Meanwhile in his Washington Post column Fareed Zakaria says this about Russia’s war against Ukraine:
America’s dominant priority must be to ensure that Russia does not prevail in its aggression against Ukraine. And right now, trends are moving in the wrong direction. Russian forces are consolidating their gains in eastern Ukraine. Sky-high oil prices have ensured that money continues to flow into Putin’s coffers. Europeans are beginning to talk about off-ramps. Moscow is offering developing nations a deal: Get the West to call off sanctions, it tells them, and it will help export all the grain from Ukraine and Russia and avert famine in many parts of the world. Ukraine’s leaders say it still does not have the weapons and training it needs to fight back effectively.
The best China strategy right now is to defeat Russia. Xi Jinping made a risky wager in backing Russia strongly on the eve of the invasion. If Russia comes out of this conflict a weak, marginalized country, that will be a serious blow to Xi, who is personally associated with the alliance with Putin. If, on the other hand, Putin survives and somehow manages to stage a comeback, Xi and China will learn an ominous lesson: that the West cannot uphold its rules-based system against a sustained assault.
What Mr. Zakaria does not explain is how the U. S. can ensure that “Russia does not prevail”. In bullet point form the sad truth is:
- Slowly but surely Russia is reducing Ukraine.
- The longer the war goes on the more Ukrainians will be killed or flee Ukraine and the weaker Ukraine’s negotiating position will be.
- The economic sanctions that have been imposed on Russia are toothless.
- The G7 countries are marginalizing themselves rather than Russia.
- The sanctions are imposing pain on the world economy.
- Were the G7 to impose such sanctions on China the impact on the global economy would be quite serious.
- For just that reason whatever the U. S. does Germany, France, and Japan probably wouldn’t go along with economic sanctions against China.
- China is being convinced that it can do pretty much what it cares to with respect to Taiwan.
Update
It’s not just me and it’s not just Russian propaganda. Individuals much more knowledgeable than I are saying the same things. Consider this observation by retired Lt. Gen. Stephen Twitty at a Council on Foreign Relations roundtable:
TWITTY: Yeah. Richard, I’m going to give a little bit more color in terms of what I’m seeing here. I think the war in the Donbas is starting to turn to the Russians’ favor, and when you take a look at—and I’m particularly talking about the eastern part of the Donbas—the Russians have transitioned from trying to pour all their combat power into the Donbas to obliterating every single town. Whether it be Rubizhne, Lyman, they’re working now on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk as well, they’re obliterating these particular towns, and that’s how they’re making their headway. They’re not putting a bunch of combat power with infantry forces and tanks in there. They’ve taken all their artillery and they’re treating it like Mariupol and that’s how they’re making their headway. So they’re starting to make some headway in the eastern Donbas and so we have to watch that one closely.
HAASS: Given this situation, I have one question—one more question about the current situation and then I want to transition to issues of goals and war termination and the rest. Given that we are where we are and there’s more agreement than disagreement among us by far, would anyone at this point argue for a major change in Western policy, that we ought to add something that’s qualitatively—like, for example, one could say we ought to try to accelerate gas sanctions against Russia—that might be one thing. There’s the question of equipment deliveries to Ukraine. But, basically, are the contours of policy set or am I missing something?
Why don’t we reverse it? General Twitty, is there something that the president said? Are things we’re not doing that we should be doing? Is there things that you would recommend at this point?
TWITTY: Well, as I take a look at this, you know, Secretary Austin came out that we’re going to weaken Russia. We have not really defined what weaken means, because if you take a look at the Ukrainians right now, I take a strong belief in Colin Powell’s doctrine—you overwhelm a particular enemy with force. And right now, when you take a look at Ukraine and you take a look at Russia, they’re about one to one. The only difference is Russia has a heck of a lot of combat power than the Ukrainians.
And so there’s no way that the Ukrainians will ever destroy or defeat the Russians, and so we got to really figure out what does weaken mean in the end state here. And I will also tell you, Richard, there’s no way that the Ukrainians will ever have enough combat power to kick the Russians out of Ukraine as well, and so what does that look like in the end game.
Its a marathon and not a sprint. I wouldn’t buy into the Russian propaganda about how they are all peachy. The better point is that China is different. However, if the Eu can keep it together, remember it is a marathon, and stay with the plan and not go back to Russian gas and oil that might give China second thoughts. We shipped all of our industry to China. We can take it back.
Steve
We can but it won’t be as much fun as de-industrializing. I don’t know about you but I don’t see the will. Reindustrializing will take a lot of capital investment, a stable currency, and increased energy production.
I don’t think that the Russians are “all peachy”. I merely note that Russia’s army is a lot bigger than Ukraine’s.
Putins latest.
“”During the war with Sweden, Peter the Great didn’t conquer anything, he took back what had always belonged to us, even though all of Europe recognised it as Sweden’s. It seems now it’s our turn to get our lands back [smiling]”.”
Steve
Slightly off topic. I was curious about Putin’s comment — I was surprised the Kremlin website had the official transcript (both English and Russian), and the original video.
I found it interesting the differences between the official English translation, the machine translation of the Russian transcript — there’s a question whether Putin meant “he” or “I” on a key sentence. Hopefully, someone who knows Russian could dig deeper based on the video.
The last sentence doesn’t seem to be what was said “It seems now it’s our turn to get our lands back [smiling]” — it reads as a more subtle allusion; as much about economic / social sovereignty as much as physical sovereignty.
As for Taiwan. Pundits and policy makers should not think of only negative incentives (military deterrence, or economic sanctions); also consider positive incentives for all 3 sides to maintain the status quo. Perhaps that will be a lesson of Ukraine — one must combine carrots and sticks; give everyone a reason they prefer the existing order instead of forcibly trying to change it.
A policy of negative incentives is a highly risky one….
Link? I can translate.
Are you talking about this?
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68606
I’m looking at the Russian transcript. Which sentence are you curious about?
Yes. That’s the English translation.
The original Russian transcript (which also has an Q&A that was omitted from the English translation) is http://kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/68606
The Russian transcript has the video.
I’m looking at the Russian transcript. Which passage are you curious about?
It’s not a literal translation. The English language translation on the Kremlin’s site is a very faithful and literal translation of what he said.
Is Twitty being purposely obtuse? The quote is: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
Russia has not announced clear war aims, nor should any country necessarily believe them if it did. Nor should any country assume Russia’s war aims are the destruction of the Donbas, which is itself different from claims that Russia was freeing the Donbas of NAZIs and securing the safety of Russian nationals. Nor should any country assume that if Russia ceases hostilities at any given point, that the invasion won’t be resumed at a later date. The only thing that deters Russia is its cost/benefit calculation of continuing the invasion of neighboring countries. Weakening the Russian military is how those goals are met.
Quite to the contrary, I would presume it would.
That returns to a point I have made before: how? There are only two ways to rule out that prospect: let them succeed or break Russia up into little statelets. That latter is what Putin has been claiming was the West’s objective.
For the Russians it’s not a matter of cost-benefit analysis any more than it is for the Ukrainians. That, too, is a point I have made before.
This is the part I believe that’s key.
In the english transcript (bold mine) —
“However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there along with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was under Russia’s control. The same is true of the western direction, Narva and his first campaigns. Why would he go there? He was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing.
Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well…”
In the machine translation of the Russian transcript. (bold mine).
“The same is true in the western direction, this applies to Narva, his first campaigns. What did I get in there? I returned and strengthened – that’s what I did.
Apparently, it also fell to our lot to return and strengthen…”
To me, the cleanest reading using the machine translation of the Russian transcript is Putin saying this war is a so-called “gathering of the Russian lands”; drawing on the example of Peter the Great.
The English transcript sounds reads more plausibly that Peter the Great is an example of someone building Russian sovereignty. And this meeting is like that, but building sovereignty in the economic, social, technogical spheres.
Weaken Russia? The dollar today buys 58 rubles, down some 20% since before the war. Oil is at $120/bbl (WTI) to $122/bbl (Brent), and the oil/gas sanctions have not actually kicked in. That won’t happen until December. And Russia is running record trade and accounts surpluses.
Our leaders have no conception of what Russia is or does. No conception of the size and diversity of its economy. And no understanding whatsoever of its military and its foreign policy goals. None. Nada.
As a consequence, all our policies backfire, and Russia invades Ukraine, and the EU economy is wrecked. Orban is the only sane leader in the entire West. Maybe Erdogan is the other.
The Ukrainian war has not only exposed our leaders for the clowns they are, it has also demonstrated just how isolated the West is from the rest of the world. Russian and China are not.
Not one country in Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East supports the US/EU sanctions against Russia. Even military allies like Hungary and Turkey and Israel don’t. In Asia only our military allies support the sanctions. No one else does.
The recent Summit of the Americas was a geopolitical disaster, with Mexico, Bolivia and other countries refusing to send their heads of state. The recent Biden trip to Asia was another fiasco, and gained nothing.
What China is learning from the Ukrainian war is that a war to take Taiwan would likely succeed, and China would occupy the island before the West and Japan could respond.
China would lose the European and American markets, but without Chinese products to sell, every large consumer retailer in both the EU and US would go bankrupt, and the West’s economies would collapse.
People like Zakaria, and other members of the West’s Deep State and nomenklatura still think it is 1992, before China’s rise to economic dominance and when Russia was prostrate and in chaos.
Russia plainly has the upper hand both in the shooting war in Ukraine and in the economic war. Western weakness is the lesson China is learning.
@Dave, the offensive realist approach of Mearsheimer is that it is rational that Russia would seek to expand as a regional hegemon regardless of what other actors do or don’t do. The only restraint is the cost-benefit assessment, which might include things like having other priorities or not seeing a lot of value gained in occupying rubble.
That analysis may not account for state-specific characteristics, but it is sound first principles.
That’s not what he said. I’ve listened to the video a half dozen times and examined the Kremlin’s Russian and English language transcriptions. Their Russian and English language transcriptions are correct:
What caused me to raise an eyebrow a bit was not that but his reference to “Russian government”. There was no Russian government prior to Peter’s time. There was the Tsar and there were the nobles. More precisely, Peter was in the process of creating the Russian government.
I don’t think it was an error. He could have said “under Russian control” or “under Russian governance” but he said “controlled by the Russian government” which I think is interesting.
Other than that what he said wasn’t particularly surprising. It’s what Russians have been learning in school for more than 200 years.