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The U.S. Is Afraid of Losing in Ukraine—or Winning - WSJ


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2022 Aug 13, 8:53am   912 views  12 comments

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Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.
Aug. 12, 2022 6:28 pm ET

Russia’s war is forcing a cornered Putin regime to bet on red lines it can’t afford to enforce.

Is the Biden administration afraid of victory in Ukraine? Such has been the accusation, but while it may come down to nearly the same thing, a truer statement is that the U.S. fears being dragged in if it puts its chips on Ukraine and Ukraine starts losing and also if Ukraine starts winning. In fact, almost any victory scenario might require NATO intervention to seal the deal—to draw a red line against a Vladimir Putin desperation play.
Lots of things short of victory or defeat also would make U.S. intervention hard to avoid if the U.S. bet big on victory or even if it didn’t. With the degree that the two countries interpenetrate each other’s elite and intelligence establishments, think the Russian military couldn’t get a kill shot on President Volodymyr Zelensky? But Mr. Zelensky is a hero to Western publics and Mr. Putin can’t be sure of the consequences of such an act. Every time his air force drops a bomb, Mr. Putin has to worry about it falling on an orphanage or a visiting celebrity. He has to worry every time a Western prime minister or parliamentary delegation sets out on the roads of Ukraine.

Mr. Putin fears also the things that Ukraine might do to which he might have to respond—as does the U.S., which is why it discourages strikes on Russia proper. The Kremlin has warned of ominous consequences if Ukraine bombs a vital bridge in Crimea. Monday’s special-forces attack on a Russian air base in Crimea may fall in the same category depending on how Mr. Putin chooses to react. And remember Mathias Rust, the German pilot who landed his Cessna on Red Square at the height of the Cold War? Neither the Kremlin nor the U.S. can have confidence in Russian air defense to stop a Ukrainian MiG bent on bombing Moscow’s onion domes or Mr. Putin’s private office.

None of this means the West shouldn’t up its support—just the opposite. But be ready for what it entails. The problem with some of the go-for-victory calls is their magical element—the unspoken stipulation that Ukraine can supply victory without NATO getting its feet wet. NATO will have to get its feet wet if it wants anything other than a frozen conflict that carries on without resolution (unfortunately the preferred outcome of many in the West). Mr. Putin can’t lose to Ukraine, he has to lose to NATO. In their separate recent war updates, the Atlantic Council and Rand Corp. both emphasize the possibility of the Kremlin leader seeking an armed confrontation with the U.S. to rescue his position at home.
For all the dubious arguments offered about an alleged NATO role in provoking today’s war, notice that NATO is less a military alliance than a demilitarization alliance, its arsenal having shrunk massively since the Cold War. Countries like Poland and the Czech Republic sought membership to avoid having to develop their own deterrents. The Western alliance is an alliance of countries that prefer to shelter behind the U.S. rather than spend on defense. And yet NATO, backed by a collective GDP 25 times as great as Russia’s, is still massively superior to Russia in conventional military power, and Mr. Putin knows it. Thanks to his expensively failed war, he also knows he has less and less with which to counter a Western intervention except the threat of nuclear armageddon, which isn’t what the billionaire sybarites who undergird his regime signed up for.

This is most obvious in his laborious seven-veils dance over whether to annex Ukrainian territory and bring it under Russia’s nuclear umbrella. Mr. Putin dithers because if he makes the declaration and the U.S. and Ukraine decline to be impressed, he could face a personally disastrous dilemma between climbing down and using a nuke.

Recall his pre-war fretting about what would happen if Ukraine were allowed to join NATO and then tried to reclaim Crimea. Mr. Putin is bedeviled by problematic bets on red lines he can’t afford to enforce (and, in some sense, has been begging Europe and the U.S. to bail him out of).
This doesn’t mean the war is already over except the shooting, as some European Metternichs would like to have it. But settled is whether Ukraine is an independent country: Mr. Putin now knows it won’t become an annexed satrapy of Russia. That ship has sailed. But Mr. Putin has something to fight for yet, to avoid the worst consequences of his own botched aggression, with Ukraine becoming a regional military superpower, getting stronger and stronger with Western backing, while Russia gets weaker and weaker under sanctions, its Chinese captivity, and a war it doesn’t know how to get out of.

There’s an obvious solution for Russia: Accept Ukraine’s existence and grow prosperous and secure together. But this solution would require the departure of Mr. Putin.


https://archive.ph/XaH1k

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1   RWSGFY   2022 Aug 13, 8:57am  

I think the guy is wrong on Putler worrying about his bombs hitting orphanages - it's the opposite - but the rest sounds spot on.

I suspect the task of giving Putler the pleasure to lose to NATO will fall on Poland.
2   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2022 Aug 13, 9:01am  

US politicians clearly stated that goal was to drag war out against Russia for as long as possible. We Americans don’t have any say in that apparently, since they never asked us about soending those billions.
3   RWSGFY   2022 Aug 13, 9:06am  

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says

US politicians clearly stated that goal was to drag war out against Russia for as long as possible.


Who said that? Name? Quote?
4   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2022 Aug 13, 9:15am  

RWSGFY says

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says


US politicians clearly stated that goal was to drag war out against Russia for as long as possible.


Who said that? Name? Quote?


that was a while ago. some big shots in pentagon said it during hearings in Congress. names i don’t remember, because i just don’t care enough.
5   Onvacation   2022 Aug 13, 9:31am  

"Universally debunked lies"

Biden’s role at Burisma Holdings Ltd has come under intense scrutiny following unsupported accusations by U.S. President Donald Trump that Joe Biden improperly tried to help his son’s business interests in Ukraine.

Interviews with more than a dozen people, including executives and former prosecutors in Ukraine, paint a picture of a director who provided advice on legal issues, corporate finance and strategy during a five-year term on the board, which ended in April of this year.

Biden never visited Ukraine for company business during that time, according to three of the people.

They also said that his presence on the board didn’t protect the company from its most serious challenge: a series of criminal investigations launched by Ukrainian authorities against its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, a multimillionaire former minister of ecology and natural resources. The allegations concern tax violations, money-laundering and licences given to Burisma during the period where Zlochevsky was a minister.

Revelations in a whistleblower complaint that Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pressed the Ukrainians to pursue investigations into Burisma and the role of Hunter Biden have sparked an impeachment inquiry by Democrats in the House of Representatives. Trump faces allegations that he withheld U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to place pressure on Kiev to investigate his potential Democratic rival in next year’s U.S. presidential election.

Giuliani has alleged, without providing evidence, that Joe Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to end an investigation into Burisma and Zlochevsky in order to protect his son.

Hunter Biden, 49 years old, has denied wrongdoing. In a public statement on Oct 13, his lawyer George Mesires said: “Despite extensive scrutiny, at no time has any law enforcement agency, either domestic or foreign, alleged that Hunter engaged in wrongdoing at any point during his five-year term.”

In an interview with ABC News aired Tuesday, Hunter Biden said in retrospect it may have been poor judgment to join Burisma’s board while his father was vice president, but added: “Did I make a mistake based upon some ethical lapse? Absolutely not.”

Biden, in the interview added that he didn’t discuss his business dealings in Ukraine with his father, other than one brief exchange in which his father told him “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

A lawyer for Hunter Biden didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Joe Biden has also denied any wrongdoing, saying he called for the removal of then-chief prosecutor Viktor Shokin in 2016 because of his ineffectiveness in tackling corruption in Ukraine, a widespread problem that both the United States and the European Union had long highlighted.

A spokesman for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, Andrew Bates, said: “Donald Trump is so terrified of running against Joe Biden that he sent his presidency into a tailspin by trying to blackmail Ukraine into intervening in our elections with universally-debunked lies.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hunter-biden-ukraine-idUSKBN1WX1P7
6   Onvacation   2022 Aug 13, 9:32am  

The only one investigated or prosecuted for Hunter's alleged crimes is Trump.

What up with that?
7   Hugh_Mongous   2022 Aug 13, 1:20pm  

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says

RWSGFY says


FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says



US politicians clearly stated that goal was to drag war out against Russia for as long as possible.


Who said that? Name? Quote?



that was a while ago. some big shots in pentagon said it during hearings in Congress. names i don’t remember, because i just don’t care enough.


You got it wrong then. The biggest Pentagon shot - Lloyd Austin III -said that the goal is not to "drag it out as long as possible", but to (exact quote) “to see Russia weakened to the degree it can not do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
8   just_passing_through   2022 Aug 13, 4:35pm  

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says

that was a while ago. some big shots in pentagon said it during hearings in Congress. names i don’t remember, because i just don’t care enough.


I remember it but got it from interwebs sources rather than the person's(s) mouth.

Idea was the break them with a quagmire that drug out for years causing an internal collapse that would get rid of Putin.

Then take them over and westernize.

This was discussed maybe a few weeks before the war started - if you mark the start when Putin invaded.
9   richwicks   2022 Aug 13, 4:53pm  

Hugh_Mongous says

You got it wrong then. The biggest Pentagon shot - Lloyd Austin III -said that the goal is not to "drag it out as long as possible", but to (exact quote) “to see Russia weakened to the degree it can not do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”


The government says one thing than another, they have no consistency other than they are perfectly willing to lie to the public.

Remember when Fauci claimed masks were useless, and then mandated that people wear them? I can find it again, if you like.

It's a complete waste of time to listen to US officials now. I don't know why people bother. Generally the lie is the claim they make repeatedly and the truth is said maybe once, quite often less than that. That's been the rule for 20 years.
10   FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden   2022 Aug 13, 5:20pm  

Hugh_Mongous says

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says


RWSGFY says



FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says




US politicians clearly stated that goal was to drag war out against Russia for as long as possible.


Who said that? Name? Quote?




that was a while ago. some big shots in pentagon said it during hearings in Congress. names i don’t remember, because i just don’t care enough.



You got it wrong then. The biggest Pentagon shot - Lloyd Austin III -said that the goal is not to "drag it out as long as possible", but to (exact quote) “to see Russia weakened to the degree it can not do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”


you do that by dragging war out to make it unaffordable, turn ukraine into another afghanistan
12   Eric Holder   2022 Aug 16, 12:07pm  

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says


You got it wrong then. The biggest Pentagon shot - Lloyd Austin III -said that the goal is not to "drag it out as long as possible", but to (exact quote) “to see Russia weakened to the degree it can not do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

you do that by dragging war out to make it unaffordable, turn ukraine into another afghanistan


But this is not what they said - this is purely your speculation.

And they might wanted to turn it into another Afgh initially because it was widely expected that UA armed forces will collapse and the war will transition into an insurgency. Hence only ATGM and MANPADS being supplied in the couple month between it became obvious the attack is imminent and about 2 month into the war. It's pretty obvious that this didn't happen and now it's definitely does not resemble Afghanistan in any way, shape or form. Austin's statement was made after it became obvious this is NOT anything like Afghanistan or Iraq but rather a combined arms war between peer adversaries. In that type of conflict it's made unaffordable not by dragging it out but by destroying as much equipment and personnel as fast as possilbe and denying your enemy time to recover by producing more shit and training more people.

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