Russia - Ukraine: Opinion Roundup

There are a number of very worthwhile articles available today that offer informed commentary on the state of affairs in the collective West’s war on Russia. I’ll briefly link and summarize so readers can decide whether to follow the links. Three of these articles are at Anti-War.com.

Putin: Lessons From Childhood

This article begins with an anecdote from Putin’s childhood, but it goes on to consider what could be termed the operative principles in Putin’s foreign policy, with extensive discussion under each heading:

The story is recounted in Philip Short’s biography, Putin. Several lessons from childhood can be found in the biography that seem to have been formative for Putin. Three of them stand out.

No One Should be Cornered

Never Bluff

Never Back Down

Putin is not spontaneous or rash. His ex-wife, Lyudmila, said that "Everything he did was always thought through." A Swedish diplomat who knew him said that "he sizes up his opponents coldly and soberly, and anticipates his own and others’ actions well before he makes the first chess move."

When you do make that move, you commit to the sequence of moves it sets off.

Next up is David Stockman. This one is not as lengthy and is more succinct than is usual with Stockman. This is a “what if” sort of article. In a sense it’s the counterpart to the Lessons From Childhood article, because it shows what was lost by ignoring the operative principles that have characterized Putin throughout the twenty years of his public life:

What In the Hell Was Washington Thinking?

What in the hell were those bloody-minded Washington/NATO neocons thinking? At any time in the last nine months they could have had a diplomatic settlement with Russia that would have:

• Avoided/ended the war in Ukraine, thereby saving tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives and hundreds of billion of economic cost and destruction;

• Allowed the Russian speaking population of the Donbas a substantial degree of self-governance and autonomy from the hostile government in Kiev;

• Permitted the historic Russian territory of Crimea to remain under Russian control per the wishes of the overwhelming share of its Russian-speaking population;

• Kept NATO out of Ukraine and its missiles away from Russia’s doorstep;

• Removed NATO missile bases from the the old Warsaw Pact countries, where NATO had expanded in breach of Washington’s solemn promise made at the time of the German reunification to not extend NATO "one inch to the east".

I found the discussion of the missile issue—stationing them in Romania and Poland—to be particularly trenchant.

Lastly, from Anti-War:

Brainwashed for War With Russia

by Ray McGovern 

Thanks to Establishment media, the sorcerer apprentices advising President Joe Biden – I refer to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jacob Sullivan, and China specialist Kurt Campbell – will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China. And, shockingly, under false pretenses.

Most Americans are oblivious to the reality that Western media are owned and operated by the same corporations that make massive profits by helping to stoke small wars and then peddling the necessary weapons. Corporate leaders, and Ivy-mantled elites, educated to believe in U.S. "exceptionalism," find the lucre and the luster too lucrative to be able to think straight. They deceive themselves into thinking that (a) the US cannot lose a war; (b) escalation can be calibrated and wider war can be limited to Europe; and (c) China can be expected to just sit on the sidelines. The attitude, consciously or unconsciously, "Not to worry. And, in any case, the lucre and luster are worth the risk."

The media also know they can always trot out died-in-the-wool Russophobes to "explain," for example, why the Russians are "almost genetically driven" to do evil (James Clapper, former National Intelligence Director and now hired savant on CNN); or Fiona Hill (former National Intelligence Officer for Russia), who insists "Putin wants to evict the United States from Europe … As he might put it: "Goodbye, America. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out."

…

Russia is not Iraq. And Putin has been so demonized over the past six years that people are inclined to believe the likes of James Clapper to the effect there’s something genetic that makes Russians evil. "Russia-gate" was a big con (and, now, demonstrably so), but Americans don’t know that either. The consequences of prolonged demonization are extremely dangerous – and will become even more so in the next several weeks as politicians vie to be the strongest in opposing and countering Russia’s "unprovoked" attack on Ukraine.

THE Problem

Humorist Will Rogers had it right:

"The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so; that’s the problem."

That’s the beginning and the end, but there’s lots of in between. I will say this: I’m not as inclined to believe that Americans have failed to discount the BS factor in the MSM accounts. I think the polling shows that rallying Americans for war will not be as easy as McGovern assumes. The situation is still worrisome.

So we move on to Douglas Macgregor’s latest at AmCon:

Holding Ground, Losing War

Zelensky’s strategy of defending territory at all costs has been disastrous for Ukraine.

Macgregor’s reference to “defending territory at all costs” has to do with WW2. While in some respects it’s not entirely on point historically, it remains an interesting comparison, because there can be no doubt that the Russians have spent generations internalizing the lessons of WW2—precisely with the object of never repeating any of the mistakes that were made. Never again allowing a mortal threat near their borders is, of course, one lesson, but another has to do with how to deal with dug in defenses.

At the end of 1942, when the Wehrmacht could advance no further east, Hitler switched German ground forces from an “enemy force-oriented” strategy to a “ground-holding” strategy. Hitler demanded that his armies defend vast, largely empty and irrelevant stretches of Soviet territory. 

“Holding ground” not only robbed the German military of its ability to exercise operational discretion, and, above all, to outmaneuver the slow, methodical Soviet opponent; holding ground also pushed German logistics to the breaking point. When holding ground was combined with endless counterattacks to retake useless territory, the Wehrmacht was sentenced to slow, grinding destruction.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, (presumably with the advice of his U.S. and British military advisors), has also adopted a strategy of holding ground in Eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces immobilized themselves inside urban areas, and prepared defenses. As a result, Ukrainian forces turned urban centers into fortifications for what became “last stands.” Sensible withdrawals from cities like Mariupol that might have saved many of Ukraine’s best troops were forbidden. Russian forces responded by methodically isolating and crushing the defenders left with no possibility of either escape or rescue by other Ukrainian forces.

Presumably those US/UK advisers came up with this strategy of transforming urban areas into “last stand” redoubts from their experience with urban warfare in the Middle East. Americans tend to be impatient. This strategy didn’t count on the patience of the Russian response.

Macgregor goes on to discuss how this has all played out, including the horrible price Ukraine has paid for its “counteroffensives.” From there he pivots to a discussion of the current geopolitical situation, which begins with a reflection that, once again, recalls Putin’s operative principles from his childhood:

Washington always mistook Putin’s readiness to negotiate and limit the scope and destructiveness of the campaign in Ukraine as evidence of weakness, when it was clear that Putin’s aims were always restricted to the elimination of the NATO threat to Russia in Eastern Ukraine. Washington’s strategy of exploiting the conflict to sell F-35 fighter jets to Germany—along with large numbers of missiles, rockets, and radars to Central and East European allied governments—is now backfiring.

... As conditions favorable to Moscow develop in Eastern Ukraine and the Russian position in the world grows stronger, Washington confronts a stark choice: 1) Talk about having successfully “degraded Russian power” in Ukraine and scale back its actions. 2) Or risk a regional war with Russia that will engulf Europe. 

In Europe, however, Washington’s war with Moscow is more than just an unpleasant subject. Germany’s economy is on the brink of collapse. … Germany’s economic performance is often the harbinger of hard economic times in the U.S. 

More important, social cohesion in European States, especially in France, and Germany, is fragile. Berlin’s police force is reportedly drawing up contingency plans to cope with rioting and looting during the winter months …

As of this date, Kiev continues to oblige Moscow by impaling Ukraine’s last reserves of manpower on Russian defenses. … But if Washington continues to drain America’s strategic oil reserve, and ship American war stocks to Ukraine, the ability to protect and provision the United States will compete with supporting Ukraine.

Russia already controls the territory that produces 95 percent of Ukrainian GDP. It has no need to press further west. At this writing, it seems certain that Moscow will finish its work in Donbas, then, turn its attention to the capture of Odessa, a Russian city that saw terrible atrocities committed by Ukrainian forces against Russian citizens in 2014. 

Moscow is in no hurry. The Russians are nothing if not methodical and deliberate. Ukrainian forces are bleeding to death in counterattack after counterattack. Why rush? Moscow can be patient. ...