War re Ukraine: Thread

[grarpamp]

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-gathering-storm/

The Gathering Storm

America’s self-inflicted trouble in Ukraine aggravates our dangerous
trouble at home...

The crisis of American national power has begun. America’s economy is
tipping over, and Western financial markets are quietly panicking.
Imperiled by rising interest rates, mortgage-backed securities and
U.S. Treasuries are losing their value. The market’s proverbial
“vibes”—feelings, emotions, beliefs, and psychological
penchants—suggest a dark turn is underway inside the American economy.

American national power is measured as much by American military
capability as by economic potential and performance. The growing
realization that American and European military-industrial capacity
cannot keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment is
an ominous signal to send during a proxy war that Washington insists
its Ukrainian surrogate is winning.

Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have
successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal
expenditure of Russian lives and resources. While Russia’s
implementation of attrition warfare worked brilliantly, Russia
mobilized its reserves of men and equipment to field a force that is
several magnitudes larger and significantly more lethal than it was a
year ago.

Russia’s massive arsenal of artillery systems including rockets,
missiles, and drones linked to overhead surveillance platforms
converted Ukrainian soldiers fighting to retain the northern edge of
the Donbas into pop-up targets. How many Ukrainian soldiers have died
is unknown, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000
Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while
another estimates about 250,000.

Given the glaring weakness of NATO members’ ground, air, and air
defense forces, an unwanted war with Russia could easily bring
hundreds of thousands of Russian Troops to the Polish border, NATO’s
Eastern Frontier. This is not an outcome Washington promised its
European allies, but it’s now a real possibility.

In contrast to the Soviet Union’s hamfisted and ideologically driven
foreign policymaking and execution, contemporary Russia has skillfully
cultivated support for its cause in Latin America, Africa, the Middle
East, and South Asia. The fact that the West’s economic sanctions
damaged the U.S. and European economies while turning the Russian
ruble into one of the international system’s strongest currencies has
hardly enhanced Washington’s global standing.

Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a
strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and
Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like
India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America. The global economic
implications for the emerging Russo-Chinese axis and their planned
industrial revolution for some 3.9 billion people in the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) are profound.

In sum, Washington’s military strategy to weaken, isolate, or even
destroy Russia is a colossal failure and the failure puts Washington’s
proxy war with Russia on a truly dangerous path. To press on,
undeterred in the face of Ukraine’s descent into oblivion, ignores
three metastasizing threats: 1. Persistently high inflation and rising
interest rates that signal economic weakness. (The first American bank
failure since 2020 is a reminder of U.S. financial fragility.) 2. The
threat to stability and prosperity inside European societies already
reeling from several waves of unwanted refugees/migrants. 3. The
threat of a wider European war.

Inside presidential administrations, there are always competing
factions urging the president to adopt a particular course of action.
Observers on the outside seldom know with certainty which faction
exerts the most influence, but there are figures in the Biden
administration seeking an off-ramp from involvement in Ukraine. Even
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a rabid supporter of the proxy war
with Moscow, recognizes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s
demand that the West help him recapture Crimea is a red line for Putin
that might lead to a dramatic escalation from Moscow.

Backing down from the Biden administration’s malignant and asinine
demands for a humiliating Russian withdrawal from eastern Ukraine
before peace talks can convene is a step Washington refuses to take.
Yet it must be taken. The higher interest rates rise, and the more
Washington spends at home and abroad to prosecute the war in Ukraine,
the closer American society moves toward internal political and social
turmoil. These are dangerous conditions for any republic.

>From all the wreckage and confusion of the last two years, there
emerges one undeniable truth. Most Americans are right to be
distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. President Biden
comes across as a cardboard cut-out, a stand-in for ideological
fanatics in his administration, people that see executive power as the
means to silence political opposition and retain permanent control of
the federal government.

Americans are not fools. They know that members of Congress flagrantly
trade stocks based on inside information, creating conflicts of
interest that would land most citizens in jail. They also know that
since 1965 Washington led them into a series of failed military
interventions that severely weakened American political, economic, and
military power.

Far too many Americans believe they have had no real national
leadership since January 21, 2021. It is high time the Biden
administration found an off-ramp designed to extricate Washington,
D.C., from its proxy Ukrainian war against Russia. It will not be
easy. Liberal internationalism or, in its modern guise, “moralizing
globalism,” makes prudent diplomacy arduous, but now is the time. In
Eastern Europe, the spring rains present both Russian and Ukrainian
ground forces with a sea of mud that severely impedes movement. But
the Russian High Command is preparing to ensure that when the ground
dries and Russian ground forces attack, the operations will achieve an
unambiguous decision, making it clear that Washington and its
supporters have no chance to rescue the dying regime in Kiev. From
then on, negotiations will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.