Posts published in “Russia’s War on Ukraine”

How to Prevent a Nuclear War in Ukraine

By John R Guardiano on September 21, 2022

Deterrence, strength, and resolve are critical now, not weakness and fear.

With the Russian military reeling from massive casualties, defeats, and a surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive, Vladimir Putin has resorted, once again, to nuclear saber-rattling. Putin himself warned today that he is “not bluffing” about his willingness to use nukes. A key Putin ally, meanwhile, threatened London with a nuclear strike.

Of course, such talk is utterly reckless and dangerous and ought to draw worldwide condemnation. But how should the West—and specifically the United States and NATO—respond? Well, we need to remember several key things:

First, Russian nuclear saber-rattling is nothing new. It was commonplace in the Cold War and, unfortunately, remains a staple of Russian foreign policy today. Yet, despite decades of this reckless talk, Russia never actually resorted to using nukes; and there is little reason to believe it would resort to using nukes in Ukraine today.

Second, during the Cold War, Russian nuclear saber-rattling did not paralyze American presidents, Democrat and Republican, and it should not paralyze President Biden now. Nor did Russian nuclear saber-rattling paralyze NATO during the Cold War, and it should not paralyze NATO now.

The West cannot be intimidated and forced to back down each and every time Russia threatens to use nukes. If the West had respond in this way during the Cold War, the West would have lost the Cold War.

Third, Russian nuclear saber rattling is a reflection of Russian weakness, not Russian strength. As Dr. Mike Martin of King’s College in London points out in The Telegraph this morning:

The Ukraine war has already hollowed out much of the Russian armed forces. This includes the sending of its training battalions into combat, and so the trainers of these mobilised reservists are, in many cases, already dead.

As for equipment, very few Russian soldiers even get body armour, and so much equipment has been destroyed by the Ukrainians that they are already having to press Soviet-era equipment into service.

Most of it belongs in a museum not on a modern battlefield.

Putin is sending these people to their deaths. The Ukrainian armed forces have killed tens of thousands of professional Russian soldiers with the best equipment that Russia could supply. What will they do with this mobilised reserve?

…Putin has shown us this morning that he is not strong, but that he is weak.

Exactly. Russia is losing the war and its military faces the very real prospect of collapse. Putin is resorting to nuclear saber-rattling out of desperation.

Fourth, if Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, this will not change the course of the war. It will not reverse Russia’s battlefield losses or its inability to conquer Ukraine.

Instead, all it will do is result in a more horrific loss of life and the very real danger of nuclear contamination blowing back on Russian military forces and the Russian populace. Putin surely knows this, or at least his military advisers surely know this.

Fifth, Putin alone cannot launch nuclear weapons. He would need the buy-in of an entire military, and possibly civilian, chain of command. And it is by no means obvious that all of these officials would be so stupid and so reckless as do the unthinkable.

Sixth, if Russia becomes the first and only country to use nuclear weapons since the Second World War nearly 80 years ago, it will seal its fate as a country thoroughly isolated and shunned for two or three generations at least.

Russia currently enjoys the good offices of China, Turkey, Israel, and India. All of these good offices end the minute Russia crosses the nuclear threshold and does the unthinkable. Putin knows this, and it is a big reason why he is highly unlikely to employ nukes in Ukraine.

Seventh, the West does not have to respond in kind, with a retaliatory nuclear strike, if Russia employs nuclear weapons in Ukraine. In fact, the West should not do so and almost certainly will not do so.

Why? Because that is completely unnecessary from a military standpoint. NATO has more than sufficient conventional military means to destroy the Russian military in Ukraine and should do so if Putin launches a nuclear weapon there.

Moreover, by responding in kind, NATO and the United States cede the moral and diplomatic high ground in Ukraine. Why do so when that is completely unnecessary?

Ceding the moral and diplomatic high ground risks driving away China, Turkey, Israel, and India, all of whom can then say, in effect, “A pox on both your houses.”

Eighth, the only time the West should launch a nuclear strike on Russia is if Putin launches a nuclear strike on a NATO country.

In other words, if Russia nukes Warsaw or London, then the West responds in kind with a retaliatory nuclear strike on Moscow. But if Russia nukes Ukraine, then NATO enters the war, destroys the Russian military there, and quickly ends the war with conventional weapons.

That at least is what should happen. Let us hope and pray that that is what President Biden, Prime Minister Truss, and other NATO leaders are communicating privately to Russian government officials.

Ninth, the way to prevent nuclear war is through the time-tested method of deterrence, which served us well during the Cold War. Weakness and fear are provocative and could well result in a miscalculation by Putin.

The Russians should be under no illusions. If they use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, NATO will enter the war, quickly decimate and destroy the Russian military there, and end the war. And if Russia ever dared to launch a nuclear strike on a NATO country, it would result in the utter destruction of Moscow.

That is how we can and will prevent the unthinkable from ever happening. Pray for peace, but prepare for war.

Feature photo credit: YouTube screenshot of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, courtesy of CNN.

Russian Nukes are No Reason to Scale Back Western Support for Ukraine

Russian Nukes are No Reason to Scale Back Western Support for Ukraine

By John R Guardiano on September 15, 2022

Nuclear weapons are not a military game changer in Ukraine and Putin and his generals know it.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has sparked renewed fears that a desperate Vladimir Putin might resort to nuclear weapons; and that, to forestall this possibility, Ukraine should be careful not to beat back the Russians too far too fast. Otherwise, Putin might lash out and do the unthinkable.

As dovish New York Times’ columnist Ross Douthat put it:

The danger is that desperation might push Moscow toward nuclear brinkmanship—especially given the Russian strategic posture that envisions using tactical nuclear weapons to reverse battlefield defeats.

As the United States learned to its cost in the Korean War, when our push to the Yalu River reaped an unexpected Chinese intervention, the question of how far a victorious army should push is not an easy one, and whether in Crimea or the Donbas, there may be a line that’s perilous to cross.

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson agrees: The Ukrainians, he warns,

are getting very close to the Russian border, and that raises the question: You have an ailing dictator, [Vladimir Putin], with 7,000 nuclear weapons, the world’s largest arsenal. And there are some scenarios that we don’t think about.

Is he just going to say, “I lost 100,000 dead, wounded, and missing. I’m sorry. We lost,” and then quit. I don’t think so…

I think he’s going to say:

“You’re getting very close to the Russian border. You’re hitting targets with NATO and American weapons inside Russia. You’re attacking ships,” and we’re back to 1962, [the Cuban Missile Crisis].

And he’s going to do something dramatic [engage in nuclear brinksmanship if not the use of nuclear weapons].

Excuse me, but this is ludicrous and nonsensical. Douthat and Hanson are serious-minded analysts, but what they are doing here is unserious. It is scaremongering, not serious analysis.

Nuclear Weapons. First, what is at issue in Ukraine are tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons, not strategic nuclear weapons. No one is suggesting that Russia might launch nuclear weapons at the United States or any NATO country.

That would be suicidal for the Russians because it would invite, obviously, a devastating counterstrike that would destroy Moscow. Putin knows this and so, it won’t happen.

The question is: might Russia use tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons on Ukraine?

International Politics. Of course, no one can never say never, because leaders sometimes do stupid things and make horrendous mistakes. But such a move would make no military sense, and it would isolate Russia, politically, to an extent rivaled perhaps only by Kim Jong-un’s hermit kingdom in North Korea.

Russia currently enjoys the good offices of China, India, Israel, Turkey, and other countries that are trying to have it both ways vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine. Heck, even the Germans and the French sometimes suggest that they are ready, if not eager, to abandon Ukraine for the sake of “peace.”

All of these good offices end the minute Russia crosses the nuclear threshold and does the unthinkable. Putin knows this, and it is a big reason why he is highly unlikely to employ nukes in Ukraine.

Military Disadvantage. Moreover, Russia gains nothing, militarily, by using nuclear weapons.

“They [tactical nukes] don’t really do that much,” explains military analyst Ralph Peters. “You can do more in many cases,” he explains, “with a HIMARS, [the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System]…

A tactical nuclear weapon, he adds, “is not gonna stop the Ukrainians… and it won’t change the course of the war.” Again, Putin knows this, or at least his military advisers know this.

Russia also “would have to worry about the fallout coming from the [nuclear] explosion drifting onto Russian soldiers, pro-Russian separatists, and Russian citizens,” notes Brent M. Eastwood.

Finally, as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis observes, Putin’s use of a tactical nuclear weapon, “while highly unlikely… would probably bring NATO into the conflict with the creation of a no-fly zone.”

Of course, the last thing Putin and his military commanders want is a direct engagement with NATO. The Russian military is being beaten by Ukrainian citizen soldiers and would be quickly decimated were NATO to enter the conflict.

The bottom line: Putin has every reason not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. And, to the extent he may be deluded on this score, it is important for the United States and NATO to disabuse him of his delusions: by communicating to him and his military commanders the inevitable consequences should he dare to cross the nuclear threshold and do the unthinkable.

In short, although Russia has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, this is of no real political or military significance in Ukraine. What matters is that the Russian military is incompetent at waging war.

What matters is that the Russian economy is incredibly weak and anemic and cannot long sustain Putin’s war of conquest, war of choice.

What matters is that although public opinion polls suggest most Russians support Putin, the Russian people have no appetite for fighting in Ukraine, which is why Putin has not imposed a draft or mass mobilization of the populace.

Support Ukraine. The possibility of a nuclear war always exists, of course, but it is highly unlikely and should not be used as a pretext to scale back Western support of Ukraine and limit Ukrainian political and military objectives.

Ukraine should aim to drive every last Russian out of their country, and America and NATO should stand by the Ukrainians until this objective is achieved.

In other words: don’t listen to the scaremongers. They don’t know what they are talking about. Slava Ukraini.

Feature photo credit: YouTube screenshots of military historian Victor Davis Hanson (L) and New York Times‘ columnist Ross Douthat (R).

Bucha Should Cause the West to Accelerate Its Military Efforts in Ukraine

Bucha Should Cause the West to Accelerate Its Military Efforts in Ukraine

By John R Guardiano on April 5, 2022

A Ukrainian military victory, not Western legal action and a negotiated settlement, is what is needed now.

The gruesome images of mass graves and murder coming out of Bucha, Ukraine, have inspired calls for war criminal investigations and war crimes tribunals.

This is, obviously, necessary and appropriate. But what is conspicuously missing are calls for Russia’s military defeat and expulsion from Ukraine.

President Biden, for instance, called Putin a war criminal, who needs to stand trial; however, he did not call upon the West to redouble its efforts to ensure a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield. Instead, the President was silent and noncommittal about Western war aims in Ukraine.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stolenberg, likewise, said that “targeting and murdering civilians is a war crime. All the facts must be established and all those responsible for these atrocities must be brought to justice.”

True, but how can justice be served if Putin wins the war? Russia, obviously, must be defeated first before any war crimes tribunals can be convened.

Yet, like President Biden, in the wake of Bucha, NATO had nothing to say about altering the military balance of power to ensure Putin’s defeat.

Unfortunately, this is part of a troubling pattern or trend. Since this conflict began in February, Mr .Biden and his counterparts in Western Europe have been more worried about provoking Putin than in ensuring a Ukrainian win.

Consequently, they have been slow-walking military aid and assistance to Ukraine, while denying Ukrainian requests for heavy military equipment: tanks, armored vehicles, artillery systems, anti-ship missiles, military aircraft, et al.

“The [Biden] administration is not moving quickly enough,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, in an interview with Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot.

There is more we can do to help [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and put him in the strongest possible position going forward…

[But] the administration just continues to be guided by a fear of provoking Putin. That’s really what’s guided their efforts from the start. I think that’s why we’re somewhat behind the curve.

“The concern among Ukraine’s supporters on Capitol Hill and the Pentagon,” reports the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board

is that the Biden Administration doesn’t want Ukraine to go on offense. It wants a negotiated settlement as soon as possible.

France and Germany, the doves in the NATO coalition, are in a similar place. They worry that if Russia suffers even greater losses, Mr. Putin might escalate again and perhaps in more dangerous ways that drag NATO directly into the war.

In a sense, Mr. Putin with his threats is defining the limits of U.S. assistance to Ukraine.

‘World War III’. Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin sums up the conventional wisdom: “The bitter truth is that we will not risk a third world war to insist Russia fully retreat from all of Ukraine and purge itself of Putin.”

In truth, though, a wider war and a more dangerous conflagration—in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East—is more likely if Putin wins in Ukraine.

Dictators and bad actors—including China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and Iran’s Ali Khamenei—will learn that the West can be rolled and that aggression pays.

An emboldened Putin, meanwhile, will continue to threaten nearby NATO countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states, but from a far stronger military position in Ukraine.

The bottom line: war crimes can be punished only after a war ends, and only after those responsible have been defeated on the battlefield.

Calling Putin a war criminal and insisting that he and his generals be tried in a war crimes tribunal is all well and good, but it mustn’t obscure the more immediate and pressing wartime exigency, which is to drive the Russians out of Ukraine.

Bucha should stiffen the spines of Western leaders to ensure that Ukraine wins and Russia loses. Punishing Putin and his generals for war crimes is no substitute for military victory and is impossible in any case without a military victory.

Feature photo credit: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, grief stricken after seeing the carnage caused by Russian war crimes in Bucha, courtesy of the New York Post.

Reaction to Biden’s ‘Regime Change’ Comment Is Wrongheaded

Reaction to Biden’s ‘Regime Change’ Comment Is Wrongheaded

By John R Guardiano on March 27, 2022

Biden never called for “regime change.” Instead, he acknowledged an obvious truth: that real peace in Ukraine and Eastern Europe necessitates a new Russian leader.

During his speech in Warsaw, Poland, yesterday, President Biden never called for “regime change” in Moscow.

Yet, this hasn’t stopped the peanut gallery, in the media and on Twitter, from insisting that he did. Nor has it stopped the critics from clucking over the President’s alleged gaffe.

“For America,” wailed AllahPundit,

it seems, the endgame isn’t an independent Ukraine but the decapitation of Russia’s government. The whole premise of the conflict, that NATO is a defensive alliance whose members pose no threat to Moscow, has been undermined.

Biden’s comment, agreed Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), “plays into the hands of the Russian propagandists and plays into the hands of Vladimir Putin.”

And this “may well make it harder to negotiate with Mr. Putin over Ukraine or anything else,” warned the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.”

“At a time of war, with WMDs in the hands of our foe, this kind of gaffe—massively altering war aims in an aside—risks millions of lives. It’s a huge unforced error,” cried Andrew Sullivan.

But this outcry from the critics reflects a willful misreading of the President’s speech.

Moreover, it attributes to Russian leaders an inability to think and act rationally; and it presupposes that America and NATO ought to aim to accommodate Putin through a compromise agreement in Ukraine.

If, however, you believe, as I do, that the West ought to defeat and discredit Putin in Ukraine, then Biden’s comment is hardly a gaffe.

Instead, it is an explicit acknowledgement of a hard political truth: that Putin has no interest in peace; and that, therefore, a real peace in Ukraine and Eastern Europe necessitates a new Russian leader who respects international law and the territorial integrity of Russia’s neighbors.

‘Regime Change’. A peaceful Russia can be realized in myriad ways, but “regime change”—meaning a Western attempt to topple Putin from Power a la the 2003 Iraq War or the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan—which is, obviously, what “regime change” connotes—that has never been under consideration, and Putin knows it.

He knows this because again, Biden never called for “regime change.”

Here’s what the President actually said at the very end of a long speech on the need to defend NATO against Russian aggression while standing with Ukraine in its fight against Russia

For God’s sake, this man, [Putin], cannot remain in power.

When coupled with Biden’s oft-repeated insistence that American troops will never step foot in Ukraine, let alone Russia, and that America will not risk any sort of military confrontation with Russia, it becomes blindingly obvious that a Western military-forced “regime change” is not a policy option in the Biden administration.

Russian Realism. For this reason, as even the dovish Tom Nicholas admits:

So far, the Russians seem to have taken Biden’s remarks more calmly than the American media.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson who never misses a chance to castigate the United States said only that this was a question for the Russian people, and not for Biden.

The Russian people, of course, have no say in who rules them, but Peskov’s answer amounted to a shrug.

Ironically, albeit not surprisingly, Russian leaders are more sanguine and realistic than hyperbolic American commentators and politicians. They realize that of course America and NATO are opposed to Putin and would like to see him gone.

But they also realize that America and NATO have absolutely no intention of invading Russia; and that, regardless of what Western leaders think about Putin, the hard realities of nuclear deterrence still apply and constrain the behavior of Russia and the West.

In short, Biden was right to acknowledge that Russia needs a new political leader, and the critics are wrong to fault him for saying so.

The President’s “gaffe” was “undeniably morally true and the implications are inescapable anyway,” explains Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-New Jersey). “No president can have a normal relationship with Putin ever again,” he told the Washington Post.

Biden’s “gaffe,” obviously, won’t incite Putin to react wildly and irrationally. He still must contend with hard political and military realities.

However, by publicly calling out the Russian dictator, as he did in Warsaw, the American President may well have hastened the day when Putin is ousted from power, by Russians and from within Russia, and a new Russian leader takes the helm. Then and only then can a real peace ensue.

Feature photo credit: Screenshot of President Biden delivering an historic and consequential speech in Warsaw, Poland, March 26, 2022, courtesy of Sky News.

The West Needs to Focus on Winning in Ukraine

The West Needs to Focus on Winning in Ukraine

By John R Guardiano on March 20, 2022

A failure to defeat Putin in Ukraine will cause a worse war in the years ahead for America and NATO.

The commentariat to the contrary notwithstanding, the big risk right now is not that the war in Ukraine “escalates” and becomes “World War III.” The big risk is that weak-kneed Western leaders pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into accepting a compromise “peace deal” with Putin.

This would be a grave mistake. The West should aim to discredit Putin; defeat Russia; drive Russian forces from Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; and force a new Russian leader to respect international law and the territorial integrity of Russia’s neighbors.

Otherwise, Putin will pocket whatever concessions he can gain at the negotiating table and lay low for a bit before planning his next military assault. The result will not be a genuine peace, but a worse and more dangerous war in the years ahead.

Fortunately, the Ukrainians can win. In fact, they are now winning. Russia is losing and on the defensive, both militarily and economically.

“Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war,” concludes the Institute for the Study of War.

“U.S. officials estimate that 75 percent of Russia’s combat-ready force is deployed in Ukraine. If the estimates of 25,000-30,000 casualties are accurate, it means around a third of their main combat troops are out of action after less than a month of war,” AllahPundit reports.

The Russian economy, meanwhile, is reeling from the effects of Western sanctions. “Russian social media channels are flooded with pictures of empty shelves in supermarkets and videos of people scrambling to buy bags of sugar and grains, the Financial Times reports.

“The ruble has fallen through the floor,” Jeff Jeff Schott told the Washington Post.

Interest rates are high. Inflation is soaring. Imported goods are basically hard to find and are not being restocked because nobody is selling to Russia for fear that they will not get paid—or only paid in rubles.

“All 4 major international oilfield servicing firms,” adds Dmitri Alperovitch, “have now left Russia: Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Weatherford International.”

“Russia,” he explains, “will struggle with exploration and servicing of fields without them. China cannot substitute for that lost expertise and technology.”

Thus there is real doubt about how long Russia—and specifically, the Putin regime—can hold out against the combined effects of a Ukrainian military counteroffensive and crippling Western economic sanctions.

Yet, the American and NATO response, both substantively and rhetorically, has been weak, belated, and subpar.

Rhetorically, the emphasis continues to be not on winning in Ukraine, but on preventing a larger-scale conflict that might engulf all of Europe and conceivably cause “World War III.”

And substantively, the Ukrainians still complains—more than three weeks into the fight—that they do not have all of the military equipment that they need and have requested to protect their country from Russia’s horrific military assault.

“The air defense systems [that we were] promised four days ago… are not coming; they have’t been negotiated yet,” Ukrainian Parliamentarian Oleksandra Ustinova told Fox News Saturday.

Winning. “We’re too slow in almost every step we take,” Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) said on Fox News Sunday.

Zelensky needs to win,” he adds.

The Ukrainian freedom fighters need to win. We don’t need them just to lose more slowly. We need them to win. And to win they need to kill Russians. And to kill Russians they need more weapons…

They need more Javelins; they need more ammo; they need more Stingers; they need more SAMs; they need more airplanes; they need more of everything.

And they’re fighting not just for their kids and their future; they’re fighting for the free world.

Exactly.

A Putin-Russian win in Ukraine would be a disaster for the free world. It would embolden Putin, who then would turn to subjugating Moldova and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).

It would encourage Putin imitators on the world stage; and it would signal to China, North Korea, and Iran that the West can be rolled and should be pushed, prodded and provoked.

That’s the real risk: that a Putin-Russia win ignites a less stable and more dangerous world in which anti-Wester leaders and anti-Western powers gain the initiative and gain the upper hand.

For this reason, let us hear no more talk from American and NATO leaders about their fear of a military escalation that results in World War III. Instead, let us hear about their plan to ensure Ukraine wins, Russia loses, and Putin backs down, disgraced and defeated.

Feature photo credit: Screenshot of Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska), courtesy of Fox News Sunday.