Still More Dry Thoughts in a Time of War
Rounding into Year Three of the Ukrainian conflagration
Two years ago I wrote the first “Dry Thoughts in a Time of War” and I followed that up with “More Dry Thoughts in a Time of War” last year. I sincerely hope for the sake of humanity that this will be my last installment in this series. With over 500,000 young Ukrainian men dead and somewhere between 250 to 300,000 young Russians sent home in body-bags, the war has dragged into a hellish spot not seen since World War I. I largely stand by my predictions in the first two pieces though again I stand corrected at how long this would drag on. I really thought it would end within six-months to one-year, and obviously, I was wrong…although only partially. Talks were being conducted in March and April of 2022 in Belarus and Turkey and a deal (along the lines of what I proposed in the first piece was near.) Enter Boris Johnson, then PM of England, who jetted into Kyiv in early April to encourage Zelensky to continue to fight the Russians. While we know Johnson didn’t go there without getting the nod from Washington, I have begun to wonder why the British have such animus towards the Russians. Does it go back to the Crimean War? Well, we can muse about the Light Brigade in another piece, but it is something that bothers me. So why break up an imminent peace deal that would save countless lives, billions of dollars and restore some semblance of order in Central Europe? Sussing that out, I’ve arrived at a couple of options, none of them good.
Option 1: Ike was right. In his farewell address in 1961, Eisenhower warned that:
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Good old human greed. Look at our military procurement system. Want to build a ship? The propeller will be built in Long Beach, California, the missiles in Illinois, the hull in Maine, all of it assembled in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Every Congressional district gets a taste. A large sampling of the usual suspects from Lindsay Graham to Marc Thiessen were extolling on X in the last couple of weeks how Ukrainian aid money doesn’t really go to Ukraine, it goes to create jobs in the good ol’ USA! So continuing the war is apparently a US jobs program! Here’s a graphic a lot of them were sharing:
But even that line is only part of the story - perhaps a very big part - but here’s a breakout of what is in the current (contested) aid package to Ukraine from AP:
“About $60 billion in the bill would go to supporting Ukraine as it defends itself from the Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago. There’s nearly $14 billion to allow Ukraine to rearm itself through the purchase of weapons and munitions and another nearly $15 billion for support services such as military training and intelligence sharing.
The support also includes nonmilitary assistance. About $8 billion would go to help Ukraine’s government continue basic operations with a prohibition on money going toward pensions. And there’s about $1.6 billion to help Ukraine’s private sector.
About a third of the money allocated to supporting Ukraine actually will be spent replenishing the U.S. military with the weapons and equipment that are going to Kyiv. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly emphasized that point, saying in a statement Tuesday that the money is about ‘reaffirming a commitment to rebuild and modernize our military, restore our credibility, and give the current Commander-in-Chief, as well as the next, more tools to secure our interests.’ ”
We are paying to keep a government afloat? While there have been no audits (ahem!!), we are told that prior packages included funding their pensions. But the basic argument that comes through glaringly here is this: the money is going to be used to replace the old stuff we already sent them and buy fancy new toys so our C-in-C can “secure our interests.” See, war is GOOD for you! I don’t know about you, but I find this type of argument as appealing as a three-day old tuna fish sandwich that’s been left outside in mid-July.
Option 2: The big brains in Washington and London really, really believe this will result in regime change in Russia or that Russia will be so mauled by this conflict that the neocon dream of a shattered Russia will at last be achieved. While I know we are being run by an increasingly mentally impaired “President” and a geriatric Congress, I find it hard to believe they actually think this. To do so would show an utter lack of understanding of Russian history and behavior…when fighting on or close to Russian soil, the Russians don’t give up. All signs are that Putin is as popular as ever (remember when he was labeled senile, had cancer, was going to be dead in a month or two? ), and the Russian economy has decoupled completely from the world economy and appears to be doing well with arrangements with China and beyond.
One of the aspects of warfare is constantly evaluating your position and trying as hard as possible to assess how your opponent is doing - the famous Colonel John Boyd OODA Loop: “Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.” Perhaps the big brains have not heard of this concept and they believe that reading propaganda from the Washington Post - “Ukraine is winning!” - is enough.
If the cost were not so tragically high, this would be funny.
Option 3: This is sort of a combination of 1 and 2 with an end cap: this is the way it has always been done. I recently was reading several pieces on what happened in the Bosnian War that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The parallels are eerily similar and NATO was knee deep in it…cause for concern about having NATO get involved in Ukraine. A slew of Canadian forces’ documents were declassified in early 2022 which show that in 1992, the United States actively stymied a peace deal that was worked out by the Portuguese and English, known as the Lisbon Agreement. According to the Canadian cables, the US didn’t want the emerging European Union to become a counter-force to US hegemony. Sam Finley covers this very well in his piece “Breaking the World to Save it :
“The Canadians observed that Bosniak forces had been emboldened by “outside” help initially stemming from diplomatic and media cover, and later through the assistance of weapons, materiel, and Mujahedeen brought in from fronts like Afghanistan on “black flights.” (Keep that in mind the next time some high-ranking ex-Spook on the news throws words at you like “treason” and gets the vapors about threats to “our democracy” when you dare to question their leadership. Sleep well, America.)”
Sleep well, America indeed. It’s one thing to do this type of malfeasance with a deteriorating state, it is completely another matter to do so with a nation that bristles with nuclear arms and weaponry that could be changing the way we have to fight wars in space. All of which leads me to the maddeningly sad question:
I am heartened by the number of people who seem to be waking up to this reality and are engaging their Congressmen to stop the funding. Will there be untold suffering if the Ukrainians run out of ammunition? Most certainly. But will that be worse than the suffering and death that is sure to continue without a path for peace if we do send the dollars? I, for one, believe the former course is preferable. Borders change constantly through time - look at our own Southern border right now! I believe a peace deal is there that mirrors what I wrote last year: “In my opinion, this thing is going to end the way it should never have started. The ethnic Russian parts of Eastern Ukraine will become Russian client states, no longer part of Ukraine. The Ukrainians will be allowed to keep Odessa so they are not a complete rump state. They will be allowed to join the European Union (what’s left of that) and they will agree to never join NATO.”
I hear the chorus of folks saying that “this will embolden Putin and he will march across Europe just like Hitler!!” I would submit that if that were his aim, the Russians would have dispatched Ukraine a long time ago. Russia is a demographic nightmare with birth rates plummeting. He already has a land mass with hundreds of ethnicities and cultures to manage. It might just be possible that he wants to be left alone, but our provocations and constant prodding of Ukraine to join NATO left him with no option. And no, this does not make me a “Putin puppet.” I’m just someone who is willing to look beyond the established narrative and consider what might be. A lot more eye-to-eye diplomacy and understanding and a lot less death is the course I would like to see our nation steer. I earnestly hope we can return to being the good guys and following a course recommended by our “first in the hearts of his Countrymen,” George Washington:
“Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”
These wise words continue to ring down through the centuries; we should listen to them.
This is a very solid and concise analysis of the situation today. But the sources of the conflict are more in and around the White House than in Europe. If Biden hadn't attacked the American energy sector, Russia would not have had the money to pursue war in the Ukraine., and the instability we see everywhere right here at home today would most certainly have been avoided.
This war should have been over in mid-2022. And it could have been avoided had we not meddled
in their affairs. Our Deep State works round the clock to start and/or keep wars going. Our joint Biden-Obama Administration needs America and the rest of the world at war to cloak their cultural and reset priorities while crashing our economy and thereby cement progressive political control. They collectively disgust me.