Hesitancy or Inability?

I encourage you to read this piece from The Moscow Times by Boris Bondarev. Here’s a snippet:

As Kyiv’s counteroffensive stalls and a decisive Ukrainian victory looks increasingly unlikely, suggestions by some American experts that the United States should initiate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may seem tempting. However these arguments are nothing but counterproductive in terms of ensuring a lasting peace in Europe and the world beyond.

The very statement that the U.S. should launch negotiations indicates that the author seeks to present the war as a purely regional conflict rooted in a land dispute between neighboring states. Such a reading is undoubtedly intended to reduce anxiety about the prospect of further escalations. Unfortunately, that understanding is far from the truth.

No matter how much Washington assures itself with the incantation that the U.S. is not a party in this conflict, Moscow assumes the opposite. For President Vladimir Putin, this war is the culmination of an epic and eternal confrontation between an independent Russia and its eternal enemy, the West led by the United States. In this context, Ukraine is not a sovereign actor, and Kyiv’s unilateral surrender is the only outcome Moscow will accept.

The Moscow Times is a dissident news web site in both Russian and English. Originally, its headquarters was in Moscow. Since the crackdown on coverage of the war in Ukraine, it has been in Amsterdam. Here’s the kernel of the post:

It is time for the U.S. to make a clear decision about whether it supports Ukraine and, by extension, Western democracy and rules-based order from violent revision. Or, on the other hand, whether it has made a mistake by agreeing to help Ukraine, in which case it should urgently make peace with Putin (neglecting the fact that the billions of dollars of the U.S. taxpayers spent on helping Kyiv have been actually wasted).

The goal of the war for Ukraine, and the West as a whole, should not just be a military victory in Ukraine. Rather, they need a global defeat of Putin’s regime and to banish it from the world stage.

To this end, the following steps would be required. The U.S. must abandon its half-hearted arms supply policy and provide Ukraine with all the necessary weapons as soon as possible. It must lift the ban on hitting military targets deep inside Russian territory and untie the hands of the Ukrainian military, given that the Russians do not restrict themselves in the same way. Finally, the U.S. has to clearly state that it is Putin himself who is the enemy of Ukraine and the West and to offer a vision of future relations without Putin – a vision potentially acceptable for both Putin’s own elite and Russian pro-democratic forces. Engaging with the Russian opposition movement could be instrumental in fleshing out such a vision.

I agree with Mr. Bondarev’s assertion that we should clearly identify our strategic objectives and pursue them. I don’t believe we agree on what those strategic objectives should be. I think he may be conflating his own objectives with the U. S. strategic objectives. Where I think we disagree most is that I think he’s wrong in attributing U. S. posture to “hesitancy” or half-heartedness. We don’t have the ability to supply Ukraine with arms at the rate they’re requesting. We abandoned that ability decades ago. We haven’t really begun rebuilding what we’ve been tearing down and it will take us a considerable amount of time to accomplish that. If we want to accomplish it which I do not believe is completely clear. I think we should want to rebuild our industrial capacity. What does the Biden Administration think?