America's War On Russia: A Russian Perspective

A hat tip to Friend George for the heads up to this article by Rostislav Ischenko at Ukraina-Ru:

On the positive aspects of the "special operation"

Very briefly, my take on what this article indicates. Here in the US all public opinion polls show that Americans are focused on inflation. That’s understandable. To the extent that they think about Ukraine, they’re overwhelmingly in favor of sending the Ukrainians any amount of weaponry. Americans, after all, are reflexively in love with underdogs, especially underdogs who have been attacked by big bullies without provocation. That’s America’s place in the world—defending helpless underdogs against bullies whom we can easily put in their place, without inconvenience to our way of life over here. That’s stuff that happens “over there” and we don’t need to pay much attention to it, except to high five one another at the inevitable and well deserved victory. I hope you recognized Russia’s position in that narrative.

That’s not the Russian perspective. An important thing that Russia has going for it is that the Russian people are, by and large, totally focused on this war that America has decided to wage against Russia. How many Americans do you think actually understand that simple truth—that America has declared war on Russia? How much understanding of what’s involved do you think the average American has? Do they understand that we’ve been dragged into an existential conflict by a small coterie of unaccountable Neocons, backed by Globalist money that has bought off our “elected representatives.”

I very much doubt that you’ll read anything as clear sighted as this, devoid of ideological claptrap, in the MSM:

According to Sun Tzu, war is the worst way to solve problems. Thousands of years of human history confirm the correctness of the great Chinese

You can almost always win without a war. Moreover, in a war, as a rule, the side that would have won even without the war wins. Thus, war is a resource-intensive confirmation of preliminary calculations. Roughly speaking, its result can be calculated in advance. Therefore, as a rule, a war is started (or provoked, which is basically the same thing) by those who do not want to accept their inevitable political defeat and are trying to change the course of history by force.

For example, Stalin planned to complete the rearmament of the Red Army by 1942 and securely cover the borders. But, contrary to Hitler's conviction, he did not plan to attack the Reich. In full accordance with the Marxist doctrine, Stalin (documents of the era, including his personal speeches testify to this) was going to take the position of a “wise monkey” and watch from a height how two imperialist predators destroy each other in the valley, in order to then finish off both. ...

Similarly, Russia did not intend to launch military operations in Ukraine. She would have been quite happy with the situation in which the West would continue to spend money on maintaining the agony of the Russophobic regime, draining its own resources and only worsening the situation with Ukrainian statehood. The only critical condition for Russia was to ensure security in the western direction. Moreover, the security of not only Russia, but the entire project of "Greater Eurasia".

...

From the point of view of the ruling elites in Washington, even a compromise agreement, which Russia and China were ready for, in order to avoid the danger of a big war, was a defeat for the United States. The very need to recognize oneself as equal among equals was seen by American elites as a disaster.

He’s right about that, I think. That’s because this war is about imposing the Rules-Based Order on the all recalcitrants, prominently including Russia. By definition, a Rules-Based Order that suffers a defeat no longer exists.

….

This made war inevitable. The only question was who would start and where would it start. There was a variant of an attack by Poland on Belarus, with the support of the Baltic States and Ukraine. There was a variant of Kyiv attacking the DNR/LNR. The option of a joint attack by Ukraine and Moldova of Transnistria was present in the calculations rather as a virtual one. ...

A major conflict could start with an Israeli strike on Iran, but the overall balance of power in the Middle East, after Russia won the Syrian campaign, forced Tel Aviv to be extremely cautious. Finally, the conflict could flare up on the Indo-Pakistani, Indo-Chinese border, and also because of Taiwan.

The main task of the United States was to tie down Russian and Chinese forces in the conflict zone, to force its geopolitical opponents to waste resources senselessly in an endless war of attrition, and to remain outside the conflict zone and cut bonuses.

...

War is a very bad, extremely risky undertaking, which, if possible, should be avoided, but, if it has already begun, then one should strive for victory, which will bring greater dividends than a compromise peace treaty on pre-war terms would bring. If in the first phase of the special operation, Russia saw it as its task to force the West to a compromise peace (the corresponding conditions were set for the Ukrainian delegation at the talks), then the second one is being conducted with an eye to achieving maximum success.

I have already written about the time factor and the danger of an uncontrolled growth of the crisis due to the inadequacy of the American elites. I will not return to this. Now I will focus on the positive aspects that Russia has already squeezed out and can still squeeze out of this crisis.

First, the West (USA, Great Britain and France) at the official level was forced to admit that it was waging a war of annihilation against Russia. The West itself is engaged in the economic, informational, logistical and material support of the conflict, Ukraine plays the role of an instrument of a hot war, and the Eastern European states are waiting for their turn to serve as firewood to keep the heat going.

Your average American doesn’t understand that we are attempting to annihilate Russia, but the average Russian probably does. The average American sees our involvement as the act of a good cop who give self defense advice to the bullied little guy. Russians know better. Sometimes information war is self defeating.

This radically changed our relationship. Prior to the current phase of the crisis, Russia's task was to convince the West of the need for compromise agreements. This is not naivety, as some not very educated, but very hotheads think, these are the rules of the game. You can't play upfront if you don't want to end up in a world war against your will a couple of weeks into the crisis. The experience of mankind shows that it is more advantageous to take a moderate position and demand negotiations on a comprehensive settlement, even if you are aware of the impossibility of reaching an agreement due to the unconstructive nature of your opponent. The enemy is forced to react to your proposals, you knock him off the pre-calculated pace of the crisis development, the agreed measures are not coordinated, the allies fall out of resonance.

With the beginning of the current phase of the crisis, Russia began the war for victory. Lavrov correctly says that all wars end with a peace treaty. Only here earlier we proposed a peace treaty without war, and now our foreign minister emphasizes that the conditions for peace will depend on the outcome of the war, which our Western “friends and partners” announced to us, not we. We have moved from a more complex (political and diplomatic) level of relations with "partners" to a simpler (military) one. We lose in political maneuverability, but we gain social mobilization (simple tasks are clearer to ordinary people and do not arouse unnecessary suspicions in them), and we also gain momentum in the party.

Second. We forced both the collective West and the whole world to decide on which side a particular country stands. At the same time, we have declared a more constructive approach to the definition of allies than the United States. The Americans said: "Whoever is not with us is against us," and we: "Whoever is not against us is with us." As a result, not only most of the world ended up with us (it’s easier to keep neutrality than to rebuild to please one of the warring parties), but even such a NATO and EU country as Hungary, which seems to support sanctions, but also maintains trade relations with Russia and even trying to develop. Even such a NATO camp as Turkey, the most important American partner on the bloc's southern flank, without whose support NATO cannot fight not only in the Black Sea, but even in the eastern Mediterranean, is trying to play its game, gaining bonuses in relationships with both sides of the conflict. In our gradation Ankara is an ally, in the US gradation it is an adversary.

As a result, the "world community" has shrunk to the Euro-Anglo-Saxon bloc + Japan and the Republic of Korea and has become the subject of ridicule. The “civilized world” suddenly saw its (and not ours) economic and financial systems collapsing, sources of raw materials out of reach, a significant part of promising markets closed to itself. The West, slowly slipping from the wound, began to rapidly collapse into a depression worse than the Great.

Third. Inside Russia, not only did the fifth column fully manifest itself. She also left the country in almost full force. The West has lost thousands of seasoned agents of influence. The level of consolidation of the Russian elite has increased, its mutual understanding and interaction with society has grown.

All these positive aspects of the current crisis practically guarantee us a political victory. The problem, however, is that the crisis has already developed into a military stage. Therefore, on the battlefield, too, there must be a victory that at least our own society recognizes as such.

Well, the main price that we pay (and all of humanity pays) for all this splendor is the increased risk of an uncontrolled development of the crisis. So much increased that even Lavrov was forced to declare the growing danger of nuclear war. We can be consoled by the fact that we did not choose such a risky path, it was imposed on us. Until the last moment, we offered to agree on a good deal.