There is a growing
sentiment in the west that the Ukraine war is drawing gradually to a
close, with Russia as the victor. Russian forces are advancing at an
accelerating pace across the 1000 kilometer front and have captured
most of Pokrovsk, key to Ukraine’s defenses in Donetsk. A nightly
onslaught of drones and missiles in ever-increasing quantities are
steadily tearing into Ukraine’s military-industrial infrastructure, let
alone the homes and businesses of ordinary Ukrainians. Despite hopeful
data-free analyses in the western press, Ukrainian casualties almost
certainly far surpass (customarily exaggerated) Russian losses.
Possible resupply of Ukraine’s air defenses, especially the much-hyped
Patriot missiles, may take up a lot of headline space as denoting a
Trump U-turn on supplies, but the reality is that the Pentagon is
refusing to disburse any of its own dwindling stocks, and two batteries
promised from Germany will not arrive before next spring. Optimistic forecasts
that the Russian economy will buckle under the strain of the war effort
and sanctions, repeated at regular intervals ever since early 2022,
seem, as usual, to be wide of the mark.
The Ukrainian economy is in ever-more serious decline, not just thanks
to Russian missiles and drones, but also due to EU abandonment of
duty-free quotas for imports of Ukrainian agricultural products.
Assuming
that the war ends with whoever is in charge in Kyiv agreeing to Putin’s
demands for a militarily neutered Ukraine shorn of Nato protection,
coupled with permanent control of the territory it has conquered, what
will follow?
First: Pass the Buck.
The
most immediate response will be a bout of feverish buck-passing as
those who have striven to keep Ukraine fighting as peace initiatives
(Minsk 2015, Istanbul 2022) came and went, maneuver to avoid
responsibility and stick someone else with the blame. Donald Trump
will undoubtedly be the object of angry recriminations, especially when
it dawns on everyone that his recent much hailed “U turn” on arms for
Ukraine amounted to little beyond empty promises and some disobliging
words about Putin. But he won’t particularly care about that, given that
he concluded long ago that Ukraine’s defeat was inevitable. He has
given the military-industrial lobby a trillion dollars to feed on, which
should keep it quiet, especially as much of the rapidly increasing
European defense budgets will inevitably flow into the coffers of U.S.
defense contractors. An end to the war may in addition be a plus for
Trump in that much of his MAGA base, currently attriting somewhat
thanks to to the Epstein furore, will be cheered by a fulfilled promise
to end the war.
Trump Can Broadcast Zelensky Regime’s Corruption Rap Sheet Anytime He wants.
If
Trump needs a scapegoat, he has one ready to hand in the rampant
corruption that has been a hallmark of the current regime (as well as
its predecessors) in Kyiv. Trump, who has inherited the CIA’s extensive file
on Kyiv corruption assembled under Biden, has no shortage of ammunition
on that score. Zelensky’s attempt these last few days to emasculate
Ukraine’s western-sponsored anti-corruption agencies serve to confirm
the well-founded notion that there is something very rotten at the heart
of the Kyiv regime.
Europe Disunited.
There
will be fissures inside Europe. Although, as noted, major countries,
especially Britain, Germany, and France, are resolved to utilize the
spectre of Russian aggression in bolstering their flagging economies,
tossing billions into the defense-industrial pot, not everyone is on
board with an ongoing cold war. Hungary and Serbia have announced plans
to build an oil pipeline to import crude directly from Russia that will
bypass the EU and its sanctions. Slovenia recently opted to hold a
referendum on withdrawal from Nato, although choleric reaction from the
usual suspects prompted a hurried cancellation. Last November, Romanians
voted to elect an otherwise eccentric candidate, Călin Georgescu, who
pledged to break ranks with Nato and foster relations with Russia. This
unwelcome outbreak of democracy was quickly crushed by the juduciary,
which banned the irksome Georgescu from politics.
Covert War on the Frontier
The
end of the war will not necessarily end turmoil in eastern Europe.
Extensive portions of western Ukraine, after all, consist of Polish,
Rumanian, and Slovak territories occupied by the Red Army at the end of
World War II and absorbed into Ukraine by Joseph Stalin. It is not
beyond the bounds of reason that the Ukrainian defeat will lead to the
re-transfer of those lands to their original owners. It is also worth
bearing in mind that, following the end of World War II, the CIA gave
significant support to Ukrainian nationalists who had formerly fought
enthusiastically with the Nazis to continue a years-long guerilla
campaign against the Soviets, an effort that will likely be repeated
following the end of this war.
No, Putin Will Not March On Paris.
A
major theme of the European marketing campaign for the Ukraine war has
been the claim that a victorious Putin would storm westward with a
blitzkrieg that would stop only at the English Channel, if there. But
there is scant evidence that the Russian leader nurtures any such plans.
His decision to invade Ukraine in 2022 was almost certainly prompted
by his need to shore up his threatened nationalist base, as I have explained elsewhere.
There is no indication that the nationalist sentiment on which his
popularity depends favours expansion into areas historically unconnected
to Russia and populated in part by Russian-speakers. (This would seem
to apply to the Baltic republics,
despite their Russian-speaking minorities and historic rule by Moscow.)
It is also worth noting that the only explicit military threat to a
Nato country has come from Trump vis-a-vis Greenland.
Europe Will Be Knee-Deep in Nukes
Most
ominously, the presumptive defeat in Ukraine will accelerate the flow
of nuclear weapons into an ever more militarized Europe, completing the
rollback of George H.W. Bush’s withdrawal of most (but not all) of those
weapons at the end of the last Cold War. For example, within the last
week a special shipment of U.S. Air Force B-61-12 “dial-a-yield” nuclear
bombs arrived at Lakenheath air base (which is shared by the USAF and RAF) in Suffolk. The British Labour government recently announced
it will buy twelve F-35A aircraft - a healthy boost to the Lockheed
balance sheet at $80 million a pop - for the specific purpose of
carrying nuclear weapons. Coupled with this, there is talk in European
capitals, notably Berlin,
of a non-US European nuclear capability, utilizing the French and
British nuclear forces for this purpose. Such plans, if they really
amount to such, are based on the notion that Washington will abandon
Europe and leave it at the mercy of Genghis Putin. This appears far
fetched. Trump may despise the Europe and its leaders as feeble pygmies
but since his menacing demands for increased European defense spending
are essentially aimed at amping sales of American weapons (viz, those
F-35As) there seems little prospect of he or any other president leaving
Europe to its own devices.
As
has been copiously reported, the peace agreement initialed by Ukraine
and Russia in Istanbul in April 2022 had a good chance of ending the war
with most of Ukraine not destroyed or absorbed into Russia, and
hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians not killed or maimed.
But Washington and London nixed that, and ordered the Ukrainians to keep
on dying, a stupid and cruel decision.
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