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When Assessing Russia’s War on Ukraine, Ban the Word ‘Escalate’

When Assessing Russia’s War on Ukraine, Ban the Word ‘Escalate’

By John R Guardiano on February 5, 2023

The West’s fear of ‘escalation’ makes no sense and is seriously undermining Ukraine’s ability to win the war.

As we’ve previously observed, the tendency to see Russia’s war on Ukraine through the antiquated prism of the Cold War has led many analysts astray, and nowhere is the more true than in the oft-expressed concern that the West do nothing that might “escalate” the conflict.

Of course, this concern is idiotic and counterproductive: because in practice, anything that might help Ukraine win and bring this conflict to a swift and successful conclusion is castigated as “escalatory” and, therefore, bad and dangerous. For example:

  • Ditto aircraft, which are critical to a Ukrainian combined arms offensive that could quickly overwhelm Russian forces. Aircraft are deemed “escalatory” and thus a no-go, says President Biden.
  • ATACMS. What about the U.S. Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which would increase Ukraine’s long-range precision strike capabilities by a factor of more than four, from 45 miles to 190 miles? Nope. No can do. Too “escalatory.”
  • Russian Military Targets. Should Ukraine strike Russian military targets that lie within clear view just beyond the Russian-Ukraine border? Absolutely not! That would be the ultimate “escalatory” move.

In short, this fear of “escalation” has seriously narrowed the bounds of permissible Western military action vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine and with the catastrophic consequence of a longer, more costly, and drawn-out war.

‘Escalation’. But it makes no sense. The fear of “escalation” is a relic of Cold War thinking. It does not reflect current political, military, and strategic realities.

Politically, Ukraine is a free and sovereign country, not a Soviet satellite state, and its existence does not pose an existential threat to Russia, and Russia knows this.

Strategically, there can be no peace and stability in Europe unless and until this conflict is resolved, and this means that either Ukraine or Russia must win. There is no middle-ground or modus vivendi as there was during the Cold War.

The two sides have clear and irreconcilable differences: Russia wants to conquer and subsume Ukraine, and Ukraine wants to be free and independent of Russia.

Militarily, Russia has shown itself to be weak and incompetent, and its possession of nuclear weapons does not change or alter this balance of power.

Russia is not about to risk a strategic nuclear war and the destruction of Moscow for the sake of conquering Ukraine, and tactical nukes give it no real military advantage in Ukraine.

Russia. Russia, in fact, has every reason to fear a larger-scale war with NATO, which is why such a war won’t happen. Russia can barely handle the under-armed Ukrainian Army. It is not about to pick a fight with vastly superior NATO military force.

Russia also fights alone. It has no allies of any military significance other than Iran, which provides Russia with cheap, subpar drones.

China, meanwhile, has wisely decided to sit this one out as it looks askance at Russian military weakness and ineptitude. Chinese state-owned companies are providing Russia with military-applicable parts, but not weapon systems or battlefield assistance.

Fear. Consequently, there is no reason to fear a larger-scale war resulting from “escalation.” There is, however, reason to fear a long and costly, drawn-out war that results from the West’s refusal to adequately arm Ukraine.

A fear of “escalation,” in fact, is a fear of Ukraine winning and Russia losing, and this fear makes no sense. As General Douglas MacArthur observed:

Once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very objective is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.

The bottom line: it is long past time for President Biden and other Western leaders to overcome their utterly misplaced fear of “escalation” and to commit to a Ukrainian victory over Russia.

Give the Ukrainians all of the military weapons systems—tanks, aircraft, long-range precision artillery, armed Reaper drones, et al.—that they need to bring this conflict to a swift and successful conclusion. And do this now, not six or 12 months from now.

The alternative is morally and militarily unconscionable. It is to allow Ukraine to be destroyed and innocent Ukrainian civilians to be slaughtered by the Russian war machine as this conflict grinds on interminably for years. That is in no one’s interest and it is as unnecessary as it is wrong. The Cold War, after all, ended more than 30 years ago.

Feature photo credit: President Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron have refrained from fully arming Ukraine because of their utterly misplaced fear of “escalating” the war. (Pic courtesy of ChannelsTv.com, Johanna Heron, Hannibal Hanschke, Nicolas Kamm / AFP.)

What Does History Portend for Ukraine?

What Does History Portend for Ukraine?

By John R Guardiano on January 8, 2023

One’s view of the war in Ukraine depends largely on which historical precedent—World War I, World War II, the Cold War, or Iraq and Afghanistan—you think applies.

Michael Brendan Dougherty argues in National Review that American intervention in Ukraine is a “nearly utopian project with obvious, foreseeable risks and potentially ruinous costs.”

Dougherty’s analysis wildly misses the mark. Among his errors: he doesn’t believe the United States has a strategic rationale for seeking to cripple the Russian military in Ukraine, and he believes that by helping Ukraine, we are weakening our position in Taiwan vis-à-vis China.

In truth, of course, Russia has proven, by its actions over the past two decades, that it is an enemy of the United States. So crippling its military in Ukraine absolutely serves the American national interest.

And of course, by aiding Ukraine, militarily, we are exposing—and resolving—problems with our weapons production and supply chain bottlenecks that will redound, ultimately, to the benefit of Taiwan.

We are also learning valuable lessons about what types of weapons systems and tactical approaches might prove most effective at deterring a potential Chinese invasion.

Nonetheless, despite misfiring, Dougherty inadvertently shows how the misapplication of historical precedent has distorted our understanding of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Iraq and Afghanistan. Although he himself does not explicitly say so, Dougherty, I think, sees the war through the prism of recent history, and specifically, the unsatisfactory American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus he calls American intervention in Ukraine “a nearly utopian project” that is “peripheral to U.S. interests.”

Of course, that’s how many critics saw and see the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as quixotic and costly diversions from core American interests. And the fact that these wars dragged on interminably gives these critics standing in the minds of many Americans who now worry about U.S. involvement in Ukraine.

I do not believe this recent historical precedent is very applicable and for myriad reasons:

Europe is not the Middle East or Central Asia; one sovereign state (Russia) invading another sovereign state (Ukraine) is very different from a civil conflict within one state (Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively); and Ukrainians have demonstrated a fervent sense of nationalism and will to win that was often absent in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

For these and other reasons, the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is, I think, an utterly inapt and unhelpful historical precedent—though, to be sure, there are lessons to be learned there.

For example, small numbers of American military advisers and battlefield intelligence can be dramatic force multipliers. That was true in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is true in Ukraine as well.

(The U.S. military advises Ukrainian soldiers via Zoom or Microsoft Teams; and it trains Ukrainian soldiers at American and NATO military bases in the United States and Europe, but outside of Ukraine.)

Cold War. Another historical precedent that people, including Dougherty, fall back upon is the Cold War. Thus whenever Putin engages in nuclear saber rattling, many Western analysts talk about the importance of learning lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis and providing Putin with an “off-ramp.”

But during the Cold War, Ukraine was part and parcel of the Soviet Union. Today, by contrast, it is a free, sovereign, and independent country.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, likewise, involved a country (Cuba) that was firmly ensconced in the Soviet orbit. Ukraine, by contrast, is a Western democracy (or aspiring Western democracy) valiantly and heroically seeking to free itself of Russian domination or attempted Russian domination.

For these and other reasons, the strategic and military calculus has radically and necessarily changed from the Cold War to the present day.

Maintaining the balance of power between two superpowers is no longer at issue, as it was during the Cold War. Instead, what matters most is protecting the territorial integrity of independent nation-states like Ukraine.

World War I is another inapt historic precedent. There, competing alliances involving multiple countries led to an unforeseen escalatory spiral that soon engulfed all of Europe, Japan and the United States.

Today, by contrast, Russia fights alone, albeit with the help of Iranian drones. Thus any conceivable world war involving multiple countries would mean only one thing: NATO’s intervention and Russia’s swift and decisive defeat in Ukraine.

Russia knows this, which is why there will no World War I-like escalatory spiral in Ukraine.

World War II. That leaves World War II, which is arguably the most apt and helpful historical precedent for understanding Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Then as now, you had a country hellbent on imperialist conquest and domination. Hitler was determined to establish the Third Reich; Putin is determined to establish a new Russian empire. Then as now the only thing that might stop the dictator is timely Western aid and resolve.

In the 1930s, the West failed and the result was World War II. Today, thanks to the heroic resistance of Ukraine, the West is doing much better; and so, a larger-scale war might yet be averted. Time will tell and we will see.

The bottom line: history can both distort and clarify our understanding of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Not all historical precedent, after all, is equally valid and equally relevant.

Seeing the war through the prism of inapposite conflicts that are fundamentally different leads to misunderstanding and bad analysis. However, similar wartime dynamics from previous eras can be telling and instructive.

Anti-interventionists like Dougherty misfire because they are like old generals who fight the last war. They don’t realize that the conflict has fundamentally changed. The Cold War is over and Ukraine is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan.

Instead, Ukraine is more like Poland or Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, but with more of a fighting chance if only the West will act with a greater sense of dispatch, or what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.”

Feature photo credit: Poland 1939, courtesy of Amazon.com.

No Reason to Delay Providing Ukraine with Patriot Missile Defense

No Reason to Delay Providing Ukraine with Patriot Missile Defense

By John R Guardiano on December 15, 2022

Send American soldiers into Ukraine to standup and operate the Patriot missile defense system.

The Biden administration’s pending decision to send Ukraine a Patriot missile defense system encapsulates everything that is right and wrong about its policy vis-à-vis Ukraine.

The Biden administration is doing the right thing, but belatedly, reactively, and inadequately—and with catastrophic consequences because of its dithering and delay.

Providing Ukraine with a Patriot missile defense system is obviously the right thing to do. The Patriot is a defensive weapons system that will protect innocent Ukrainians against horrific Russian war crimes.

Russia is deliberately targeting Ukrainian residential building and civilian infrastructure.

The Patriot will enable Ukraine to intercept Russian missiles while they are airborne, well before they can slaughter innocent, men, women and children—and well before they can cripple Ukraine’s electrical grids and power supply.

Delay. The problem is: it will be months before the Patriot arrives in country. In the meantime, Russia continues to wage war against innocent civilians.

Why the delay? Because it will take months to train Ukrainians to operate the system, and the Biden administration won’t send American troops into Ukraine to operate the Patriot. That would risk “provoking Putin” don’t you know, and we can’t have that.

This is ludicrous and makes no sense. Protecting innocent Ukrainian civilians is hardly a provocation; it is humanitarian mission and clearly the right thing to do.

Putin can protest all he wants; but he knows, and the world knows, that shooting missiles out of the sky to save lives is not at all analogous to targeting Russian soldiers.

Conflict Deescalation. In fact, deploying the Patriot to Ukraine is a deescalatory measure, not an escalatory measure.

The Patriot is designed to contain and minimize the horrific costs of war. President Biden needs to recognize this and overcome his timid approach to aiding Ukraine.

His timidity is needlessly prolonging the war and worsening the horrific costs of war for those who can least bear it: innocent Ukrainian civilians.

Moreover, the need for a missile defense system in Ukraine was obvious within the first few months of the war. Russian military attacks on civilian targets have occurred habitually throughout the conflict. Yet only now is the Biden administration thinking about providing Ukraine with a Patriot missile defense system.

Predictably and sadly, this administration’s approach all along has been the proverbial day late and a dollar short. The truth is, this administration never expected Ukraine to succeed and has been forced to play catchup every single step of the way.

Act Now. Now is the time for Team Biden to get ahead of the curve for once. The administration should overcome its fear and timidity and immediately send an American military team into Ukraine to standup and operate a Patriot missile defense system.

The risk to our soldiers would be minimal, and relatively few soldiers would be required to standup and operate the system. We’re talking hundreds, not thousands, of soldiers.

Within several months, after Ukrainians have been fully trained on how to operate the system, the U.S. team can leave.

There is no reason to dither and delay. Do the right thing and do it now.

Feature photo credit. Another civilian target destroyed by a planned Russian military attack, courtesy of Ukrainska Pravda.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Spreads Malicious Lies about Ukraine and the United States

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Spreads Malicious Lies about Ukraine and the United States

By John R Guardiano on December 11, 2022

In his zeal to vilify Ukraine and malign the United States, Carlson betrays an appalling ignorance of the politics and history of both countries. 

Is Tucker Carlson a knowing Putin propagandist or historically obtuse and ignorant?

It’s hard to tell, but that is the inescapable conclusion one must draw after listening to his myriad commentaries trying to portray Ukraine in the worst possible light, while saying little or nothing critical of Putin and Russia.

Most recently (Dec. 7, 2022), Carlson declared that Ukrainian President Zelensky is a Lenin-like dictator who is using American tax dollars to stamp out opposition parties and religious liberty in Ukraine.

Zelensky is a “dangerous authoritarian” who “has no interest in freedom and democracy,” Carlson intoned. And, for this reason, any comparison to World War II, the proverbial “good war” for freedom and democracy, is wrongheaded.

American support for Ukraine today does not mirror American support for Britain at the outset of World War II. No, Sir, said Carlson.

The Biden administration “baited” Russia into invading Ukraine: by “telling Zelensky to join NATO, which they, [the Biden administration], knew was a Russian red line. They, [the Biden administration], wanted this war,” Carlson said.

Russia Threats. Carlson then brought left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald on air to tell viewers that the U.S. government “actually doesn’t care about spreading democracy.” That is a “fairy tale,” Greenwald said.

Russia, he scoffed, is no threat to the United States. Russia is not our enemy. Presidents Obama and Trump didn’t see Russia as an enemy and neither should we. Only crazy left-wing Democrats who still cling to the Trump-Russia collusion hoax think that, Greenwald said.

As Luke Coffey observes, “Tucker would make a fantastic spokesman for the Kremlin.” And, in fact, as The Guardian points out:

Carlson’s commentaries on the Ukraine war generally reflect Putin’s speeches and claims. Russian television then plays back the monologues as evidence that Putin is right because the same is being said by “the most popular television presenter in America”.

But while Americans of all political stripes do not accept the lies spewed by a Russian dictator, American conservatives are inclined to accept the falsehoods spouted by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, and therein lies the problem.

Carlson is opposed to U.S. aid to Ukraine, which is a legitimate, albeit wrongheaded position.

What is illegitimate is deliberately lying about the United States and Ukraine, and deliberately defaming and demonizing these two great countries, to try and make your case for cutting off American aid dollars.

Zelensky v. Lenin. First, to compare Zelensky to Lenin is obviously idiotic and slanderous. Lenin seized power in a violent Communist revolution and was guided by dictatorial Communist ideology. Zelensky was elected president peacefully and democratically, and is guided by the broad-based concerns of the Ukrainian people.

As for religious liberty, it is guaranteed in the Ukrainian Constitution, and it is, in the main, respected and protected. However, because Putin has weaponized the Orthodox Church and manipulated the church to try and conquer and subdue Ukraine, matters are considerably more complicated than Carlson acknowledges.

Ukraine is fighting for its very survival and has a legitimate interest in rooting out spies, traitors, and saboteurs.

Perhaps Zelensky and his government have overreached. But if that is the case, they did so as a wartime exigency and not out of any ideological desire to stamp out legitimate democratic opposition and dissent.

Let us remember: the United States, too, has sometimes stifled dissent and infringed upon liberty while at war.

Lincoln. During the Civil War, for instance, President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus to ensure that Union commanders could arrest and detain people seen as a threat to military operations. Yet, only the historically illiterate would suggest that, because of this, Lincoln was a “dangerous authoritarian” opposed to democracy.

Instead, historians understand that Lincoln was a wartime leader trying to preserve the union and save his country.

This doesn’t meant that Lincoln was right to suspend habeas corpus. That is a legitimate historical argument to have. But any fair-minded historian will place Lincoln’s suspension of the writ into historical context to arrive at a judicious and fair-minded conclusion regardless of whether he thinks what Lincoln did was right or wrong.

So, too, with Zelensky. Political and wartime context is required to understand his actions vis-a-vis the Orthodox Church. Yet, Carlson eschews such context precisely in order to demonize Zelensky and portray him as a cartoonish political villain.

Ukraine. What is beyond dispute and debate is that Ukraine is a burgeoning democracy that aspires to be part of the West. The Ukrainians wish to share in our political and cultural patrimony. They wish to be a free, sovereign, and independent country.

Russia, by contrast, wants to dominate and subjugate Ukraine. They want to isolate Ukraine from the West and make it dependent upon and subservient to Russia. And, more ominously, in so doing, they want to wipe Ukraine off the map and destroy its culture and its nationhood.

American support for Ukraine is thus morally just and righteous and something all Americans ought to be proud of—Carlson and Greenwald to the contrary notwithstanding.

But make no mistake: America supports Ukraine not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it serves the American national interest.

Russia. Again, Russia is an avowed enemy of the United States that has spent the better part of two decades undermining American national security interests in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. So any opportunity to bloody and weaken Russia is a good and welcome opportunity for the United States.

This doesn’t mean that the United States baited or lured Russia into waging war on Ukraine, as Carlson and Greenwald idiotically assert. To the contrary: the United States and its European allies went to great pains for many years to allay Russian concerns.

The problem is that Putin has been hellbent on resurrecting a new Russian empire and could not be assuaged by anything less than utter appeasement and surrender.

Putin launched a war on Ukraine not because of anything the United States or NATO did or did not do. He launched a war on Ukraine because he wants to conquer and subsume Ukraine.

The United States is supporting Ukraine because it recognizes that Russia success there will threaten peace and stability throughout Europe, while inspiring dictators worldwide to redraw national boundaries and rewrite the wold map.

In other words, American support for democracy is no fairy tale; it is reality, hard-headed realism in a dangerous world. And the only lies being told are those by Carlson and Greenwald, who portray an illiberal, authoritarian Ukraine that doesn’t exist.

The bottom line: Ukraine is a good country and its president, Zelensky, is a great wartime leader, despite whatever mistakes he might have made and, undoubtedly, will make in the future.

Ukraine and Zelensky, in fact, can be compared, favorably, to Great Britain and Winston Churchill as they heroically fought back against Nazi Germany at the onset of World War II.

Russia, by contrast, is a bad country and its dictator, Vladimir Putin, is a bad man. Russia and Putin can be compared, unfavorably, to Nazi Germany and Adolph Hitler as they savagely tried to conquer Europe during World War II.

And then, as now, the United States is doing the Lord’s work in supporting the forces of freedom and democracy. May it always be so.

Feature photo credit: Fox News’ host Tucker Carlson and left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald, courtesy of a Fox News screenshot.

Ukraine, France, and ‘Peace for Our Time’

Ukraine, France, and ‘Peace for Our Time’

By John R Guardiano on December 4, 2022

Humiliating, not appeasing, Putin is the only way to restore peace and stability in Europe.

One of the big lessons of World War II is that a policy of appeasement toward dictators hellbent on conquest and subjugation is morally repugnant and strategically wrong. Appeasement only wets a dictator’s appetite for domination. Dictators must be confronted and defeated, not appeased.

The French in the 1930s were big appeasers of Hitler’s Germany; and all of Europe, especially European Jews, paid a horrific price as a result.

Had Hitler been confronted and defeated before amassing a fearsome military and before he annexed the Sudetenland and invaded Poland, World War II would have been averted.

One would think the French had learned this history and internalized its lessons. France, after all, was occupied by Nazi Germany and liberated only by the force of American and British arms.

French Appeasement. Yet, fresh from his visit last week with President Biden in Washington, French President Emanuel Macron renewed his longstanding call for appeasing Putin and giving the Russian dictator “security guarantees.”

According to The Telegraph, “this means,” said Macron,

that one of the essential points we must address, as President Putin has always said, is the fear that Nato comes right up to its doors and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.

That topic will be part of the topics for peace, so we need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.

In July, Macron, likewise warned: “We must not humiliate Russia so that the day the fighting stops, we can build a way out through diplomatic channels.”

NATO Again. Excuse me, but this is dangerous and ill-informed nonsense. Macron has it exactly backwards. Russia, not the West, must provide “security guarantees”: to Ukraine and its East European neighbors. Russia is the clear and obvious aggressor. Russia, not Ukraine or NATO, started this war.

NATO never threatened Russia, and Putin knows it. The idea that NATO, or any one NATO country, has designs on Russian territory is ludicrous and laughable, and Putin knows that, too.

NATO is a defensive alliance designed to protect against longstanding Russian aggression and imperialism.

As former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has observed, Putin never raised a concern about NATO expansion with her or former President George W. Bush until very late in Bush’s second term. He belatedly raised the issue only as  convenient excuse or cover for his attempt to create by force a new Russian empire.

Humiliation, Not Appeasement. In truth, Russia must be humiliated. It must suffer a complete and devastating military defeat precisely to disabuse it of its historic and deep-seated imperialistic ambitions.

Otherwise, as with pre-World War II Germany, a barbaric and authoritarian Russia will regroup and rise again to threaten the peace and stability of Europe.

A defeated and chastened Russia, by contrast, creates the possibility of liberal change and reform. As Anne Applebaum explains:

The only solution that offers some hope of long-term stability in Europe is rapid defeat, or even, to borrow Macron’s phrase, humiliation.

In truth, the Russian president not only has to stop fighting the war; he has to conclude that the war was a terrible mistake, one that can never be repeated.

More to the point, the people around him—leaders of the army, the security services, the business community—have to conclude exactly the same thing. The Russian public must eventually come to agree too.

Win, Not Tie. Unfortunately, the Biden administration seems to be playing for a tie, not a Ukrainian win; and this is resulting in a long, drawn-out war, which allows appeasers like Macron to strut about the world stage foolishly warning against an “escalation” of the conflict.

Veteran foreign affairs analyst Robin Wright, for instance, urges the Biden administration to pressure Zelensky to negotiate with Putin. Otherwise, she warns, the war could reach “horrifying levels” and result in the utter destruction of Ukraine.

Wright is right to worry about a prolonged war, but wrong to push for appeasement.

Instead of playing for a tie, the Biden administration should be robustly arming Ukraine with America’s best weapons—drones, tanks, fighter aircraft, long-range artillery, air defenses, et al. precisely to bring this war to a swift and successful conclusion.

That’s the lesson of history; that’s the lesson of World War II; and that’s what French President Macron should be saying and acknowledging: NATO and America will ensure that Ukraine wins and Russia loses.

Feature photo credit: President Biden and French President Emanuel Macron yukking it up at the White House Dec 1, 2022, courtesy of USA Today.