After describing his visit to a military rehab center in Ukraine in his latest Washington Post column, David Ignatius declaims:
Listening to their stories, you realize that Ukraine is bleeding out. Its will to fight is as strong as ever, but its army is exhausted by a ceaseless drone war that’s unlike anything in the history of combat. The Biden administration’s rubric of support — “as long as it takes” — simply doesn’t match the reality of this conflict. Ukraine doesn’t have enough soldiers to fight an indefinite war of attrition. It needs to escalate to be strong enough to reach a decent settlement.
He then turns to a conference he attended there:
A recurring theme of the conference was that President Joe Biden should remove current limits on Ukraine’s use of American ATACMS long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia. A procession of speakers said Biden should stop worrying about the danger of Russian escalation — and implied he was weak for even considering the issue. That strikes me as wrong; a primary responsibility of any American president is to avoid war with a nuclear superpower.
But I came away from the conference thinking the United States should take more risks to help Ukraine. It matters how this war ends. If Putin prevails, it will harm the interests of America and Europe for decades.
He concludes by arguing that U. S. national interest requires “deeper American support for Ukraine”. What I do not understand is how deeper support would change the fundamental realities he calls out earlier in the column. How strong would Ukraine need to be to “reach a decent settlement”? There is no depth of support that will create more Ukrainian soldier.
Ignatius is one of the certified lunatics who are seeking the destruction of America. Every single leader in Russia, Putin, Medvedev, Lavrov, Russia’s UN and US ambassadors, et al. has stated that allowing deep attacks into Russia proper will result in Russian attacks on NATO countries. That means Russian bombs and missiles falling on US cities, British cities, French cities, German cities, Polish cities, … ad nauseam.
A number of American leaders, including Biden, have dismissed the Russian warnings as bluff. Their wanton recklessness has brought us the the very edge of nuclear war.
We are much closer to nuclear war today than we ever were during the Cuban missile crisis. Then we had leaders who were actively trying to avoid conflict. John Kennedy had to face down his own military and state department to prevent war. Khrushchev also worked for peace. But today our leaders are willing to risk war.
Does Ignatius realize the contradiction here — “It (Ukraine) needs to escalate to be strong enough to reach a decent settlement.” but then states “a primary responsibility of any American president is to avoid war with a nuclear superpower”?
Two recent things caught my eye in the war. First, Putin gave a pretty explicit warning of consequences (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/75092) if “Western-made long range precision weapons” is used on Russian territory. People who follow Putin / Russia say its the most specific “red-line” Putin has laid out since just before the war started in 2022. It maybe something Putin won’t enforce, but it is clear this is a different warning compared to other times NATO has increased support.
The second is a recent interview of Victoria Nuland where she stated the Istanbul deal collapsed not on Crimea, going back to status ex ante for Kherson / Zaporizia / Donbas / Luhansk oblasts, or even neutrality — the dispute was over proposed hard caps (personnel and military systems) imposed on the Ukrainian army. And yes, it was the West who convinced Ukraine to kill the proposed settlement due to hard caps.
How long before Ukraine burns through our long range missile supply?
Who knows? Not the public.
I can’t imagine why anyone believes official statements about inventories or production rates for any weapon systems.
Everybody has an agenda and everyone is lying.