Preparing for Defeat Francis Fukuyama - Chairman of the editorial board of American Purpose https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/preparing-for-defeat/ I’m writing this from Skopje, North Macedonia, where I’ve been for the last week teaching one of our Leadership Academy for Development courses. Following the Ukraine war is no different here in terms of available information, except that I’m in an adjacent time zone, and the fact that there is more support for Putin in the Balkans than in other parts of Europe. A lot of the latter is due to Serbia, and Serbia's hosting of Sputnik. I’ll stick my neck out and make several prognostications: Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine. Russian planning was incompetent, based on a flawed assumption that Ukrainians were favorable to Russia and that their military would collapse immediately following an invasion. Russian soldiers were evidently carrying dress uniforms for their victory parade in Kyiv rather than extra ammo and rations. Putin at this point has committed the bulk of his entire military to this operation—there are no vast reserves of forces he can call up to add to the battle. Russian troops are stuck outside various Ukrainian cities where they face huge supply problems and constant Ukrainian attacks. The collapse of their position could be sudden and catastrophic, rather than happening slowly through a war of attrition. The army in the field will reach a point where it can neither be supplied nor withdrawn, and morale will vaporize. This is at least true in the north; the Russians are doing better in the south, but those positions would be hard to maintain if the north collapses. There is no diplomatic solution to the war possible prior to this happening. There is no conceivable compromise that would be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine given the losses they have taken at this point. The United Nations Security Council has proven once again to be useless. The only helpful thing was the General Assembly vote, which helps to identify the world’s bad or prevaricating actors. The Biden administration’s decisions not to declare a no-fly zone or help transfer Polish MiGs were both good ones; they've kept their heads during a very emotional time. It is much better to have the Ukrainians defeat the Russians on their own, depriving Moscow of the excuse that NATO attacked them, as well as avoiding all the obvious escalatory possibilities. The Polish MiGs in particular would not add much to Ukrainian capabilities. Much more important is a continuing supply of Javelins, Stingers, TB2s, medical supplies, comms equipment, and intel sharing. I assume that Ukrainian forces are already being vectored by NATO intelligence operating from outside Ukraine. The cost that Ukraine is paying is enormous, of course. But the greatest damage is being done by rockets and artillery, which neither MiGs nor a no-fly zone can do much about. The only thing that will stop the slaughter is defeat of the Russian army on the ground. Putin will not survive the defeat of his army. He gets support because he is perceived to be a strongman; what does he have to offer once he demonstrates incompetence and is stripped of his coercive power? The invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world, who prior to the attack uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin. That includes Matteo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, and of course Donald Trump. The politics of the war has exposed their openly authoritarian leanings. The war to this point has been a good lesson for China. Like Russia, China has built up seemingly high-tech military forces in the past decade, but they have no combat experience. The miserable performance of the Russian air force would likely be replicated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, which similarly has no experience managing complex air operations. We may hope that the Chinese leadership will not delude itself as to its own capabilities the way the Russians did when contemplating a future move against Taiwan. Hopefully Taiwan itself will wake up as to the need to prepare to fight as the Ukrainians have done, and restore conscription. Let’s not be prematurely defeatist. Turkish drones will become bestsellers. A Russian defeat will make possible a “new birth of freedom,” and get us out of our funk about the declining state of global democracy. The spirit of 1989 will live on, thanks to a bunch of brave Ukrainians.
This is exactly the point of what I'm talking. If Russia is doing so poorly and they are headed for defeat why then do we need to put in a no-flyzone or get them the MiGs? I see Fukuyama says that it was a good thing we haven't done any of those things. At the same time we're still seeing plenty of reports of how dire the situation is in Ukraine and that the Ukrainians are being slowly pushed back.
Most do not agree that "Russia is heading for an outright" defeat and many think that Russia will eventually win in the short term. I just wanted to share an article from this viewpoint (and he's not the only one - many experts believe that Russia will lose to various degrees). I have not seen a single article (at least worthwhile IMO) that said Russia will win in the long term. It seems their best hope is to devastate Ukrainian lives so that the Ukrainian gov capitulate to a political solution. Which unfortunately means possible chemical and tactical nuke attacks. If you think they may do that, it's valid to ask if we should allow that, if we should intervene to save Ukraine (not to defeat Russia - they are heading for a defeat in one way or another if they don't find a political solution).
Russia will leave after they destroy everything. They are using Ukraine as a pawn to extract concessions from the US on NATO encroachment. US doesn’t negotiate under threat like this. They’re destroying Ukraine and want to negotiate. F-ck them!
Yes Fukuyama isn't the only one saying that Russia is headed to an outright defeat. Honestly at this point I don't know really what to make of all of this. On paper yes the Russians still have a large advantage but Russian losses as reported by many sources point indicate those are devastating. As I've said though again I have no idea what Ukraine's military losses are or even what their strength is. All of this still tells me we need to continue to be very careful in regard to what we do in Ukraine. Maybe Russia is so weak that Ukraine themselves can beat them. Maybe they aren't and they Ukraine isn't that long now from a being defeated. My own view is though it is dangerous to get overconfident about Russian weakness or Ukrainian strength. On the unconventional weapons side if Russia does use those I think we will have no choice but to intervene. I think from the standpoint of not allowing unconventional weapons to become widely accepted as a tool of war we will have to intervene and I don't think Biden or other NATO leaders will be able to resist the calls to intervene from the public.
former CIA Russian bureau chief argues in the Post that Putin has more to fear from his spy corps than anything else
I think what Putin wants and what will constitute victory for him isn't an occupation and eventual absorption of Ukraine into Russia. From the terms given to Ukraine he's looking for the following. 1. A legal binding law to never join NATO 2. To give up any claims to Crimea. 3. Recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk. 4. Ukraine to significantly disarm. Victory for Putin will be achieving those and also installing a more favorable regime in Kyiv.
We do have a choice. There is always a choice. We didn't intervene when Syria used chemical attacks on its people. A tactical nuke will make it very tough, but there is still a choice. I don't know what's what either. All I know is what we can do. The US and the West should do everything reasonably possible to increase Ukraine's chances to win, including giving them those MIGs they asked for.
This is the first I'm seeing of Ukrainian military losses. If this number is accurate, ,and I'm taking it with a grain of salt, this shows that while things are bad the Ukrainians are putting up a very tough fight and their losses aren't nearly as bad as the Russians. Now it would be good to know what the remaining Ukrainian force strength is.
Sure we could just pull out of NATO too. I don't think that is likely to happen now and I think if a chemical or nuclear attack were to happen by Russia on Ukraine or NATO forces it would be very hard to not respond.
I said it's a choice because there is already discussion on what we should do if there is a tactical nuke attack. The position I saw is to not intervene. This is very different than pulling out of NATO that only one man was pushing for in the US.
I have to admit I've not seen arguments that if Putin were to use a tactical nuke that we wouldn't intervene.
