Contrary to some national “experts” with a staunch and unfailing faith in the impact of Washington’s immense military assistance package to Ukraine on the fate of the war, read, in the Ukrainian victory, approved on April 23 in the senate, the media American leader has raised some concerns about the miraculous effect of this tremendous aid: “it will give Ukraine relief on the battlefield, but it will not change the fortunes of the war”; or, the US government expects more Russian strategic victories, even with new aid.
Many other examples could be added. CIA Director William Burns was very clear about the White House’s intentions with that aid. If it were not approved by Congress, “there would be a very real risk of the Ukrainians losing on the battlefield by the end of 2024, or at least putting Putin in a position where he can essentially dictate the terms of a political settlement.”
Until “the end of 2024” means, in practice, keeping Ukraine “connected to the machine” until November, the date of the North American presidential elections, preventing, in the meantime, the country from collapsing, obviating the consequences that could arise from this for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
The Biden Administration itself admitted that the almost 61 billion dollars donated/borrowed will not be enough to win the armed conflict. Regarding the ATACMS long-range missiles, Washington acknowledged that, although it has sent a “significant amount”, it continues to anticipate “tactical successes” from Russia in the following weeks.
Despite the reasonable consensus on the limited strategic effect of this military aid, Washington does not seem to have a strategic thought on how to end the conflict, much less a plan B, since the Kremlin’s regime change strategy did not work. The plan to take power and remove Putin through a rebellion by friendly oligarchs did not materialize. As has happened in other situations, we once again run the serious risk of being confronted with Washington’s strategic miscalculations. Now more in the mode of letting the ivory flow and then you’ll soon see what will happen.
At the same time, here and there, particularly in Europe, we hear warmongering voices with an increasingly assertive tone. As Bloomberg noted, “European leaders are not just discussing the risk of a new war on the continent. They are preparing for it.” The inconsistency of many of the arguments used by the promoters of these dangerous ideas is notable, especially when we talk about the leaders of major European powers.
On the one hand, we have the high profile contortionism of French President Emmanuel Macron. In the same speech (Sorbonne, April 25) he managed to advocate two contradictory ideas.
On the one hand, defend the construction of a common security framework, which provides security guarantees for everyone, including neighboring Russia; and, on the other, establish an intimate relationship between the security of Ukraine and Europe as a pretext to validate the idea of strategic ambiguity promoted by it, which is nothing more than a euphemism to justify the military intervention in Ukraine by a military coalition of countries Europeans led by France.
On the other hand, we are faced with the bizarre claim of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to convert the UK economy into a war economy, by increasing defense spending from the current 2.3% to 2.5%, in 2030, when he doesn’t know whether he will be prime minister or what the strategic framework will be at that time. Sunak will have to explain what his concept of a war economy consists of in a peace situation, as common understanding indicates that war economies are created in times of war, which does not currently appear to be the case.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also came out to give an air of grace, warning that the Russians were producing more weapons than they needed to defeat the Ukrainians, as if that were measurable, exactly when the US congress had just approving one of the largest military aid packages for Kiev, joining the chorus of voices that argue that Russia is arming itself to attack Europe. To add to the bouquet, we also had statements by Polish President Andrzej Duda expressing Poland’s willingness to host nuclear weapons on its territory.
On the other side of the Atlantic, there are also voices that are not very reassuring. A recent article published by “Foreign Affairs”, belonging to the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank North American leader, stated that “Europe, not NATO, should send troops to Ukraine.” For the authors of the article, “the time has come for Europeans to enter into a direct war with Russia, to, among other activities, protect their [da Ucrânia] borders and critical infrastructures, and even participate in the defense of Ukrainian cities west of the Dnieper River, for example Odessa, in case of the advance of the Russian Army.”
Underlying this thinking we find the incentive for Europeans to attack Russia. “Ultimately, Russia cannot afford to fight several European countries simultaneously.” “Furthermore, Europe is much richer than Russia, its technologies are more advanced and its population is larger.”
“Taking into account that European forces will act outside the framework of NATO and the territory of the Alliance, no loss will imply reactions within the scope of art. V and will not drag the USA into the conflict.” “Russia’s adversary will not be NATO, but a coalition of European countries.” We are therefore faced with a recommendation with very clear intentions.
As it becomes clear that the US is not capable of defeating Russia by turning to the Ukrainians, it is time for the Europeans to move in to complete the unfinished work. And when Europe is “on the canvas”, and with its economies destroyed, the saving hand of Washington will come to help it, as happened in another recent moment in its history.
At that time, the US hoped that German forces could defeat the Soviets. When the course of the war began to change, after the battle of Stalingrad (officially ended in February 1943), when it became obvious that the Nazi troops’ days were numbered, the USA decided to come and save Europe, but only in June. 1944, when Europe had already completely destroyed its economic and social fabric.
In the midst of the increasingly frequent absurd remarks and the establishment of a schizophrenic international environment, promoting the inevitability of war, there are still those who have common sense. Among the thoughtful voices, that of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, stands out. Despite having joined the North American armed forces as a lieutenant in 1988, already in the throes of the Cold War, he deeply understood the challenges faced by political and military decision-makers at that time.
In a recent interview, he mentioned what politicians should take into consideration: the need for the US to reactivate lines of communication with Moscow, which during the Cold War helped to avoid a nuclear conflict. As Cavoli pointed out, “we knew how to read each other’s signals. We knew how to send signals to each other… almost all of that has disappeared now”, not mentioning, however, that this was a consequence of the attempt to turn Russia into a pariah state, with which relations should be cut off.
According to him, the transformation in NATO’s combat readiness does not appear to have been followed at a strategic level, when it comes to ensuring that nuclear powers do not misinterpret each other’s intentions.
During the Cold War, there was a “very fine and mutually understood vocabulary” between the West and the Soviet Union. We knew how to verbally and non-verbally communicate our intentions in a way that gave predictability and understanding to the other side”; “This was one of the main things we used to manage escalation and deter without significant risk.”
Other aspects that have been effective in the past include several nuclear treaties, agreements and on-site inspections that have helped keep lines of communication open, Cavoli said. “We have lost the habit of using these mechanisms to signal and… we have collectively abandoned many of the agreements and treaties that previously gave us the ability to do so.”
It was a shame that Cavoli had not gone further and had not mentioned who were mainly responsible for sabotaging and compromising the effectiveness of these agreements and treaties, starting with the abandonment of the ABM (anti-ballistic missiles) treaty, in 2002, by President George Bush, going up to the withdrawal of the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaties, in 2018, and the “Open Skies” treaties, in 2020, by President Trump, and others, mostly from the North American initiative, compromising the maintenance and functioning of the system of Confidence Building Measureswhich operated for decades without any major problems.
The last aspect mentioned by Cavoli concerns what, in international relations, is called the “Security Dilemma”, and the Kremlin’s perception of the growing number of NATO forces positioned in places such as the Baltic States and Poland. , interpreted by Moscow as a threat.
Almost recovering the concept developed during the Cold War of non-offensive defense, Cavoli asks himself “how are we going to move forward with all this and re-establish our collective defense capacity without being threatening and without accidentally causing the effect we don’t want?”. “I think the first step is to openly describe ourselves as what we are – a defensive alliance.”
Recognizing the difficulty in reestablishing past practices during the hot war being fought between Russia and Ukraine, Cavoli gives us the good news that efforts are underway within NATO to update some of the successful practices in the past and transport them to modern times. Let us therefore hope that this example bears fruit, multiplies and prevails over absurd and idiotic ideas.
