Leonard and Michael Hochberg have published the second installment in their series on U. S. national interests and the war in Ukraine at RealClearDefense. This installment deals with the second possible outcome—reinforcing the rules-based international regime through a complete Ukrainian victory:
One reason that the war in Ukraine has been met with such alarm is that it is a direct attack on the rules-based international order, which stipulates the sanctity of the territorial integrity of sovereign states. In the absence of a global government enforcing these rules, enforcement rests on the willingness of the U.S., as a now-weakened global hegemon, to enforce its treaty obligations.
As desirable as that outcome might be, I think there are several major roadblocks. The first of those is that it is far from clear that it is an achievable goal, especially without direct intervention of American forces and such an intervention would appear to contradict directly the limits President Biden has placed on our involvement. It would also be quite risky.
The second is that our commitment to a “rules-based international regime” rings a bit hollow at this point. Invading Iraq? Our intervention in Libya went far beyond the empowering Security Council resolution and our interventions in Serbia and Kosovo took place without such a resolution. In other words we’ve made it pretty clear that we only follow the rules when it suits our purposes. Not to mention all the times we have turned a blind eye on other countries’ violations of the rules when responding to them was simple not seen as being worth the cost.
I look forward to the third installment. Since the first installment dealt with Russian victory and the second with Ukrainian victory, I assume it will deal with some sort of negotiated settlement.
The US has been providing targeting information for the HIMARS and other artillery we have supplied. It is rumored that many of these units, maybe all, are operated by NATO troops, so we are directly involved in the fighting. This is not new. US and UK, at least, special forces were actively operating in Ukraine prior to the coup, and the BBC actually photographed and tried to interview some US/UK special forces troops that were actively fighting the separatists in the Donbas.
This war is continually escalating, and the US/NATO is spreading it east into Russia. It is also going to spread west into Poland, Germany, the UK, and the US mainland. The probability of nuclear war is growing, and if the clowns in Washington, London, and Brussels do not come to their senses, nuclear war will be inevitable.
A nice initial target in the US would be the editorial offices of the WSJ, the principal warmongering publication in the US.
The US government refuses to recognize that Russia can actually manufacture all the weapons it is using using only materials and parts readily available in Russia. They actually think Russia’s economy is the size of Spain or Italy, and that it has to import most of the parts and materials in its weapons. They also think the Russian military is incapable of organizing and running large-scale operations, like combined arms.
Russia’s real, material economy is 4.6 times that of Germany and 5.4 times that of Japan. It is the third largest real economy in the world, behind China and US. Russia has the second most powerful and capable military in the world, and it has achieved technological superiority over the US military in several areas. The US just today (or yesterday) had its first successful test of a hypersonic weapon. Both Russia and China have deployed such weapons for the last couple of year (or more), and Russia has actually used them in combat.
If (when?) the Ukrainian war spreads to North America, Americans will experience war first hand since the Civil War. Actually, people north of the Mason-Dixon Line will experience for the first time since the Revolutionary War.