{"id":240444,"date":"2023-07-31T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=240444"},"modified":"2023-07-31T08:08:10","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T07:08:10","slug":"us-admits-to-pushing-ukraine-into-a-fight-it-cant-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/07\/us-admits-to-pushing-ukraine-into-a-fight-it-cant-win\/","title":{"rendered":"US Admits to Pushing Ukraine into a Fight It Can’t Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

A US “windfall” in Ukraine comes at an unfathomable cost.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Win McNamee\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

28 Jul 2023 – <\/em>Nearly one month into Russia\u2019s invasion, the New York Times<\/em> quietly abandoned any pretense that the US aim was to defend Ukraine and bring the war to a quick end. The White House, the Times reported<\/a>, \u201cseeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire without inciting a broader conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary or cutting off potential paths to de-escalation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eighteen months later, the desired quagmire has been achieved. This is due not only to a massive influx of NATO weaponry, but a Western blockade of every tangible path<\/a> to de-escalation, most notably the April 2022 Ukraine-Russia peace deal that Boris Johnson nixed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With a Russian quagmire the overriding goal, the US and its partners have adopted an attendant disregard for the tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives sacrificed for the task.<\/p>\n

In the war\u2019s early stages, only the most outwardly enthusiastic proxy warriors, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, could candidly admit that US support ensured that Ukraine would \u201cfight to the last person<\/a>.\u201d With Ukraine now struggling to mount a widely hyped counteroffensive, the prevailing indifference to its human toll is more widely acknowledged.<\/p>\n

As the Wall Street Journal newly reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn\u2019t have all the training or weapons\u2014from shells to warplanes\u2014that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is unclear how Western officials could have \u201choped\u201d that Ukrainian \u201cresourcefulness\u201d would make up for the training and weapons that they did not provide. A war zone, after all, is not an episode of MacGyver<\/a> or the A-Team<\/a>, and Ukraine\u2019s adversary happens to be one of the world\u2019s most powerful militaries. The operative Western definition of \u201cUkrainian courage\u201d, however, is not hard to discern: a willingness to use Ukrainian soldiers as cannon fodder.<\/p>\n

\u201cSenior U.S. officials,\u201d the New York Times reports<\/a>, have \u201cprivately expressed frustration that some Ukrainian commanders… fearing increased casualties among their ranks\u201d have recently \u201creverted to old habits \u2014 decades of Soviet-style training in artillery barrages \u2014 rather than sticking with the Western tactics and pressing harder to breach the Russian defenses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times did not ask these same US officials whether it is appropriate to express \u201cfrustration\u201d at the decision of another military \u2013 the one we claim to support \u2013 to avoid \u201cincreased casualties\u201d among its ranks. But Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, asked an equally salient question of his US counterparts: \u201cWhy don\u2019t they come and do it themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n

Frustrated US officials are well aware of Ukraine\u2019s toll. According to the New York Times<\/a>, Western states now estimate that Ukraine lost about 20 percent of its weaponry in the first weeks of its counteroffensive, a \u201cstartling rate of losses… as Ukrainian soldiers struggle against Russia\u2019s formidable defenses.\u201d Oddly, the Times omits any mention of losses in Ukrainian lives \u2013 a tacit admission, perhaps, that the human casualties are even more startling.<\/p>\n

As is also increasingly admitted, all of this was foreseen. \u201cU.S. Defense Department analysts knew early this year that Ukraine\u2019s front-line troops would struggle against\u00a0Russian air attacks,\u201d the Wall Street Journal notes<\/a>. Or as the Washington Post puts it<\/a>: \u201cPrivately, U.S. military officials concede that their expectation from early this year, described in leaked intelligence documents, that Ukraine is likely to make only modest gains in its counteroffensive has not changed, despite public pronouncements seeking to downplay fallout from the disclosure.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, US \u201cpublic pronouncements\u201d have entailed lying to the public to \u201cdownplay fallout\u201d of fueling a knowingly catastrophic and futile war. The participants in this deception include Secretary of Defense\u00a0Lloyd Austin, who declared in March<\/a> that the Ukrainian military had \u201ca very good chance for success,\u201d despite privately being told<\/a> the opposite.<\/p>\n

One reason for Ukraine\u2019s current woes, as President Biden recently admitted to CNN<\/a>, is that \u201cthe Ukrainians are running out of ammunition,\u201d and \u201cwe’re low on it\u201d as well. Another major factor, a classified Pentagon assessment noted in February, was Ukraine\u2019s \u201cinability to prevent Russian air superiority.\u201d Or as a senior European official<\/a> now warns, \u201ceveryone worries that the Ukrainians will run out of ammunition and air defenses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don\u2019t have air superiority,\u201d John Nagl, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and professor at the U.S. Army War College, observes<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Pentagon, NATO\u2019s latest influx of heavy weaponry will not change the tide. Speaking at a Washington security conference<\/a> this month, John Kirchhofer, chief of staff at the US Defense Intelligence Agency, claimed that the Ukraine war is at a \u201cstalemate\u201d and that \u201cnone of these\u201d newly provided weapons \u2013 including Storm Shadow missiles and cluster bombs — \u201care the holy grail that Ukraine is looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accordingly, the Wall Street Journal notes<\/a>, the unlikelihood of \u201cany large-scale breakthrough by the Ukrainians… raises the unsettling prospect for Washington and its allies of a longer war\u2014one that would require a\u00a0huge new infusion\u00a0of sophisticated armaments and more training to give Kyiv a chance at victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Washington, perhaps that prospect is not unsettling. According to veteran Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, the Ukraine war has already yielded a \u201ctriumphal summer\u201d for the NATO alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe West\u2019s most reckless antagonist has been rocked,\u201d Ignatius writes<\/a>. \u201cNATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accordingly, \u201cfor the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians).\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, it is quite easy to reap a \u201cwindfall\u201d from 18 months of war when the US is not itself fighting it. It has instead sacrificed future generations of an entire nation, whose worth is so devalued that their unfolding catastrophe is openly reduced to an afterthought.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Aaron Mat\u00e9 is a journalist with<\/em> The Grayzone, where he hosts<\/em> \u201cPushback.\u201d He is also a contributor to<\/em> Real Clear Investigations and the temporary co-host of<\/em> \u201cUseful Idiots.\u201d In 2019, Mat\u00e9 won the\u00a0Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for Russiagate coverage in<\/em> The Nation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 mate.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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