My Opinion

A friend implores, “What with all your whining and criticism about this Ukraine war, who do you think should win and why?” My disaccord about US support for Ukraine is not driven by a blanket anti-war ethic on my part. Situations differ. For instance, I root for total Israeli military victory. My Ukraine complaint is muddled even in my own head. I find it hard to be succinct and a war deserves better than to be trivialized by succinct. But OK, succinct — the Ukrainian war best end soon through negotiation, maybe before Donald Trump is inaugurated. There is no good reason for a rump-Ukraine to be part of NATO or to get any rebuilding aid from us, and no imperative that the Russians give back any of the land they’ve conquered and currently control. What follows is a slightly longer explanation sorted into seven categories of anxiety. The seven are not in any particular sequence and they overlap a lot. Anyhow, here they are.

One – Immense opportunity costs. Sending so many weapons and so much money in the direction of the Ukraine war, whether actually spent there or not, has obviously weakened our government’s capacity (regardless of its intentions, which might have been nil) to respond to domestic disaster, to close off illegal immigration, to strengthen naval readiness in support of Taiwan, etc. The Ukraine war is a hole into which we have been stupidly pouring national capacity. Maybe it has not been stupidity, maybe it has been evil subversive design.

Two – Blowing the most obvious geostrategic value. PoliSciers still like talking about how there’s no longer a bipolar world, that it is a multipolar world. That was mildly interesting stuff in 1994. For decades since there have been three top-tier countries with independence of decision-making and destructive nuclear power sufficient to cause global Armageddon. A tri-polar set up. It has been plenty obvious that the most dangerous of the three to US national security and to the success of our constitutional way of life has been Communist China. It has been correspondingly obvious that it behooves us to keep the Russians off the Chinese side of the teeter totter. If we were to identify one job for those dilettantes and debutants who somehow get to play with America’s national strategy apparatus, it would be to not cause the Russians and the Chinese to gang up on us. Well, they blew it.

Three – Poor military strategy-making – The Ukrainians have what the progressives used to call ‘agency.’ This means that they control much of the military decision-making on the ground; they are not just subordinates of American and NATO patrons. But regardless of whether the operational decisions are autochthonous or obedient, they have not been great. Indeed, Ukrainian soldiers have shown a great deal of tenacity and competence in their defensive fight during the past year or so. That’s true, but operational and strategic decisions (the offensive toward Tokmak, the offensive toward Kursk, the plan of field fortifications, use of key weapons for momentary media advantage, dooming troops in indefensible positions rather than ordering timely withdrawals) have not been good. It’s looked pretty sorry.

Four — Diseased purpose. The strong case to be made that the Democrat Party’s insistence on the moral need for our resolute efforts in favor of the Ukrainian regime is driven by a criminal logic to maintain impunity. There is plenty of evidence of corruption schemes involving senior members of that party and their families.  Add to that ugly thought the war’s profitability for some corporations which, due to the discrete nature of ‘national security’ transactions, have been able to kickback great sums of money into the party coffers. ‘War economy’ is a term leftists used to decry.

Five – Abusive sanctimony. All this moral preening about guarding democracy and fighting against dictatorship and international aggression is annoying as hell. Is hell. We hear Kamala, for instance, repeating the line “unprovoked invasion by the Russians.” That’s a tell. It was provoked. Zelensky is no better a person than Putin. A Ukrainian is culturally no less likely to be corrupt than a Russian. Ukraine is not a democracy or even close. Stop. All the unctuousness is just cover for the difficulty in being able to express a reasonable strategic goal. Might it be immoral to promote and fuel a war that brings death  to the families of hundreds of thousands of young men for a dubious chance of having achieved anything? Our leaders don’t want the question even asked. Is it OK morally to constantly accuse the other side of human rights and laws of war violations while not even allowing a conversation about the log in our eye?

Six – Execrable strategy makers. I’m not sure who actually is making US strategy these days. Names like Nuland, Rice, Powers and Jarett are suspect. Maybe other feminal names, like Blinken or Austin, are in the mix. I just don’t know. Whoever they are, I do not trust them. I have contempt for them. If they advise we should keep fighting the war in Ukraine, then my presumption has to be that we get out. The whole lot should be taken over to the castle window where we can better see their plans.

Seven – Unrelenting guile. In addition to all the haughty shaming, we have to put up with the constant flow of propaganda instead of news. Fortunately, there exists a community of ‘mappers’ that have been following the war and who keep archives of their past expressions about conditions on the ground. (That community would not exist if the Democrats could better control social media and the narrative.) We cannot trust our government because it insists it somehow has a right and duty to lie to us constantly. The government destroys trust itself with this kind of thing.

And there it is. Again, the above categories are in no order of importance, and they meld seamlessly one with another. I’m not rooting for the Russians, but I refuse to be shamed into opining that we should expend any treasure or emotion on Ukrainian sovereignty. There is just too much else.