185 - A Simmering Summer of Discontent: Ukraine's Battle Needs More Muscle
Sudan, Russia in Africa
Returning from a month away in Europe and Africa, I had expected decisive progress on one or more war fronts. Instead, the war in Ukraine is as much of a relentless slog as ever, with a decisive breakthrough for Ukraine’s embattled forces still (or even more) dependent on more power in the sky. Otherwise, Odesa and other cities will continue to be pulverized and Ukraine’s valiant frontline attackers will continue to run up forlornly against deeply fortified and heavily mined Russian encampments.
Likewise, I had hardly expected the criminal forces arrayed against one another in Sudan to still be at each other’s throats with the nation’s millions of totally innocent civilians continuing to suffer at the hands of not one, but two, contingents led still by merciless corrupt generals, both determined to aggregate spoils – gold primarily. I’ll write subsequently about the travails of Sudan, both in the major cities and in outlying provinces such as Darfur, where another genocide is underway.
I will also write soon about Russia (and Belarus’) acquisition of power, influence, and resource riches in Africa, about the failure so far (or perhaps the sheer inability) of an effective American diplomatic and strategic response to the onrush of Russian acquisition in Africa - on top of the long gathering power of China in a region that was once aligned firmly with its biggest aid donors, the United States and the European Union.
Further, I want to write about the preponderance of electoral autocracy in Africa and Asia. Zimbabwe, a long-running, wildly corrupt, example, will be holding a supposed election next month. The unbridled abuse of its citizens by the tainted government of Zimbabwe is an exemplar of such tendencies, with Chinese, Russian, and Belarusian assistance.
In all of these African tragedies, and in others like the Democratic Republic of Congo (still fully embroiled in combat), the resource curse controls destinies. Gold is a particular source of illicit wealth and conflict. But lithium, cobalt, nickel, and diamonds additionally exacerbate competition for lucrative interventions.
Ukraine
Months ago, I wrote (as did many other commentators) about the war against Russia ultimately depending on control of the skies over the eastern battlefields. In the Iraqi war, Kurdistan survived and remained unconquered because American forces patrolled the skies, enforcing a pax Americana over that part of the embroiled country. President Biden and the Pentagon are understandably hesitant to launch American fighters and bombers into Ukrainian airspace. They were equally slow to allow Ukraine to acquire modern F-16 fighters and to train Ukrainian pilots in advanced F-16 tactics. Even now, the F-16s are tardy to arrive and training of pilots is a work in progress.
This failure to help Ukraine gain air power has handicapped Ukraine’s military’s ability to support the tank battalions that have been trying to cut through heavily defended Russian defensive lines. Demining on the ground is an endless drag. Overcoming the “porcupine” defenses erected by the Russians is also inevitably painful, and very deadly. To reinforce its glacially slow advances against such well-fortified Russian redoubts, Ukraine desperately needs the ability to attack by air behind Russian lines. It has destroyed some ammunition dumps and some armored encampments, but there will be little real forward motion until Ukraine can strafe the Russians at will, and force soldiers to flee the front lines because of effective carpet- bombing runs. The howitzer pounding of the Russians is strong, but not yet sufficiently decisive.
Likewise, Russia’s main strength now, on the cusp of August in year two of the invasion, is its ability to harass cities like Odesa (and drone manufacturing facilities there and elsewhere) with missile and Iranian drone attacks. Ukraine thus requires the ability to assault the missile and drone launching sites (wherever they are, even in Russia) from the air. Otherwise, the attacks drag on, damaging morale and civilian support for the war effort. Russia cannot make gains on the ground, so it uses Ukraine’s weaknesses overhead to display its missile and drone launching might. NATO and Ukraine’s main military backers (including Washington) must find a way to strengthen Ukraine’s air power. Doing so is possibly the only way of ending the war in any sensible way this year.
The United States navy also needs to insert itself into the Black Sea to face off against the Russian navy and to escort Ukrainian grain-exporting ships from Odesa and elsewhere through the Strait of Bosphorus. Doing so might provoke a wider war with Russia. But, merely as a way to lower escalating grain costs and to ensure that wheat, barley, and sunflower oil from Ukraine find their way to the long-dependent and famine prone regions of East and West Africa, a U.S. naval intervention would prevent millions of Africans from going hungry, some even to starve.
President Biden and the Pentagon will be reluctant to counter the Russians in this way, and to risk skirmishes, even outright war, in the Black Sea. But it is Putin who has resumed blockading Ukrainian export harbors on one flimsy pretext after another. And American naval forces would be acting on a humanitarian mission. The U.S. would also have to persuade Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to let U.S. naval vessels to transit the Bosphorus. Nominally, Turkey is part of NATO. But Erdogan has been playing a double game, and facilitating Putin’s aims. Yet, Erdogan wants American F-16s. He also courts U. S. favor, so a Black Sea gambit might just work. And it would further isolate Russia.
The bottom line is that the Biden administration needs to exert more muscle. Helping Ukraine win the war in 2023 would also immensely assist Biden’s electoral prospects in 2024.