in 2020 was US$23,780, in PPP dollars, compared to the US’s US$66,060—this contribution represents a much larger burden per citizen. Now add to this the assistance Europe is giving to six million Ukrainian refugees: It just can’t be said that Europe is letting the US do everything.
"You could argue that the recession or even the depression Europe will suffer because of the energy price shock is Europe’s own damned fault—and Germany’s fault, in particular—and you’d be right. But it’s nonetheless a major burden that Europeans have undertaken to support Ukraine. It’s better late than never. It means that the average European citizen feels the cost of supporting Ukraine much more than the average American. (There’s nothing wrong with this. It is a European problem.) But it’s unfair to intimate that Europeans are failing to do their duty. Estonians are doing it many times over."
Much of what you say is true, but also beside the point. By this I mean, for instance, that the Russo-Ukrainian War and US border security are two completely separate issue. To say that the Biden Administration is derelict in its duty to secure the borders of the US, is well and good. But what has it got to do with V. Putin's war of aggression? Nothing. In my opinion, Biden's wrong on border security but right on Ukraine. You will find few critics of Biden more scathing than me. But when he happens to do the right thing, I'm not going to look around for reasons to deprive him of the credit.
The idea that the war in Ukraine is making America weaker is to me fanciful. What would weaken the United States and NATO would be a Russian victory in Ukraine, i.e. the successful conclusion of V. Putin's first step on the road to a revived Russian imperium. So as long as the Ukrainian people are willing to fight in defense of their country, they deserve our support.
By the way, Thomas, you made the point that NatCons seeking to justify Putin’s invasion obsess about Ukrainian corruption. There may be some who do that, especially in the pundit class, but most I think are far more worried about American corruption. They worry about the Biden family’s entanglements with Ukrainian energy firms especially Hunter’s. They worry about Mitch McConnell’s entanglements with China, especially Elaine Chao’s and they worry about what appears to be insider-trading (legal though it may be) by the likes of Senator Richard Burr and Nancy Pelosi’s family.
It’s a caricature of NatCons to suggest that they view Ukrainian corruption as justifying Putin’s invasion. Some do. But I think most are far more worried about corruption in their own government to spend a lot of energy worrying about Ukrainian corruption.
The barbarian will have a hard time with those 300,000 "reservists" being called up.
Mark Hertling, who knows something about training soldiers, had this Twitter thread on the so-called partial mobilization: https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1572571676524838915
Trent Telenko, who's been a reliable and accurate commenter on the barbarian's war, had this on training the callups: https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1572925653644869634?s=20&t=fB0bKu3LycZGgBk1HUenVg
Which brings to my pea brain the apparent fact that the barbarian doesn't even have a Fredendall to sack (over far more than Kasserine Pass) and bring home to do a creditable job of training soldiers.
The barbarian's new strategy seems to center on attriting Ukraine's ammunition supply faster than they can reload.
The real question here is the continued timidity of the West, ably led by our own Joe Biden, in the face of the barbarian's nuclear threats.
Eric Hines
The current crew is far from ideal. But they will do on this issue. For them, it's a half-remembered script from the 1940s from which they mumble most of the lines. But they know it's serious and requires some sort of response.
I think the West is solid. I think we've got this.
I would add, thanks primarily to the Ukrainian government, armed forces and people, who've stood up against the malign spirit of Putinism. If not for their resolve to defend their country, V. Putin would have gotten away with his aggression. Not to overstate the case, but to a degree America and NATO were shamed into supporting Ukraine.
With other managers (I won't call them leaders) than Macron, Scholz, and Biden, I could be as optimistic as you.
However, we have these, and that gives me pause.
Scholz continues to decline to send the Ukrainians serious weapons--like tanks--under the two excuses that a) it would take those dumb Slavs too long to learn how to drive a German tank, and b) he doesn't want to go first with armor transfers. Which brings to mind Sallah.
And we have Biden, who expressed his timidity repeatedly by refusing to send serious arms to Ukraine before the barbarian's invasion because doing so might angrify the chieftain, and who slow-walked sending serious arms after the invasion whenever the chieftain nattered on about his nuclear weapons. And who still won't send HIMARS, et al., in serious numbers, or allow their use in destroying the barbarian's staging areas just across the Russian border. Russia must be held out as a sanctuary state. Which brings to mind earlier Presidents' reluctance to hit Cambodia and Laos for so long in an earlier war (excuse me, police action)--because sanctuary--at such great cost.
And Macron. He speaks for himself, and that speaks for itself.
And none of them are willing to send serious anti-aircraft weapons in serious numbers, so the barbarian can continue to lob destruction into cities far from the front just for vandalism's sake, and none of them are willing to transfer fighter aircraft so the barbarian's air power can be destroyed. Might angrify the chieftain....
There are other national managers who are failures in this arena, as well, but these are key.
Eric Hines
Let us not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Half a loaf is better than none.
There are no half loaves when national existence is in the wind.
The only acceptable imperfection is that Ukraine will get no reparations from the barbarian, no financial or material (viz., factories, farm tractors to replace the destruction; no mine detection equipment, etc, with which to defang the lethal booby traps with which the barbarian has sowed Ukrainian farm land) repayment from the barbarian.
Eric Hines