The Ukraine war is entering a new phrase. Russia is advancing steadily across the whole front. It is finally beginning to dawn on leaders in Western capitals that Ukraine is on the cusp of losing. We can watch their reactions. Most European leaders are doubling down on their promises of military aid and “eternal” support for Ukraine. The Trump administration is waiting in the wings. Their plan, apparently, is to tell Ukraine that if they don’t negotiate and accept what for them is considered a bad deal they, the US, will cut the flow of arms, and to tell Russia, that if they don’t accept a negotiated settlement which may be less than what they want, then the US will start arming Ukraine again and even more. It seems the incoming administration shares with the outgoing the hubris that they can dictate terms. They may get a rude shock.
It is being reported that the Biden administration in urging Kiev to lower the age of conscription from 25 to 18. Presumably this is some kind of acknowledgement that the Ukraine army has serious manpower problems and also that giving Ukraine yet more weapons is pointless if they don’t have the men to fire them. But, stop. For nearly three years the US has been repeating the mantra that this is Ukraine’s fight and purely up to Ukraine to decide how to run the war. However; it now turns out that the US feels they can try to persuade Ukraine to send young men of 18 to the war. The attempt to tell Ukraine to send their 18 year olds into the war is a new level of Western obscenity. The fact is that even 100,000 more young men, untrained 18-25 year olds, is not going to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favour. Russia still has 3.5x the population size to draw on. The only rational idea here is that, like the small quantity of ATACMS which Ukraine can now fire into Russia, this will prolong the conflict just a little longer. Probably, just enough to get the Biden team over the finish line, so the final denouement happens on Trump’s watch. It is truly obscene.
Obscenities aside, the other striking aspect of this phase is watching how the Western narrative is changing. One strand is to develop a narrative that Ukraine is losing because the West hesitated about giving them weapons and did not give them enough. The idea of this narrative line is to prepare for the defeat of Ukraine; they lost because of the weak-minded amongst us who would not give them more weapons and permissions for long-range fires. This covers the position of the war hawks and leaves them in a strong position to advocate for the next war. This line is popular amongst arms industry funded think tanks like Chatham House.
Another strand being developed is that “we cannot allow Russia to win because a) he [Putin] will go further and b) this will give the signal to China, North Korea and Iran that we are weak and they will then act accordingly”. For example; proponents of this view argue that if we allow Russia to win in Ukraine then China will try to take Taiwan. This view is simply an assertion, at least I haven’t seen it presented with any evidence. Do we, or does British intelligence, know that this is the conclusion that China will draw from a Russian victory? Or, are they just saying that? In general terms it doesn’t sound plausible to me. China will make a decision about Taiwan and the South China sea based on their political and military calculations. Were they to reason, for example, “the West did not fight to the end over Ukraine so they won’t over Taiwan, so let’s invade Taiwan”, that would be an example of making foreign policy decisions based on heuristics. That would be an example of irrational decision making. [1] China is simply unlikely to reason in that way. The US might well decide to wash their hands of Ukraine because defending it to the hilt was not in their strategic interest, but take a completely different view of the situation vis a vis Taiwan. China will fully understand that. The view mentioned here is being expounded by the head of British intelligence, Richard Moore:
Nicolas [Nicolas Lerner of French intelligence] and I are in no doubt about what is at stake in Ukraine: if Putin is allowed to succeed in reducing Ukraine to a vassal state, he will not stop there.
Our security – British, French, European and transatlantic – will be jeopardised.
The cost of supporting Ukraine is well known, but the cost of not doing so would be infinitely higher.
If Putin succeeds, China would weigh the implications, North Korea would be emboldened, and Iran would become yet more dangerous.
We have recently uncovered a staggeringly reckless campaign of Russian sabotage in Europe, even as Putin and his acolytes resort to nuclear sabre-rattling, to sow fear about the consequences of aiding Ukraine, and challenge Western resolve in so doing.
Such activity and rhetoric is dangerous and beyond irresponsible.
We have no doubt that our Ukrainian friends have the will to win.
[2]
Apparently, Richard Moore has deigned to speak to the public because he believes he can “contribute to public understanding of specific events”. To which the only answer is “oh, my God”. Russia is not trying to reduce Ukraine to being a vassal state. Ironically, it is the US which has been doing that for years – pushing Ukraine into NATO even when that was not popular in Ukraine, pouring in billions to support civil society projects to inculcate American values (or ostensive American values), manufacturing and controlling a coup in 2014, [3] In short, what Moore accuses Putin of is what the US has done and what caused this war. It would be difficult to be more wrong. Putin has been very consistent. In his public speeches it has always been clear that he accepts Ukraine as an independent state. His concern has been about an extreme nationalist government with an anti-Russia policy armed by the US becoming a member of NATO on his doorstep. This is an entirely rational concern. Moore then makes the argument we have already critiqued. His argument about China only works if he assumes China will make irrational decisions, which is possible, but unlikely. Indeed; if he wants to talk about the Western security competition with China the exact opposite of what he says is true; China will be much more worried if the US stops backing Ukraine and starts to focus on South East Asia, because this would be a sign that they understood where their true security interests lay.
Richard Moore is the head of the UK’s foreign intelligence directorate. Unless we are to interpret his speech as a disinformation operation, and I don’t think it is, this is both sad and worrying. He simply has no grasp at all of the situation. And he is the head of foreign intelligence – not a newly minted junior government Minister who never had to think about International Affairs until last week. Gosh.
In general terms Western political and media classes, (the servants of the not so visible financial elites with their links to arms manufacturing) suffer from a delusion. The delusion is that their worldview, values (Moore talks about values in his speech), interests and ideologies are the only ones. Anyone who thinks differently or who asserts different interests is wrong, bad, backward, “depraved” (the British government’s latest insult of choice) and, in essence, an enemy to be weakened and, if possible, destroyed. They are like someone who goes to relationship counselling and obdurately refuses to accept even that the other has a valid for them point of view, let alone discuss it. And so, we see, there is no analysis, no serious theorising, and absolutely no diplomacy. What a horrible situation. It seems they are now quite happy to sacrifice tens of thousands of young Ukrainians on the altar of their hubris. Which, objectively speaking, is pretty immoral.
Notes
- See How States Think – The Rationality of Foreign Policy – Professor John Mearsheimer. Yale 2023. Mearsheimer’s thesis is that most states most of the time make foreign policy decisions based on rational goals and rational thinking about how to attain those goals. He says that there are occasions when states think and behave irrationality, and gives the specific example of making decisions based on analogy. Were China to reason as the proponents of this view suggest they will they would, in fact, be being irrational. This is unlikely.
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/nov/29/ukraine-war-live-russian-defence-minister-north-korea-military-vladimir-putin-volodymyr-zelenskyy https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/speech-by-sir-richard-moore-chief-of-sis-29-november-2024
- For those who don’t know – the needed research will include words like “Nuland”, “5 billion”, “cookie”, “Maidan”, and “intercepted phone call with Ambassador”.