Jeffrey Sachs’s remarks on the White House’s Ukraine strategy, quoted at length by Tim Hains at RealClearPolitics, align pretty well with my own:
Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University known for his work with the United Nations, told podcast host Andrew Napolitano last week that President Biden’s gambit in Ukraine has backfired and caused “a bloodbath and a disaster.”
“This is a plan that has just gone over the cliff. it was a terrible idea based on a set of miscalculations by the U.S. military-industrial complex with Biden out there as the front person,” Sachs said. “And it has gone horribly wrong.”
“They can’t admit it because they are all parties to this horrible outcome, so they would rather double down. It’s not them fighting after all, it’s not their money. Everybody is doing it on deficit spending. And it is not their soldiers, only Ukrainians are dying.”
“We now have foreign policy in the hands of a few people, and they happen to be incompetent, aside from everything else. Or, there’s another theory, which is they don’t really care about the outcome, it is the war itself that is the desire because it is big business,” Sachs said.
“This is an end game. And it’s a shame for Biden, who caused this, because Biden stopped negotiations that would have ended the conflict in March or April 2022.”
There’s a lot more. Note in particular the observation about “foreign policy in the hands of a few people”.
My first question is whether Dr. Sachs is right or wrong? It seems clear to me that it is a bloodbath. Is it a disaster?
There is a third alternative that has been suggested (other than the two mentioned by Dr. Sachs): that the U. S. objective of the war in Ukraine has been to degrade Russia’s military and that has succeeded splendidly. Leaving aside the incredible cynicism of that strategy, has it succeeded? Has Russia’s military been degraded? How and how do you know? Take into account the differences between our way of war and Russia’s.
Based on the figures I’ve seen the total number of Russian casualties (killed plus wounded) is around 350,000 and the number of Russian regulars killed in action is about 80,000 with the balance of killed being partisans and Wagner Group. That’s on the order of U. S. losses in Vietnam. Did those losses degrade the U. S. military?
That’s a question not an answer. I would honestly like to know.
I am a war-monger, but this is why I cannot monger for any US war making. US politicians want to do it as cheaply as possible.
In the First Gulf War, the Generals were junior officers during Vietnam, and they were determined to not let it happen again. They sent 500,000 US troops to do a job for 50,000.
(Truthfully, nobody knew how an all volunteer military would perform.)
Unlike Vietnam, Bush the Elder refused to expand the mission. I always thought we would leave through the Baghdad airport or a bodybag.
That is the reference for today’s politicians. They draw no lessons from WW1, WW2, Korea, or Vietnam. They get their war knowledge from the First Gulf War and Call of Duty.
War is always about killing more people and blowing up more shit than your opponent, and that means producing lots of bombs and bullets – the dumb kind.
The 2022 agreement would kept Donbas et al. in Ukraine, only Crimea would have been ceded to Russia. Call it Minsk III.
That deal is off the table. Russia now intends to annex all the historically Russian parts of Ukraine: everything east of Dneipr, Kiev, and the whole Black Sea coast up to Moldova. Poland, Hungary, and Romania were invited to take the rest.
PS. Russia’s KIA and wounded come from Ukraine sources, and are over stated by a factor of three or so. The number of Russian dead is something like 20,000. The Ukrainians were conducting human wave assaults on heavily fortified positions, and never penetrated the first line. Probably 150,000 dead Ukies for the counter offensive. Almost ad bad as the Somme in 1916.
One of the points I was making is that in general when estimates of casualties among Russian forces are presented no distinction is made among Russian regulars (members of the Russian military), mercenaries (Wagner Group), and militias from the Donbas fighting with the Russians (partisans).
Tastybits:
I’m not a warmonger because I don’t believe in wars of limited objectives. If your objectives are limited, there were alternatives to war.
With the exception of “world domination”, all objectives are limited. The means need to be unlimited.
If the US objective is to expel Russia from Ukraine, the US needs to send troops with the equipment, armaments, and munitions already being sent, and the US needs to be prepared for Russia to escalate the conflict.
As discussed, the US will need to re-industrialize, and the Green Agenda will need to be tossed into the trash can. Rationing will be required. Environmental and workplace regulations will need to be repealed. Should a factory worker’s safety be more important than a US soldier fighting in Ukraine?
After victory, the only way to prevent any future Russian attempts is to station troops in Ukraine indefinitely (forever), or the US could decide to destroy Russia. This would take an even greater commitment. Nuclear ICBMs would kill millions on both sides, but the winner needs to kill more, destroy more, and cause more discomfort.
If the Ukrainian hysterics were advocating this, I might get aboard, but they do not care about Ukraine or Ukrainians. They want to step in a pile of dogshit that has existed for centuries, and no matter who wins, this fight will begin anew in a few decades.
Like most people, you are mostly a pacifist. These people include the Ukrainian hysterics, but they pretend to be warmongers. You are not the problem. They are.
Diplomacy is a way for everybody to lose without feeling like they lost.
Let me clarify. I am a warmonger because war does not scare me. I am willing to do what it takes to win, but it usually takes a lot more than most people think.
The Ukrainian hysterics want to defeat Russia by helping the Cassocks win this round of a 1,000 year fight. The refusal to attack Russian territory would seem to indicate weakness, but not to them. Actually, using proxies seems weak.
Diplomacy is nice, but it is a way to lose without admitting you lost.
My idea is to stay out of everybody’s business with the exception of true friends. The US has a few allies, and few of them are true friends. It is diplomatic in that it does not involve fighting, but it is really “talk softly and carry a big stick”. You may need to use the stick, but you do it judiciously.
Anything other than unconditional surrender of the enemy as the terms of victory is what I mean by “a war of limited objectives”.
War is for defense; IMO using war to achieve goals other than survival is immoral. Once you’re at war the gloves should be off.
IMO we have too many allies and at this point not a single “true friend”.
I mostly agree, but national interests need to be included. Therein lies the problem: what are our national interests? My answer is that which we are willing to sacrifice for.
Today’s “warmongers” do not want to sacrifice anything, and like spoiled children, they believe that they can have it all. Usually, a spoiled child learns the truth the hard way.
For today’s “warmongers”, the hard way will be rationing during an actual war. Ironically, it will be their refusal to sacrifice that leads to the war.
I get pissed that they make true warmongers look bad, but they make diplomacy look bad as well. Basically, they start shit they are unwilling to finish, and then, they claim diplomacy is the solution.
As a warmonger, I thought diplomacy came first, but maybe I am really a peaknik.