Background Paper: Russia, United States & Ukraine
6 July 2023 by Larry Johnson
INTRODUCTION
This paper is written to help address a recurring question concerning the Ukraine conflict: whether Russia is moving fast enough to finish its Special Military Operation (SMO)? In order to do this, the paper covers certain selected historical periods in the operation where Russia might have made different decisions affecting the scope and pace of the SMO. Material is added to tentatively help explain the reasons why Russia chose to do one thing and not another. More background information is added to partially cover the United States involvement. While the first part of the paper takes an historical approach, the second part addresses upcoming events and situations that will require difficult decisions by both governments. These decisions will impact the speed at which the entire world moves in the direction of World War III.
HISTORICAL
Back in 2014, the US made the decision to implement the regime change finale in Ukraine that the US had spent some $6 billion on over the years in preparation, according to reports. Russia had to decide on several things at that point. One was whether to intervene in the fashion that Russia did years later in Kazakhstan by flying in a military force and rounding up the coup-plotters and then going home in a week. Russia also could have supported the democratically elected president of Ukraine after he fled to Russia by setting up a government-in-exile. Something like when the president of Yemen was overthrown and fled to Saudi Arabia. In the latter case, it became hard to tell which government the press was referring to, the one in exile or the de facto one in Sana. It is interesting that Poland has recently set up Belarus government-in-exile composed of opposition politicians from Belarus. In any event, Russia decided not to take advantage of the propaganda potential of a Ukraine exile government, which could have showcased the US claiming to support democracy, while overthrowing a democratic government. Russia also decided not to use its military to nip the problem in the bud, presumably for many good reasons. One likely reason was that Ukraine reportedly had the largest army in Europe at the time, some 800,000 troops, even exceeding the 500,000 of Turkiye.
Another reason may have been that Russia had been oriented toward Europe since the time of Peter the Great, and Putin had recently been promoting the concept of Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok. A Russian military response in Ukraine likely would have been a poor public relations move at the time and could have brought about counter-measures by the West that Russia was not yet prepared for. Instead, Russia organized the Minsk agreements to attempt a peaceful resolution to the separatist movements. It appeared that Russia was supporting the Ukraine separatists at the minimum necessary level, and that Russia mainly concentrated on securing Crimea and the extremely important naval base in Sevastopol.
The Minsk agreements, however, were not implemented by the West, nor by Ukraine. The Western politicians later stated that it was a ruse to give NATO time to arm and train the Ukrainian army. This was a decision to set up a NATO army on the border with Russia, despite many strategists in the West who had warned against this very provocation. There were many complaints on the Russian side that forceful actions should have been taken much earlier against the Ukraine build-up. Also that the Russian leadership had been fooled by the West. Other viewpoints were that Russia had also used the eight years to build up its forces and had needed the time just as much as NATO/Ukraine. Outsiders do not know the extent of Russian military preparation during this time period, nor how far along Russia was in preparing for the certain economic headwinds if war broke put. However, it was in 2018 that Putin made his speech about all the new “wonder weapons” that Russia had developed. Presumably, many of these weapons were still in testing, factories needed to be built to produce them, and more time was needed to get them delivered to the front lines and the troops trained to use them..
By 2021, decisions needed to be made. The NATO/Ukraine had developed what was reported to be the largest army in Europe and Russia had deployed some of its very advanced weapons. The Minsk agreements were obviously not working, and Russia only continued to refer to them as part of its legal maneuvering. Washington had decided to continue on its goal of world hegemony and had prepared public opinion to believe that Putin was a dictator and that Russia was simultaneously a gas station in the wilderness and a number one enemy. Logic was not a strong point in Washington. It must have seemed to the West that the time was ripe to strike against the Ukraine separatists, and at the same time to go ahead with whatever regime-change measures could be brought to bear against the Russian government. The plan would be to have the Ukrainian army punch through to the Russian border and Russia would be too destabilized to counter the attack effectively. From the West’s standpoint, it would not be aggression, because Ukraine was only mopping up a civil war inside Ukraine.
On the other side, the Russians seemed to have pretty much the same viewpoint that things had come to a head. In December 2021, Russia issued the famous so-called “Not-Ultimatum” to Ukraine and the West which called for the negotiation of a European Security Arrangement that would satisfy Russia’s minimum requirements and avoid unspecified consequences. The West refused to take the idea seriously and continued to arm Ukraine and build up forces next to the separatist areas. Russia then went ahead with the “consequences.” Putin immediately signed papers incorporating some of the separatist provinces as part of Russia based on earlier plebiscites. This legal maneuver meant that Russia could claim that it was protecting Russian territory when evicting the Ukrainian army. Another difficult decision was made to have Russia strike first to create confusion in the Ukrainian side. This meant that the West received a propaganda bonus by claiming that since Russian troops were in Ukraine, Russia was the aggressor. The role of the neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine and the nasty actions of the Ukrainian forces against the separatists had been deleted from Western news, thus leaving Russia on the propaganda defensive. However, Putin was able to arouse patriotic fervor in Russia, in part helped by the nasty actions by the Ukraine army against Russian POWs.
The US decided to go forward with its anti-Russian campaign, with sanctions and the demonization of all things Russian. An outside observer could relate it to the famous US attempt to change the name of “French fries” to “Freedom fries” when France refused to endorse one of the US military invasions. In any event, the US actions made it easier for Putin to begin a more general mobilization for the war effort, call up reservists, and to rapidly build up weapons output. There were calls again from Russian supporters to speed up the war and for Russia to go on the offensive in the hope that Ukraine could be knocked out of action quickly, thus saving lots of lives and infrastructure. The hope of this group was that it would show the West that the effort against Russia was not going to succeed and negotiations toward a new security architecture could proceed. The opposing view was that a big offensive by Russia would enable the Western propaganda to scare the Europeans and create greater unity in NATO. This view claims that cracks in NATO are getting wider all the time and that the EU is more and more dysfunctional—so why interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake?
FUTURE
The NATO meeting in Vilnius is coming up on July 11, and both NATO/Ukraine and Russia may try to take actions before the meeting to improve their positions. The West appears to be calling for Ukraine 1) to launch a new and improved offensive in the war to gain some sort of victory before the NATO meeting in order to gain more weapons support from NATO, or 2) to hold its reserve forces back to promote a stalemate and a negotiated ceasefire line similar to the one in Korea. The latter would allow Ukraine to remain in the Western orbit, continue to rearm, maybe gain NATO membership someday, and allow the Western financial behemoths to control valuable assets in Ukraine.
This outcome does not work well for Russia, however, since it leaves most of Ukraine as a de facto NATO country and lacks any revision to the European security system. There is no guarantee that it would even stop the shelling of the separatist areas in the long run. Furthermore, Russia has made it plain that it does not consider the West to be “agreement capable,” making it hard to have productive negotiations. The Not-Ultimatum called for the de-militarization and de-nazification of Ukraine, and the effective removal of NATO from the former Warsaw Pact nations. That is a tall order, and whether it would be better for Russia to strike hard and fast, or to go slow and wait for larger fissures to develop in the NATO members, is a difficult decision. Putin will be blamed either way.
The US has even more decisions to make. Part of the Establishment advocates defeating Russia first, then using its resources to help the West contain China. This group apparently believed that Russia was weak enough that the Ukraine War, the extensive sanctions, turning the ruble into rubble, and the disconnects from SWIFT and the credit card systems, would bring about a regime change and another Yeltsin-like government. A different part of the Establishment believed that another approach was better: get Russia on the side of the West voluntarily and then all-together deal with China. This approach is growing more noticeable, along with calls to end the Ukraine War and use the money elsewhere, as in the Indo-Pacific area. The so-called “Realist School” of foreign policy has placed China as the “peer competitor” of the US and that China needs to be confronted based on a balance-of-power approach. A small non-Establishment group finds fault with both ideas. This mess needs to be sorted out, as it is hard to have an effective foreign policy or war in the midst of such confusion.
Adding even more to the confusion is the role of the Globalists, World Economic Forum, Davos Crowd, and assorted billionaires promoting some sort of “New World Order.” These folk do not seem to have much loyalty to any particular nation, rather seem to be cosmopolitan citizens of the world. Their often utopian ideas do not seem to be all that popular in parts of the world, thus there is a suspicion that military force might need to be used at some time. However, currently armies are based on nationalism and patriotic support from a single country. There is no global army supported by a global government or global citizens to tax and draft. It is a chicken-and-egg problem: which comes first—the government or the army? NATO is still a creature run by the US and supported by the US. So the thought is that the Globalists would have to use the US army, since both Russia and China show little interest in any such new order. The problem is that the US army is suffering adversity in many areas, from weapons that are not effective, to not being able to recruit enough soldiers. Critics claim that “Wokeism” is to blame for part of the troubles and that “Wokeism” is promoted by the Globalists. Of course, the supporters of Wokeism claim just the opposite. However, if the critics’ view has any factual validity, then there is a conundrum: The Globalists would need to use the US military to enforce adoption of their new order, but at the same time the US military is being hamstrung by the Globalists forcing adoption of Wokeism in the US.
So the US has some hard choices to make concerning Wokeism, immigration, national debt, student debt, education, and much else. There is also the question of what to do with aircraft carriers, stealth destroyers, stealth aircraft, air defense systems, and the roughly 800 military bases in foreign countries. An immediate puzzle is what weapons and support to send to Ukraine. F-16 fighter planes and Abrams tanks are only part of the issue; Ukraine is now asking for F-18 and European Typhoon planes. Next could be requests for the F-35? Military officials all over the world are looking to see how well the US weapons perform in a real conflict with Russia.
It is not surprising that Washington cannot come up with a coherent grand strategy, or even cope with the questions and troubles that are piling up. The bleak outlook evident in John Mearsheimer’s recent manifesto is apparent in the title: The Darkness Ahead: Where the Ukraine War Is Headed. A similar pessimism is found in the current Foreign Affairs article by Samuel Charap, of RAND Corporation, entitled: An Unwinable War: Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine.
As for Russia, in addition to the decision points mentioned above, there is the question of what to do in the other war theaters, in places like West Asia, Africa and Latin America. How much should Russia support a reformulated Wagner Group in various countries? Should Russia turn Syria loose to attack Israeli jets when they are bombing Damascus, or help Syria destroy the oil tankers smuggling the black gold out of the country? Should Russia work with Iran to help evict the US from Iraq? How about increased support to other countries that are under US pressure, such as North Korea, Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela, etc? There are many places in the world where Russia could turn up the heat on the US interests and cause even more trouble for Washington. Weapon sales and military training, countering US-supported regime changes, spreading alternative money transfer and credit card systems around the globe, and working with OPEC+ to counter US oil interests are other possibilities for Russian “hybrid warfare.” Russia has an extensive menu going beyond the action in Ukraine, and in many cases China would be happy to join in.
Finally, it is widely acknowledged that a declining empire is a dangerous beast and should be handled carefully. On this ground, analysts suggest that both Russia and China should be careful to not poke the beast too hard, lest it go berserk with rage. So far, both countries appear to be keeping this advice in mind.