I believe the Ukraine situation will be post-war sometime in 2023. This contradicts the recent words of the NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg and last year’s statements by US CJCS General Mark Milley.
The recent Judge Napolitano interview with Scott Ritter is invaluable. Ritter, who has studied this situation in depth, and US warfighting and war-making for decades, explains that the war should be finished as early as August 2023. Interestingly, he notes that both Zelensky and General Zaluzhnyi have made similar projections.
Ritter mentions things that we don’t often hear in US media, although given the US military is missing its recruitment targets, year after year – we certainly should. He refers to Ukrainian video, like this one, of policemen chasing down men in the street to “recruit” them to a deadly and unpopular front.
US spokespeople do seem to recognize is that the situation has settled into a kind of trench warfare, mutual defense of lines and territory already held. There is no substantial eastern movement possible by the Ukrainian side, and similar lack of western movement forward by the Russian side. The lines roughly match the ethno-linguistic dividing line of what was the Ukrainian land mass.
How long can something like this last? The model of the Korean armistice tells us that with the right level of stupidity and stubbornness, and US money, it can last for many decades. This indeed is the model that people are talking about here, and here. The Rand Corp produced, just this month, a new shift in its concept for Ukraine. Instead of a war to attrit and weaken, even destroy, the Russian Federation, they propose something really radical: figuring out a way to make peace and stop the bleeding.
Rand, while purporting to be objective and effective, works for the defense establishment, and were money to dry up there, the thinktank would not exist in it current form. It serves US government interests entirely, and is dependent upon them. This being the case, it is interesting that someone inside the beltway realizes that the US and NATO money flow that sustains the war in Ukraine is indeed slowing, and shifting – and this shift is coming, to overuse a Hemingway quote, “slowly at first, then suddenly.”
While this Rand report restates falsehoods like how well the Ukrainian military is doing on the battlefield, and seems to ratify the fantasy of returning Ukraine to its pre-2014 territory, it concludes with a recommendation for peace and a settlement between the parties. As an alternative to “absolute victory” (admitting it’s not possible), Rand proposes an armistice, or a negotiated peace treaty between warring parties. A real one, not like Minsk, I presume.
The Rand study makes several mistakes, one of which is to describe an impediment to a settlement as “Both sides believe that their relative power, and thus ability to prevail, will improve over time.” This stated assumption applies only to the Russian side, but stating it this way may be by design. The tone of the paper is clearly aimed at getting the western leaders to read it, be swayed by it, and consider it.
Ritter suggests, as do many others, that while the Russian “side” is getting stronger, faster, and better, the Ukrainian side has become a bone-grinder, a blood pump, dependent on increasingly hard-to-come-by donations of various military aid. Even if NATO and DC don’t want to recognize this reality, Ukrainians do, because they are living and dying in it and watching their country’s economy and environment be broken, contaminated, and set back a century.
How might we get to the point of a peace, an ending of the war, and importantly, a rebuilding of both sides into peaceful and productive neighbors? Perhaps, steps are already being taken towards this end.
The political leadership in Europe, in the US and in Kiev are increasingly being ridiculed by their own state media, and people are stepping down from their posts. We have seen the trickling end of the blue and yellow flag-waving and blatant war cheerleading that possessed the blue coasts of the US for the past year. This somewhat mainstream article suggests that Zelensky (long associated with the Democratic Party specifically) has the goods on Joe Biden, as a way of explaining his arrogant demands that we destroy Russia for him.
This comes on the heels of a strangely concerted effort many have observed within the Democratic organs of the state, including its major editorial boards at the NYT and WP, to ensure Biden does not run for President again.
If the heads of kings and queens begin to roll in the West, this can be an opening to a negotiated treaty. Domestic pressure on the many European political leaders has been building for years, and the current Ukraine disaster has only compounded the dissatisfaction.
Economic and social discontent in both Europe and the US are intertwined with immigration problems. This generally leads to, and is leading to, domestic demands that money and security spending be spent at home, period.
The current leaders in the US, NATO and in Ukraine are unlikely sue for peace, notwithstanding Rand’s welcome assessment that they should. Instead, these marionettes and criminals prefer blood and gore over publicly admitting their true motivations. Biden himself is incompetent, and he has a long list of advisors who refuse to put a single toe on the road to peace in Ukraine.
Perhaps the recent Kiev purges show the way. If Biden becomes incapacitated or sniffs the hair of one more little girl this year, will President Harris take her political revenge – clearing out the NSC, the Pentagon, State, the CIA and taking the win for peace in Ukraine? This is not an outlandish idea, and no doubt in taking her personal revenge on Biden, ending the Ukraine disaster would give her needed, if unlikely, allies in Congress, and among the American people themselves. It would give everyone a few more seconds on the nuclear doomsday clock.
A Harris presidency brings with it several risks – but incompetence may not one of them. We the living have survived real incompetence in the White House every single day since at least Carter and Ford – yet life went on. Having survived the Biden family for two long years of gaffes, dementia, warmongering, lies, and economic disaster, Americans might actually embrace a Harris caretaker presidency. It would be certainly preferable to hundreds of thousands more dead on Ukrainian battlefields, and the real risk of global nuclear war.
Copyright © Karen Kwiatkowski
