Ukraine: Entering The Blame Game Stage?

There are some terrific analysis pieces out today, inspired by what appears to be finger pointing within the Zhou regime. The question seems to be, Who is to blame for the developing debacle in Ukraine—both military and economic?

Moon of Alabama features a must read post what ranges fairly widely in gathering opinion on this issue:

Washington Starts Blame Game Over Defeat In Ukraine

Moon starts from a NYT article in which US intel agencies are quoted claiming that they lack key information about the situation in Ukraine. The CIA’s Avril Haines plaintively complains:

“We have, in fact, more insight, probably, on the Russian side than we do on the Ukrainian side.”

Uh-huh. That sounds like Haines sees what’s coming—the policy people in the Zhou regime and the war mongering Neocon chorus in Congress are preparing to blame the debacle on “intelligence failures”—and is preparing a fallback position. Larry Johnson doesn’t really buy Haines’ claim, although he’s hardly a robust defender of the Intel intelligence. He asks, IS U.S. INTELLIGENCE REALLY THIS SCREWED UP? and suggests that intel officials may be afraid to tell politicians the “hard truths they do not want to hear.”

For my part, I don’t entirely accept that explanation. As we now know, based on what came out about Ukraine and Interagency policy over something like the past decade or more—and especially during the faux impeachment of Trump—US policy toward Russia (and therefore Ukraine) has been on pretty much the same trajectory: Ring Russia with US client states, arm them to the teeth, and slowly pressure Russia into bending to our will. We have noted the foot dragging on the part of the US military establishment, which seems clearly unwilling to provoke a mano a mano confrontation with Russia. Surely they have voiced their reservations about US policy at some point? Warned about rattling Russia’s cage in its own back yard? What we see appears to be a clear case of policy makers with little understanding of Russia or of military matters who are wearing ideological blinders, living in a fantasy world of their own imagining: Neocons.

Moon shares my skepticism and he also points out the true thrust of what Haines is saying—blame Zelensky, because we can shut him up:

I do not believe for one moment that U.S. intelligence services do not know what is going on in Ukraine and in Kiev. They know that the Ukraine has lost the war and will have to sue for peace as soon as possible.

They also have told the White House that this is a case and that the whole idea of setting up the Ukraine to tickle the Russian bear was idiotic from the get go. The question now is who will take the blame for the outcome. Who can the buck be passed to?

There is always the option for politicians, as Andrei [Martyanov] assumes is the case, to blame the intelligence and the various agencies which provide it. This was done when the war on Iraq, based on false claims weapons of mass destruction, started to go bad for the U.S.

But what the NYT piece does is passing the buck from the intelligence community to president Zelensky of Ukraine: "He did not inform us about the bad position his country was in."

But that’s just the beginning in the Moon piece. What Moon does next is to provide excerpts from a discussion at the Council of Foreign Relations on the state of the war in Ukraine. The discussion features the head of CFR, Richard Haass, and the former Deputy Commander of the United States European Command Stephen M. Twitty. This venue is about as Establishment as you can get, in terms of foreign policy. Notably, this discussion took place all the way back on March 31, and Twitty minced no words at all. This war was always going to be a defeat for anyone backing Ukraine:

TWITTY: I think the war in the Donbas is starting to turn to the Russians’ favor, and when you take a look at—and I’m particularly talking about the eastern part of the Donbas—the Russians have transitioned from trying to pour all their combat power into the Donbas to obliterating every single town. Whether it be Rubizhne, Lyman, they’re working now on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk as well, they’re obliterating these particular towns, and that’s how they’re making their headway. They’re not putting a bunch of combat power with infantry forces and tanks in there. They’ve taken all their artillery and they’re treating it like Mariupol and that’s how they’re making their headway. So they’re starting to make some headway in the eastern Donbas and so we have to watch that one closely.

In military terms this assessment is hardly news. Twitty is describing the Russian way of war: level everything with artillery. Our preferred approach is to do the same thing from the air. But the real point from an intel standpoint is that all experts always knew that this is what Russia would do if push came to shove, and that Ukraine didn’t stand a chance. That’s what MacGregor and Ritter have been saying, and that’s what Twitty said back on March 31.

HAASS: ... Why don’t we reverse [our policies]? General Twitty, is there something that the president said? Are things we’re not doing that we should be doing? Is there things that you would recommend at this point?

TWITTY: Well, as I take a look at this, you know, Secretary Austin came out that we’re going to weaken Russia. We have not really defined what weaken means, because if you take a look at the Ukrainians right now, I take a strong belief in Colin Powell’s doctrine—you overwhelm a particular enemy with force. And right now, when you take a look at Ukraine and you take a look at Russia, they’re about one to one. The only difference is Russia has a heck of a lot of combat power than the Ukrainians.

And so there’s no way that the Ukrainians will ever destroy or defeat the Russians, and so we got to really figure out what does weaken mean in the end state here. And I will also tell you, Richard, there’s no way that the Ukrainians will ever have enough combat power to kick the Russians out of Ukraine as well, and so what does that look like in the end game.

That’s a real discussion ender right there, but the other participants tried to come up with fantasy scenarios would somehow return Ukraine to the status quo as of 2014. Twitty was having none of that. Basically, he says, the 2014 status quo may be your preferred end state, but there are no ways and means to get there:

TWITTY: Yeah. So I got a couple of things for you, Richard. So I want to go back to what you said. Pre-2014—I want you to think about that one, because I’ve had time to think about it hearing others here, and what I will tell you, Richard, you know, I learned from the National War College there’s something called ends, ways, and means.

So if that’s your end state—pre-2014—then I’m interested to hear the ways and the means because, from a military standpoint, if that’s the way then the means would be the Ukrainians lack, again, the ability to pull that off to pre-2014. They just lack that ability. They don’t have the combat power.

And I also want to remind you we hear a lot about Russian casualties and Russian losses. We hear very little about Ukrainian losses, and keep in mind they’re losing soldiers throughout this war as well. They started at approximately two hundred thousand. Who knows where they are today?

We are finally starting to hear about Ukrainian losses—severe losses. And, increasingly, about desertions. We’re also hearing that the Ukrainians have been gaming those numbers. Even as of March 31 Twitty knew that the losses the Ukrainians were taking were unsustainable because they were unable to replace those losses with trained personnel—as the Russians can:

And so it’s hard to recruit and maintain that level of professionalism in that military. So that’s my first point. The end, ways, and means, they lack that, to be able to go back to the pre-2014.

Now, thinking back to the Andrei Martyanov rant that I posted yesterday, one of Martyanov’s constant complaints about the US approach is the lack of diplomatic professionalism. Twitty seconds that:

The second point that I would make is, you know, as you look at the DIME—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic—we’re woefully lacking on the diplomatic piece of this. If you notice, there’s no diplomacy going on at all to trying to get to some type of negotiations. And I don’t think that we can lead that, given where Putin thinks about us.

Again, this comes back to the Neocon approach. The Neocons are stuck on the US as global hegemon—they don’t do diplomacy. They do bullying, and now they’ve run up against a nuclear power with unstoppable hypersonic missiles. It’s a bit late in the game to learn diplomacy. This next bit is funny. Twitty’s choices for diplomatic intermediaries are two figures who are largely personae non gratae with Neocons:

But if you sit back and think about those that could possibly be a part of this negotiation team, you know, you have the—two of them are in—that I’m going to list are in NATO. One is President Orbán out of Hungary. Perhaps he can help out in the negotiation effort. The other one is President Erdoğan of Turkey. Longtime friends of President Putin, although some view that relationship as transactional. I don’t know. Let’s put it to the test and see.

Again, this is how Twitty saw things—over three months ago. The situation has only deteriorated since then, both militarily and economically. As usual, the Neocons started something big without thinking it through. The escalation of the sanctions war against Russia has had the effect of calling the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency into serious doubt. Yes, that was probably inevitable, given the reckless money creation that the US has indulged in, on top of its deindustrialization. All things in this world come to an end, and it seems increasingly likely that the reign of King Dollar—at least in its present form—is coming to an end. That will prove painful for America, but by forcing fiscal discipline of some sort upon us, it may restore something like what Trump had in mind.

With that in mind, we turn to Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism:

The Tricky Question for Russia of How Far to Go

What Smith means by this title is that Russia—just as Twitty saw, months ago—is in the drivers seat. The tricky question Smith sees is, How much of Ukraine does Russia want to incorporate? This special operation began with somewhat limited aims, and a limited authorization from the Duma. Smith recognizes that Russian public opinion is behind Putin and is actually pushing Putin, willy nilly, in a maximalist direction—meaning, Odessa and Kharkiv are in play. The Duma is likely to listen to public opinion and give Putin any authorities that he needs. The problem Smith sees is this:

Getting the needed authorization to expand the war is tricky because it is guaranteed to inflame opinion in the West. And Putin would need a real reason, not so much for them but to give China, India, Turkey, and the Saudis a strong basis for continuing to defy the West and not criticize or sanction Russia.

I’m not convinced that will prove so problematic, once the sanctions really start to bite in the West. In any case, as Smith notes, the process is beginning already:

Russia is having to stabilize the parts of Ukraine that it occupies, and that includes paying salaries to local government officials and pensions, which means converting banks to roubles. That sort of move sets strong expectations that the territory is joining Russia, whether or not that was the original plan.

Even bigger than these considerations, however, is simply this:

Putin also has a bigger aim of creating a new European security order.

Smith makes that statement near the top of her piece, but it isn’t till later that she explains—in a different context—how everything seems to be breaking Putin’s way, and how NATO is floundering, thanks in large part to the sanctions blowback:

Despite Zelensky’s intransigence and the US and EU unwillingness to even consider concessions, some important things are breaking Russia’s way. The first is the fact that Ukraine is losing is becoming harder and harder to cover up, and more and more media outlets are staring to report on its poor prospects, not just not winning but even preventing further territorial losses.

Second is that the sanctions blowback is already imperiling governments. Boris Johnson’s days are numbered. The proximate cause is the dramatic fall in living standards in the UK. ... But UK business leaders were surprisingly noisy about warning of food and fuel price jumps and shortages underway and getting even worse this winter. The Estonian government fell, and they so hate Russia that no one there would acknowledge sanctions blowback played a role. Estonia’s annual inflation rate in May was 20%.

Macron is worried about losing his party’s majority in parliament in next month’s elections. Scholz’s leadership looked wobbly even before Germany’s inflation numbers got scary (producer price index increases of over 30%) as industrial production fell. And as we’ve discussed, Italy hasn’t been all that keen about backing Ukraine.

But the biggest break has come from Turkey. Russia looked to have worsened its long-term position with Sweden and Finland wanting to join NATO and having been expected to be approved this June. But that’s gone off the rails. NATO entry requires unanimous approval of all members. Turkey is arguably the most important NATO member by virtue of location and having the second biggest NATO army.

NATO completely dissed Turkey by not pre-consulting them. Turkey objects vigorously to Sweden and Finland entering because both, mainly Sweden, are too friendly to Kurds. Sweden has a representative office in Kurdistan. Turkey has said it wants a Swedish parliament member, Amineh Kakabaveh, who was a former guerrilla and is now a key swing vote, to be extradited. And Turkey has hardened its position when there’s no indication that NATO or the EU have offered Turkey any bribes to get it to climb down. So NATO looks set to suffer a big embarrassment, and Sweden and Finland will have given up their vaunted neutrality and not gotten anything in return.

What this adds up to is that the US is giving Russia the leverage it needs to pull off the creation of a new European security order. The sanctions are driving home the point that the dollar as the world’s one and only reserve currency may have outlived its usefulness. Despite some of the people that Smith cites (John Helmer), I strongly doubt that Russia is interested in chaos of any sort to its west. Russia has an enormous interest in a stable and (relatively) friendly relationship with Europe. Neocon policy is making that option look ever more attractive for Europeans. Unlike the US, Russia does do diplomacy, and it will find ways to smooth the way for Europeans to reach an accommodation. It appears to me that US foreign policy is approaching its Humpty Dumpty moment.

Add to this failure with Russia—an entirely avoidable one—the shambles that has developed in LA: Biden Loses to the Teleprompter and Gets Ripped Apart for 'Summit of Americas' Debacle. How do you hold a Summit of the Americas without Mexico? And in LA? Only Progs could pull this off. When a country like El Salvador refuses to even take phone calls from Blinken, you have to wonder how European countries will react as the economic downturn deepens.