Since 2022 I have argued that there was an obvious and growing schism between the military and civilian leadership of the USA. There have been such schisms in the past like Korea, Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but in those conflicts it was typically military leaders who were overly aggressive while civilian leaders insisted on restraint and diplomacy. This time it was the reverse. Military leaders argued restraint and a quick segway to diplomacy, while civilian leaders insisted on escalation and dragging out the conflict as long as possible.
Retired Lt. Gen. Stephen Twitty, the former deputy commander of EUCOM and later commander of First Army, publicly stated in Spring 2022 that Ukraine should seek diplomacy quickly while they still had strong bargaining chips and before the odds turned against them. Twitty later flip-flopped, probably to his own detriment because otherwise this would have been a great “I told you so” moment for him, but his statements still likely represented how the American military establishment felt.
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.
I further suspected that military leaders’ hesitancy for a protracted conflict in Ukraine was motivated by fear that if the USA got bogged down there, it would be unable to effectively pivot to other global threats and crises.
A Jan. 18 NYT article confirmed my suspicions by stating that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley had advocated diplomatic resolution in 2022, but was overruled by none other than Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Now I’ll repeat my past assessments, which have mostly aged well.
-Early 2022, especially before April, was the best time for Ukraine to go to the negotiating table. There would be no territorial loss and they could easily market the deal as a victory against a larger and stronger enemy.
-After Autumn 2022 it was still possible to negotiate a deal, but not without the loss of further territories. This sucked Ukraine into a lethal cycle of sunk cost fallacy, much like a gambler who keeps bleeding more money to recoup what he lost when the smart thing to do would be to just walk away.
-Roughly mid-way through 2022, NATO went through a massive shift in their propaganda narratives and weapon shipments. Up to and in the beginning of the conflict there had been a focus on Ukrainians fighting as light infantry using irregular tactics, and the propaganda narratives emphasized this. NATO had come to such conclusions after 20 years of losing to guerrillas, and decided that guerrilla warfare is some sort of trump card that always works. Unfortunately, real life did not live up to expectation.
-The Pentagon leak in Spring 2023 proved something I had begun to suspect already. The USA had no reliable sources of information, and their “intel” was mostly just stuff that the UAF press releases. This had the effect of American leadership only noticing obvious battlefield trends and starting to react to them six to 12 months too late. This is a pattern they would continue throughout the war.
Now Trump has the opportunity to be the genius who pulls the USA out of a quagmire, but from the looks of things, he’s probably going to blow it. Steve Bannon said, correctly, that Trump is at risk of becoming the next Nixon and Ukraine is his Vietnam. Nixon had the opportunity to end the Vietnam War, but instead doubled down on it and Vietnam became his war, not Johnson’s. At least part of the reason Trump’s team is struggling is because, as mentioned in my points about intelligence and noticing trends too late, they still have an inaccurate picture of the war. There’s no reason or need for Russia to accept Trump’s ludicrous demands. At the current pace of Ukrainian losses and desertions, Russia will almost certainly have a total victory, with or without Trump’s attempts at negotiations.
Ian Kummer
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I don’t understand how Trump doesn’t see this. Does he not read books?
If only he had even 20% of a command of US history as Putin does Russian history.
Trump is unfortunately not a well educated person. Ukraine is likely going to be a ball he drops. It is particularly strange because the whole project was so blatantly a partisan Democrat money laundering scam.
I hope so, because if he doesn’t Biden is going to avoid all the blame for it. I’ve already seen Eurolibs on bluesky preposition the ‘Trump lost Ukraine’ argument right after he won.
That would be a damn shame.
No. He does not read books. He watches Fox and likes social media trending news.
If only Trump had 20% of the command of American history that Putin has.
If only Trump had 1% of the command of Russian/Ukrainian history that Putin has.
If only Trump had any grasp of reality — the only hope is that Tulsi Gabbard comes through with a dose of the realities.
Trump changed his mind about Scripal when they showed him some pictures of poisoned children at the duck pond.
He changed his mind about bombing Syria on the basis of the n-th instance of gas attacks.
We can conclude that Trump an astute analyst of intel and narratives he is not!
That whole story, about how Gina Haspel, ex-Director of the CIA, admitted in an interview that she and Theresa May had lied to the President of the USA about this aspect of Skripal case amazed me when I first heard it. Not only is an admission of what must surely be criminal behaviour, but it is a great point when arguing that the entire Skripal poisoning story is BS: if the head of the CIA and the British Prime Minister were lying to the President of the USA about this, what makes you think they are telling YOU the truth?
By the way, in the recent enquiry, Dr Cockroft, who had been caring for Yulia Skripal in Salisbury District Hospital said that she had mentioned that they had been sprayed by someone walking past their table in Zizzi’s (not Petrov and Boshirov, who were the other side of town at the time) shortly before they fell ill. The judge heading the enquiry said that, as this doesn’t tie up with the rest of the “evidence”, it can be discounted. Hmmm.
Read the New York Times. Russia are overwhelmed by NATO materiel. Russia are using old Soviet materiel from WWII, and maybe Czarist materiel from WWI, because that’s all they have, while the Ukraine, with advanced NATO materiel, have killed more than 1 million Russians and lost only 45,000 Ukrainian troops.
All false, of course, but the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Fox, all reiterate the lie, that’s all most Americans (including Trump) can see (unless they have equipment that can circumvent the censorship).
Hunter’s laptop? Russian disinformation according to the 53 top intel experts. Ukraine’s certainty of victory? Irrefutable proof according to hundreds of top military and intelligence experts (and just as reliable as the experts on Hunter’s laptop).
But that’s what Trump, and most other Americans, see.
From 1980 until 2021, the US had a naval blockade of Iran that prevented Iran from selling oil. Every year, there was at least one story of an oil tanker that tried to sneak past the blockade, was caught, and ship and oil sold and all the money sent to the US treasury. Then, in 2021, Biden (actually, whoever was really running the US government) lifted the blockade, and the Iranian economy doubled. ‘Because Biden was weak,’ all the Trumpeters say.
Actually, a huge fleet of oil tankers protected by a fleet of naval vessels arrived at Iran, and the unAmerican navy was way too much for the US naval blockade to stop, so the fleet of tankers filled up with all the available Iranian oil and sailed away. The US can’t declare a blockade that is easily overcome by a stronger navy, so they did what they had to do: they lifted the blockade, and the economy of Iran more than doubled from what it had been.
The PRC has a strict non-intervention policy, but the PRC is desperate for oil, and Iranian and Russian oil are cheap. The US was once the biggest buyer of oil. Not any more. The US is now producing enough oil to be a net exporter, while the PRC produces very little oil and has a lot more cars than the US ever did, and needs a lot more petrol. The PRC will have to defend Iran from any US attack, they have no choice, non-intervention policy or not. And the PRC also need Russian oil. And the PRC is a near equal to the US, and if the fight is where they have all the logistic advantages, well, the US was unable to take the DPRK thanks to the PRC. And the PRC are closer to Iran than the US is. And a lot stronger than they were in 1952.
WWIII anyone???