Risk #3

Here’s how Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan of Eurasia Group, in outlining the risks they see in 2024, describe their Risk #3:

Ukraine will be de facto partitioned this year, an unacceptable outcome for Ukraine and the West that will nevertheless become reality. At a minimum, Russia will keep control of the territory it now occupies on the Crimean peninsula and in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts—about 18% of Ukraine’s territory—as the war settles into a defensive struggle with a fairly static line of control. But Russia now has the battlefield initiative and a material advantage, and it could take more land in 2024. This year is an inflection point in the war: If Ukraine doesn’t solve its manpower problems, increase weapons production, and set a realistic military strategy soon, it could “lose” the war as early as next year.

They blame the United States.

What caught my attention was their characterization of Europe’s role:

The outlook for European assistance is only slightly better. German budgetary challenges on one side, growing Hungarian opposition on the other, and a lack of leadership from most everyone else will make it hard for the Europeans to fill the gap in military aid the Americans will leave over the medium term. While Europe is ramping up production capacity, it doesn’t have the infrastructure to provide the high volume of ammunition (including all-important artillery shells), heavy tanks, howitzers, and infantry fighting vehicles that Ukraine needs.

which I find difficult to understand. The EU has half again the population of the United States and a larger aggregate GNP. Assuming that Russia does, indeed, intend to occupy all of Ukraine and, having accomplished that, will move onwards to the Baltic countries, the former members of the Warsaw Pact, and, who knows?, Western Europe as well, they face a much greater risk than we do. If they don’t have the infrastructure to provide the munitions that Ukraine needs, how do we? I think the available evidence suggests that we don’t have anything resembling the ability to supply the munitions the Ukrainians say they need.

I think the best explanations of the Europeans’ relative insouciance are that either they don’t believe that Russia actually poses a threat to them or they have confidence that the United States will deal with the situation whether they’re willing to defend themselves or not. That makes not exerting maximum effort the prudent political choice.

I’m also skeptical that Russia has any intention of occupying all of Ukraine. I’m in agreement with John Mearsheimer who has said that Russia won’t occupy all of Ukraine but will “wreck it”. Why not take the Russians at their word? From the beginning they have said that their objectives in invading Ukraine are to

• De-militarize Ukraine
• De-Nazify Ukraine, i.e. eliminate Ukrainian ethnic nationalism

I don’t know whether Ukraine will be “de facto partitioned” this year. I do think that some partitioning of Ukraine was inevitable after the Ukrainians overthrew the legitimately elected pro-Russian government and replaced it with an anti-Russian one.