76 - Taking the War to Russia
This Newsletter suggested on Friday that a radical U. S. rethink of its strategy in the anti-Putin battle in Ukraine was merited. (75 – “Ending the Suffering: A Radical Rethink Required”) I was planning to write about other matters today, but a major consideration of the same subject in the New York Times by Peter Baker and David Sanger on Sunday motivates me to return to the topic, quoting a few paragraphs from their commentary.
‘The second objective was to make sure the invasion was a ‘strategic failure’ for Russia. U.S. officials believe the country is now so isolated, and under such heavy economic sanctions, to put that goal within reach. But the worry is that Mr. Putin will have time to regroup, launch new attacks and seek to carve off another part of Ukraine.
“The third objective was to keep the war from escalating into a direct superpower conflict. On that score, U.S. officials said they were succeeding — and that all the evidence showed that Mr. Putin was being careful, at least so far, to avoid military engagement with NATO allies.
“The fourth objective was the hardest: to strengthen the international order around Western values. NATO is being strengthened, officials argue, both because it has remained unified and because it is now all but certain to expand to include Finland and Sweden. So far, Mr. Biden has not talked much about what that new American-centric order might look like.”
This last point is very important. President Biden needs to articulate a game-changing, war-ending plan, as we mentioned on Friday. American voters and, more significantly, European consumers, will find it hard to accept a wearying slog in Ukraine. They (and we) will tire in this modern, social-media driven atmosphere of a war that drives up prices and – given Putin’s relentless striving for face-saving accomplishments – seems to go on and on. Fatigue is real, and dangerous. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine predicts a combat that persists all year, but neither his people nor the rest of the world can last that long.
To look upon the positive, Russia is running out of recruits, and Putin rightly hesitates to mandate an all-out conscription of youths. Instead, he and his cohorts are orchestrating a method of offering hefty bribes to obtain enlistments. To staff the invading foot-soldiery of war, he is also relying more and more on Chechen and Wagner company mercenaries, plus the impressment of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens from the occupied portions of the Donbas.
But, as we said on Friday, Putin may have trouble filling the ranks of his army, but he still has more than enough ammunition to fire away with artillery at Ukrainian positions in Donetsk and near Kherson. With U. S. and European massive continued assistance, Ukraine may in some circumstances be able to pound back (and Ukraine blew up a Russian ammunition dump on Friday), but the Russian war machine is, if battered, much larger than Ukraine’s. Only putting the Western air finger on the scale (as we wrote on Friday) will turn the tide.
Let me quote from the Baker-Sanger article:
“’Everything the administration has done in terms of providing support has been fantastic,’ said Evelyn N. Farkas, the executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership and a former Obama administration official. ‘All I can say is we need more of it faster.’
She said Mr. Biden should not limit his ambitions to keeping the Russians in the east. ‘We need to help the Ukrainians actually launch an offensive,’ she said, ‘not just hold some ground and keep them away from Kyiv.’”
That is exactly the point. How to do so is the consuming question of Washington’s response to the Russian threat – as we approach the commemoration of Bastille Day.
To quote Baker-Sanger, once more:
“In the administration, significant tension remains over whether Mr. Biden is being too cautious in the kinds of weapons he is sending to Ukraine and how quickly. The decision to provide HIMARS rocket launchers is much debated because of fears that it would lead to escalation.”
In fact, it is an escalation that we need in order to compel Putin to back down, or perish. No one wants a widened war, engulfing NATO and the worry and threat of nuclear weapons, but Russia is weakened. With careful calibration we can take advantage of Putin’s overreaching and over-confidence by careful shaping and configuring of a further Western enlargement of its military enlargement.
This is the time for decisiveness on President Biden’s part, and for a new strategic assertiveness that will save his presidency and make the world safe for democracy.
Please permit me to close with a famous excerpt from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s March, 4, 1933 Inaugural Speech:
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Now we need some Rooseveltian resoluteness to emerge from Washington in July or August.