ATACMS Leading To Cut And Run?

Alexander Mercouris gave a very shrewd analysis yesterday of what’s going on with the US decision to provide ATACMS missiles to Ukraine. The US had long said it wouldn’t provide these long range missiles (~103 or 190 mile range depending on variant), but now …

Mercouris’ analysis came in the context of continued speculation regarding the possibility of some sort of negotiated settlement of the conflict in Ukraine—if not the US war on Russia. I addressed these reports a few days ago and concluded that, while there appeared to be some “noise”, the Russians appeared to be disinclined to go along—nothing really surprising in that.

Another part of the context for Mercouris’ analysis was an interview that he and Glenn Diesen did with well known geopolitical thinker John Mearsheimer, later in the day, which I highly recommend: An Endgame for the Ukrainian War. Mearsheimer has for a long time maintained that Russia will not be able to win the war, but has recently changed his tune to saying that Ukraine is Bound to Lose. Mearsheimer cites a number of factors that led to his change of view, among them: demonstrated US/NATO lack of competence, demonstrated and increasing Russian competence, increasing strain on the EU economy. Mearsheimer raises most of these considerations from reflections on the utter failure—in planning, training, and execution—of the vaunted Ukrainian spring-summer-fall and now winter (according to Ukrainian “intel” chief Budanov) offensive. That offensive was supposed to bring Russia to a negotiated peace that the US would dictate—an exit strategy that would still look like a victory of sorts. Instead, the whole scheme flopped and Russia is looking stronger and more confident than ever.

In Mercouris’ discussion, the main substance of which I present below in an edited transcript, he presents his explanation for what’s going on now, in the wake of the offensive failure. While the provision of ATACMS missiles may on the surface appear to be an escalation, in fact it is possible to view it as part of a cut and run strategy. The dilemma facing the Neocons is that their war on Russia is a flop and, with Election 2024 approaching they need to find a way out—but without appearing to be executing a cut and run. The overall strategy is to bluster and exhibit a supposed commitment to Ukraine by providing more “wonder weapons.” Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the US is pressuring Ukraine—Mercouris describes the ATACMS as a “bribe”—to do a deal with Russia, the terms of which will actually be largely dictated by the US. That way, when Ukraine is crushed the Neocons can say, ‘Hey, we always said Ukraine was calling the shots’—an obvious untruth, but one that will probably fly with the American public which won’t examine the claim too closely. The key for the US is to make it look like a Ukrainian initiative. Oh, and to get the Russians to bite—that’s the really tricky part.

It’s more complicated than that summary, so keep reading (below). Overall, I think Mercouris covers most of the bases—the bluster, the under the radar feelers, etc. However, I want to add my own theory of the even bigger picture here.

I propose that the Dem/Neocon plan all along was to crush Russia, then subdue China. That plan would have been put into effect once Hillary was installed in the White House—except that Trump won and then dragged his feet for four years. When the Ruling Class installed Zhou in the White House the plan was put on fast forward—Blinken immediately adopted an insulting attitude toward Russian and China that heightened tensions. I further propose that the target date for instigating a major crisis with (first) Russia was precisely as it occurred—early 2022. The idea was to gin up a crisis to serve as a justification for Sanctions Shock and Awe that would bring Russia and Putin to their knees in a matter of weeks—or, at most, a few months. Then it would be on to humbling China, reducing it (along with Russia) to perpetual thralldom to the New Globalist Empire, led by the Neocons. This would be the prelude to an electoral clean sweep in 2024 to crush all remaining opposition of Deplorables and other recalcitrants to being strongarmed into a Progressive “paradise”.

It ended up being one of those geopolitical slip and fall cases. The Neocons are now in a panic, trying to regain their feet. Their best hope is to somehow—against all odds—bluff the seemingly unbluffable Putin and Lavrov (Putin’s world class foreign minister), into agreeing to be defeated. I’m not buying it, and neither Mercouris nor Mearsheimer are, either. Will Schryver:

Will Schryver

@imetatronink

I won't pay for the Amazon Post. But my sense of the matter at this juncture is that there will be no meaningful negotiations until Russia has secured at least all of Novorossiya, as indicated on this map. I am persuaded the Russians are in it to win it big now.

7:34 PM · Nov 5, 2022

I’d go a bit further and maintain that Russia is committed to the aims that it enunciated when the Special Military Operation commenced. That means a neutral and demilitarized Ukraine—at a minimum. As Putin has said, the longer this goes on the steeper will be the price of peace. Russia has come to far, there’s too much water over the dam, to stop now.

But there’s another aspect of this to consider. If you were Putin, or Russia in general, wouldn’t you want payback, for what has been inflicted on Russia and for the destruction of Ukraine—culturally akin and for so long a part of Russia? I know I would. If I were sitting in the Kremlin I’d be devoting a lot of thought to payback—the how, and the when. Because timing is everything when it comes to revenge. Putin knows that Russia needs a decisive win. That doesn’t mean a military blowout, necessarily. Russia’s security can be assured through a combination of measures, including on the all important economic front. So I think we should be prepared for some surprises coming up in the next year, surprises that could change the geopolitical climate, including here at home in America.

With that, here we go. The full video is about 75 minutes long.

29:03

Now I want to stress that I think that there is a limit beyond which the United States is not prepared to go in terms of negotiations with the Russians. But I still think that, even though the United States has its own very clear red lines which it will not pass in negotiations, … those red lines are probably ones which the Russians will not recognize [i.e., will not respect?]. But, putting all that aside, I think that the United States will nonetheless still want to find some way to bring this war--or at least the fighting if not the war itself--to a stop this year so that the decks are cleared for the election next year. I think that the supply of ATACMS missiles actually fits fairly well into that [scenario], in the sense that, of course, the offensive was intended to put the United States and Ukraine in a strong position where they could dictate terms to the Russians. As I've discussed before, as Alex Christoforou has discussed before in other programs, which we've done on The Duran, the whole point of the offensive, the expectation that there was going to be an offensive, was that it was going to lay the scene for dramatic decisions at the NATO Summit in Vilnius in July and at the subsequent conference in Jeddah. In neither case did that actually happen. There was no Ukrainian breakthrough and the result was that those two meetings fell flat.

Now, I don't think that the United States any longer seriously expects the kind of breakthrough that it was looking for at the time when the offensive was launched, but it does still want to strengthen what I think it worries is a weakening hand in advance of negotiations. So that's where the ATACMS comes in. They're able to tell the Russians, 'Look, you might have harried the Ukrainians for the moment on the battlefield, but our will to support Ukraine remains unaltered, support for Ukraine will not flag, and the proof of that is that we're prepared to go all out. We're even prepared to supply ATACMS missiles to the Ukrainians. In fact, we are actually doing so, and we will continue to do so. So, because of that, it is in your interests to come to terms with whatever it is we're offering and to do so now. If you don't, we will attack your [Kerch] bridge, and we will attack other places behind the front lines and we will cause you real hurts and real injury. You don't want an escalation in the war in that way, so why not agree to all the things that we want you to agree to, and what we want you to agree to is freezing the front lines, having a ceasefire, and then we can supply Ukraine with its security guarantees,’ which, of course, ultimately is a step--a big step--towards NATO membership. We will supply Ukraine with with more weapons, more fighter jets, more tanks. We will re-equip and re-arm Ukraine and, in the meantime, you get those territories that you still control. But, of course, eventually when we wish we can have Ukraine join NATO.

Of course, they won't say any of the second things--they will simply discuss it as a freezing of the conflict. When the Russians bring up the question of Ukraine's security guarantees and NATO membership the United States will do as it always has: it will say that these are not topics that it's prepared to discuss. It's prepared perhaps to give the Russians some informal assurances about missile placements, but nothing that it is prepared to write down. It will do what it always does. But it will also again tell the Russians that the eastward expansion of NATO doesn't really mean anything because it doesn't threaten Russia in any way, because NATO supposedly is a purely defensive Alliance and the United States has no malicious or aggressive intentions against Russia. A claim or an assertion which, of course, the Russians will not take seriously.

Anyway, that's one reason why the ATACMS missiles are being supplied to Ukraine. It's partly intended to strengthen the United States' bargaining position with the Russians in advance of future discussions, but of course it's also intended for something else, and that is that it's a bribe to Ukraine. There's a very interesting article by Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post. It talks about how Ukraine is supposedly worried about the continued support it is going to receive from the West. It worries that this support might flag, and it's also apparently in light of the prospect of the weakening of that support now considering the otherwise unthinkable--which is some kind of deal with the Russians, whereby the front lines are frozen and Ukraine in return gets its security guarantees from the West.

I find a very interesting development because what it essentially is telling us is that Ukraine is being pushed to make this initiative so that this initiative apparently isn't going to come from the United States. It's going to come from Ukraine itself. The Ukrainians are being maneuvered into doing this so that the Biden Administration can walk away from the problem. And at the same time, of course, the Ukrainians have already been provided with bribes. They're being given ATACMS missiles and they're no doubt being promised more military aid in the future for when this deal with the Russians is supposedly secured. ...

39:25

39:47

And it seems to me that the ATACMS missile deal, the Abrams tanks that are on the way, the F-16 fighter jets that might appear in the summer of next year, you could see all of these things as the United States telling Ukraine, 'Well, we can't keep things up indefinitely, but we won't entirely abandon you if you agree to freeze the conflict. If you accept our security guarantees we will give you all of these weapons and, of course, that will put you in a stronger position with respect to the Russians in the long term.’ All things, of course, that the Russians will be observing and which will make the Russians all the more determined to continue the war because, from their point of view, freezing the conflict, agreeing to all of these sort of proposals, allowing the United States to supply more and more advanced weapons to Ukraine, well, that defeats the entire purpose of the Special Military Operation which, amongst other things, spoke about a neutral, denuclearized, demilitarized Ukraine.

Anyway, one can see how this is going to work out, but this seems to me to be the sort of bargaining that takes place towards the end of a conflict where the United States is already starting to think about some form of disengagement. And I said in the past, that I thought that the United States would try to agree to this directly with the Russians. And I still do, by the way--I still think that, in practice and in private, what the United States is looking for is some sort of channel to the Russians to explain its thinking, or a part of its thinking, that it wants to disclose and to get the Kremlin to agree to what it is proposing. But I suspect that also--and this I had not anticipated--the United States also would prefer that it was Ukraine that went through the motions of conducting this negotiation which would get the Biden Administration even further off the hook. It would be in a position to tell the Russians--well not just the Russians, but the world--this isn't the United States ratting on Ukraine. The often announced policy of 'nothing without Ukraine,' Ukraine having--in effect--its own word, its own veto over any negotiation has actually been abided by because, after all, when all is said and done it was the Ukrainians who agreed to this deal with the Russians.

Now, as I said, it's diplomatic subterfuges of this kind that can sometimes facilitate a negotiation, but I cannot imagine that it will be successful in this case. I think that the Russians--offered this kind of proposal--would almost certainly turn it down. They have repeatedly said, they continue to say, in public statements that all of the objectives of the Special Military Operation--including demilitarization, denuclearization, neutrality for Ukraine, and the reconstruction of Ukraine in a way that basically prohibits the extreme right ideologies that some people in Ukraine have. Sorry for the somewhat complex language. Well, all of that has to be fulfilled, otherwise the special military operation continues, and it continues until all the objectives are achieved. I think that is going to remain the Russian position and I don't think these proposals are going to impress the Russians at all. But, of course, if that happens we can already see what is going to gradually shake out over the next few months. The United States is now, in effect, dropping hints to the Ukrainians that it is in their [the Ukrainians'] interests to start these discussions with the Russians right away, or at least soon, because eventually the ability of the United States to continue to supply weapons and other equipment to Ukraine--well, that's almost exhausted and Russia and Ukraine--if there isn't an agreement--will be left to sort things out by themselves in circumstances that might not be attractive for Ukraine. So I think this is where all this is going.

45:54