Why Brandon Can't Ditch "The Ukraine Is Winning" Narrative...,

The West made an unforced political error - right at the start - by pushing the volume up to eleven. Since then, it has effectively painted itself into a corner. It’s unclear exactly why this happened, but at least three things seem to have been operating. One was genuine shock and surprise, as the house of cards they had built over several decades started to fall apart. A second was the confident predictions that the Russians would fail. 

How much of this was wishful thinking? How much inability to face facts? How much bad analysis? How much excessive trust in the Ukrainians? How much the escalation effect, as one government felt it had at least to equal, if not exceed, the condemnations of another.  Historians of the future will have to sort all of this out. But it’s clear that, to the extent that western leaders believed the attack would fail, and that the war would be unpopular, they must have felt that amping up the volume would have no adverse consequences. 

A third factor is the fear engendered by the capabilities the Russians have been demonstrating and the low-key practical response of the US. It’s not that Europeans ever naively imagined that the US was going to “defend” them. Rather, the hope was that in any political crisis in Europe, first with the Soviet Union and then with Russia, the US would necessarily be an actor, and this would give the Russians pause. But it’s clear that the Russians had already gamed out a lack of US response in their planning. In addition, I think that western elites have been genuinely shocked at how little high-intensity warfare capability the NATO countries actually have.  To some extent, all this shouting is aimed at keeping up their collective morale. Most of our leaders are of a generation that grew up with the belief that if you want something badly enough, you can will it into being. But let's digress for a moment...,

Because Obama was inexperienced in Foreign Affairs, he was coerced into partnering with the corrupt and compromised Joe Biden for foreign affairs supervision. Even worse, as Senator Obama he had been "schooled" by Sen Joe Lieberman on the Middle East and foreign affairs.  Consequently, when he was tapped for the presidency, Obama made extremely poor choices for his foreign policy team. 

The nomination of Hillary was not just clumsy, it was a disaster. Susan Rice and Samantha Power with regime change policy .... drone assassinations ...Iraq, Afghanistan (nixed advise in 2009 from Richard Holbrooke), Libya and Syria. War crimes and crimes against humanity. Gross failure in the so-called reset with Russia. Obama was so outmanned by Putin, that he initiated the policy to make Russia a pariah state. Obama also initiated regime change in Ukraine in 2014.

A U.S. President gets a daily briefing from the CIA. Then he gets the same story a second time from the Washington Post. Then he gets it a third time from the NYTimes. If that president is Joe Biden, his aides are a pack of nitwits. His Vice President is astonishingly stupid. Are there any better informed parties in Biden's circle? Probably. Do they have access? Who knows. 

Another old story, this is one Seymour Hersh used to tell in interviews. Shortly after Obama was inaugurated Thomas Pickering, then retired but still the dean of US diplomatic corps, got a call from parties in Iran. Said parties complained they were being shut out by the new administration and wanted Pickering to get a message to the President. Pickering had worked for every US President from Johnson to Bush Jr. And had had some interaction with Ike and JFK. Pickering could not get through. Baby Bush was often called the boy in the bubble. Obama’s bubble was far more exclusive. Iranians could not believe such an arrangement was possible; it was so.

The U.S. was the first to mine oil and gas in a big way, and exploited that to build a huge economy. But it has mostly wasted this gift, this patrimony, and now depends on the looting of others. On the other hand, Russia is pretty much self–sufficient, has a very advanced economy, has a very well educated workforce, has huge reserves of energy, and the most efficient military in the world, spending but a fraction of the U.S. and equal or surpassing it in every important way. This is real power, unlike the froth of the present U.S. economy with a hollowed out industrial base and a bloated military, led by incompetent and corrupt politicians who have swallowed their own propaganda and have come to believe the lies they tell.

The U.S. empire and the British empire before it (and more or less successful European competitors also) grew to prominence mostly by piracy and looting, imposing their world view and economic and religious regimes on the rest of the world by force. That system is collapsing before our eyes.

One of the reasons that the “Ukraine is winning” narrative is still (just) holding up, is that nobody in a position of responsibility or influence wants to consider the real consequences of a Russian victory – which will, of course, go much wider than just Ukraine. 

This is why it’s wrong to see the Europeans as passively following American orders. For a start, the major European powers (notably the French and the UK) have been investing heavily in Ukraine for a long time, and this is a significant and long-term defeat for them. In addition, their leaders are beginning to understand that the results of this chaos are going to include a hostile and distrustful Russia on the frontiers of the EU, and with a military capability that exceeds now anything the Europeans could collectively generate in less than ten years. Get out of that. But how? 

I suspect we are in for a period of epic sulking, a bit like that after the Communist victory in China. But that won’t solve any practical problems, and I also suspect we shall see the slow disintegration of EU solidarity as countries like Spain and Portugal ask exactly why they should continue to sacrifice their economies to make political points against a large country, far away, with which they have no quarrel.