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.