Keeping NATO Out of the Ukraine War

At 19FortyFive Andrew Michta provides his advice on ensuring that NATO isn’t “sucked into” the war in Ukraine:

The Przewodów incident has also demonstrated that while the West has sought to keep the war in Ukraine contained, such an approach may only be possible if Ukraine is given the requisite offensive capabilities to even out the odds.

As things stand, Russia continues to enjoy a unidirectional advantage, where the fighting and, most importantly, the suffering of the civilian population is taking place overwhelmingly in Ukraine and by Ukrainians.

In reality, if we are to have reasonable expectations that the Russians may eventually recognize and acknowledge that victory in Ukraine is simply unattainable, this will have to be the result of a cost-benefit calculus, whereby the expenditure of resources to continue pursuing Putin’s neo-imperial folly is coupled with even more significant Russian losses on the battlefield and finally some real pain at home.

Will that actually accomplish the stated goal? Or is he just leaving his complete goals unstated? That is, are his goals to ensure that Russia does not win outright in Ukraine without direct NATO intervention? That sounds like the case to me.

So far supplying the Ukrainians and providing tactical and logistical support have helped in preventing the Russians from winning outright. It has also ensured that Russia is doing what John Mearsheimer predicted. Its strategy appears to be to “wreck Ukraine”.

1 comment… add one
  • bob sykes Link

    Until recently, most of the troops on Russia’s side were Donbas militias, trained, supplied and supported by Russia. A fair number of the Russia forces were actually Wagner mercenaries. Until recently, the SMO might not have used more than 60,000 regular Russian soldiers.

    That force was not sufficient to overrun Ukraine, but Putin’s initial goals were to force implementation of Minsk I and II. The aborted (by US/UK) peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine would also have implemented the Minsk accords, and kept Ukraine intact, except for Crimea.

    The recently mobilized 380,000 are being integrated into the Russia forces, so Russia will have around 500,000 troops or more available this winter. It looks like there will be a major winter offensive that will substantially increase the area of Ukraine under Russia control. A possible scenario is annexation all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper and all of the Ukrainian coastline up to Transnistria, which might also be annexed. But there is no telling how far a winter offensive might go.

    That seems doable. Almost all of it was historically part of Russia proper, and it is the area that has just about all of the ethnic Russians.

    The main problem is that Putin and his senior ministers are the moderate wing in Russian politics. There is a very strong nationalist movement (including the Russian Communist Party) that want to reestablish the boundaries of the Tsars. That would include the Baltics and most of Poland and Central Asia.

    The longer this war goes on, the more likely it spreads to Europe, North America, and Asia. There would certainly be some sort of nuclear exchange. That is not the choice of anyone (except maybe our neocons?), but events are in the saddle, and peoples’ choices might not matter. Events sometimes just unfold. North Africa was not in Hitler’s plans until the Italians messed up their war there. Neither was Greece or Crete.

    Then there is the small matter of both Turkey and Iran threatening to invade the Kurdish regions of Syria and Iraq. Troops from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and the US are massing right now. A war in the Gulf region would take 20% of the world’s oil production off the market for at least its duration. That oil is also 40% of Europe’s supply. If the oil fields and transfer facilities are damaged, Persian Gulf oil might be off the market for a year or more after the war ends.

    Andrew Michta, of course, is as delusional as all of our Ruling Caste. They have no concept of what Russia is or can do. There is no way to even out the odds when Russia has more than 4 times Ukraine’s population and a real economy, the economy of things, that is almost 5 times that of Germany. Russia’s economy is nearly autarkic, and everything Russia needs to make war is made inside Russia. That includes computer chips.

    The US and EU want to impose price caps on Russian oil. How could they possibly enforce that? Against India? Against China? Against Japan? Against Brazil?

    Russia has escalation dominance and can increase the fighting to beyond any level Ukraine can sustain. If Ukraine is to survive as an independent state, and not as regions in Russia and Poland, a negotiated settlement must be pursued. That settlement will transfer substantial areas to Russia, more than it now occupies, but WW III is a worse deal.

    Russia will win this war, as long as it stays local and non-nuclear, and it will mark the end of 500 years of Western domination and hegemony.

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