T. Belman. The West should cut its losses, pronto, and sue for peace. They should accept that Crimea and the four provinces which have been annexed to Russia are no longer part of Ukraine and that Ukraine is to be demilitarized and de-nazified. Thus Ukraine will be saved and will keep Odessa with its access to the Black Sea.
Many critics have questioned whether the territorial integrity of that Ukraine is really a US national interest, let alone the most important thing going on in the world.
By Jonathan S. Tobin, ISRAEL HAYOM 28.2.23
The law of unintended consequences is an unforgiving master to those who specialize in predicting the course of international relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 surprised most international observers and the Biden administration. Not many, if any, in the ranks of veteran diplomats, think-tank denizens and journalists who make up the foreign policy establishment thought that the illegal act of aggression would turn into an increasingly bloody stalemate into which much of the rest of the world would be drawn.
The question now facing these supposedly smart people is what will be the implications of a decision on the part of the United States and its European allies to escalate the already destructive war by giving the Ukrainians tanks, jets, and any other high-tech armaments they want in order to give them a chance to achieve the complete defeat of the nuclear power with which they are locked in combat. Another factor that must be taken into account is the increasing likelihood that China will think it is in its interests to seek to balance the massive American commitment to Ukraine. Beijing may be coming to the conclusion that it is necessary for it to come to the aid of its ally in Moscow by sending arms that will ensure that the fighting will continue indefinitely.
But another issue is at play: What is the effect of this great power proxy war on Iran?
With the Biden administration treating support for Ukraine as its foreign policy and security priority, many of its critics have questioned whether the territorial integrity of that country is really a US national interest, let alone the most important thing going on in the world. That decision is defended as the only way to prevent further Russian acts of aggression. It’s also seen as a way to deter China, which remains America’s most potent potential enemy. But it’s unclear whether the laser focus on Ukraine and the stripping of US armed forces of armaments in order to feed Kyiv’s insatiable demand for supplies to keep fighting Russia – with no serious effort underway to increase military spending or to start a new American arms buildup – is actually undermining American efforts to deter China.
Even less attention is being paid to whether one of the unintended consequences of the West’s obsession with Ukraine is the help it may provide to Iran.
Though the despotic regime in Tehran is beset by a protest movement that it hasn’t been able to completely suppress, it, too, has become part of the drama in Ukraine by supplying Moscow with drones and the personnel to train its forces to use them. More than that, it has apparently become even more closely allied with Putin after a decade in which Russia played a largely equivocal role in the world’s efforts to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon – sometimes aiding the theocratic regime and supplying it with weaponry, and sometimes seeking to restrain it.
Even in Syria, where the two countries were allies in a joint war to preserve the barbarous regime of President Bashar Assad, the Russians played both ends against the middle.
Russia used the horrendous civil war in that country to reassert its status as a Middle Eastern power after former President Barack Obama famously punted on his “red line” threat to punish Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people and deputized Putin to deal with the problem. That enabled Russia to further establish itself in Syria with air and naval bases that they used to aid Assad and the Iranians in their bloody efforts to suppress the rebels. But Moscow also was careful not to let the Iranians have a free hand there, signaling their acquiescence to Israel’s repeated airstrikes on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria.
Some may see Iran’s decision to throw in its lot with Russia as the act of a desperate regime on the wrong side of history, as well as a mistake that will result in it becoming further isolated and ultimately weakened. That would be a possible development since Iran’s push for regional hegemony in the Middle East via its terrorist auxiliaries and its long-term effort to attain nuclear status make it a uniquely dangerous and destabilizing force in the world, not to mention an existential threat to Israel.
However, the scenario by which Iran loses as a result of its growing ties with Russia requires a belief that the escalating Western involvement in Ukraine will lead to Russia’s complete defeat and collapse, in addition to striking a blow to China’s ability to exercise its increasingly potent influence on the world stage.
Those who are pushing for America to go all in on an effort not merely to defend Ukraine’s right to self-determination, but to defeat Russia and topple Putin, believe they are trying to make the world a safer and better place. Still, they need to take into consideration the very real possibility that this massive spending and arms-aid project will fail to accomplish those goals. And that the ratcheting up of the fighting will both needlessly worsen the humanitarian disaster that Putin unleashed and create an even bloodier stalemate that will make Russia’s allies stronger.
Rather than falling, as some thought would happen when the protests began last fall, the Iranian regime is still in place and now receiving high-profile support from China, an emerging superpower that the United States is still not truly taking seriously or willing to stand up to, as the recent farce with Beijing’s spy balloons demonstrated.
The international community’s focus on aiding Ukraine, treating its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the second coming of Winston Churchill and embracing the cause of driving the Russians out not just of all territory they seized last year but to restore the borders of the country to what they were in 2014 before Putin took parts of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, has pushed every other foreign policy issue to the margins in the last 12 months.
Prior to the invasion, President Joe Biden’s foreign policy priority was his effort to entice Iran to re-enter the nuclear deal that his old boss had struck with Tehran in 2015. His diplomatic team offered terms that would have created an even weaker pact that – rather than stopping Iran’s nuclear quest – would have guaranteed its eventual manufacturing of a weapon. But sensing Biden’s weakness (a factor that also emboldened Putin to launch his invasion) demonstrated in his disgraceful retreat from Afghanistan, the Iranians stonewalled him.
With the Iranians aiding the Russians, even Biden knows that there will be no new nuclear deal with Iran. And while the administration understands that Tehran is closer than ever to being able to build a bomb, officials like CIA director William Burns remain unprepared to fully acknowledge the threat or talk tough about it, let alone join the Israelis in posing a credible military threat to ensure that such a nightmare scenario never comes to pass.
Biden spent the week of the one-year anniversary of the war patting himself on the back for rallying the West behind Ukraine and putting Zelenskyy in a position to at least avoid defeat, if not outright win the war. That position has considerable support in his party, most of whose members have finally found a war they can love because they identify Ukraine with their hate for former President Donald Trump and have become convinced that Putin is not just a terrible and dangerous dictator, but another Adolf Hitler. It’s also supported by the Republican Party’s Washington establishment that sees the conflict through the lens of outdated Cold War or Bush-era “War on Terror” perspectives.
What they are not taking into account is the very real possibility that escalating the war in Ukraine will have troubling unintended consequences that will allow Iran, as well as China, to emerge from this disaster in an even stronger position than they were a year ago.
Biden could choose to push for a compromise solution that, while falling short of Zelenskyy’s ambitions, will mean Ukrainian independence, and end the suffering and devastation visited on his country. By choosing instead to back the Ukrainian belief in “victory” over Russia, he is not just risking an Armageddon World War III scenario with a nuclear power that has no intention of being toppled or defeated; by choosing to continue a war whose outcome he can’t control, he’s also laying the foundations for an endless and unwinnable conflict that will increase Beijing’s influence in Russia. That might also enable Iran to survive its current domestic trouble and, with even more help from a Chinese regime eager to weaken the West and its friends, become even more powerful in the Middle East.
The anniversary of the war in Ukraine is a moment when all decent people should be focused on ending the suffering there, not just venting their outrage at Putin. But the longer the war continues without a decisive result, powers like China and Iran will move to fill certain vacuums and up their ante as they seek to profit from the spoils.
Well-meaning Americans should ponder the ramifications of their crush on Zelenskyy and a belief that this is a “good war” that should be relentlessly fought to ensure Russia’s collapse, no matter how high the price for that might be. Just as a stronger Iran was an unintended consequence of America’s invasion of Iraq, the same might be the result of Washington’s blind commitment to a forever war in Ukraine. US leaders need to ask themselves if they are thinking seriously about whether this policy will not only not fail to accomplish those goals, but make the world a more dangerous place in which Putin will survive, while China and Iran grow more powerful.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
@Michael
None of what you wrote is wrong except that it is irrelevant to what I wrote.
was an obvious reference to the pretext of your comment
nothing more.
Furthermore, the problem with your suggestion that the Russians would sweep across all of Europe in some redo of a Soviet fantasy is that Russia is only currently sweeping across Ukraine (to the extent in which they have) is because they could not find someone with whom to negotiate to avoid war. Recall that the only reason why Russia absorbed the 4 Ukrainian provinces is because they couldn’t find someone to negotiate an end to the war, as was proven at Istanbul and which Bennett confirmed as accurate. In fact the only reason why Russia is still at war, moving closer to Iran, moving closer to China, and not negotiating with Washington, is all because they can’t find anyone in Washington with whom to negotiate an end to this conflict, which has always had the potential of being easily avoided on reasonable terms, always had the potential of being ended on reasonable terms, and still has the potential of being settled without direct confrontations between Russia and the US but only upon reasonable terms, with someone who is earnestly interested in seeking an end to this conflict and not Russia’s defeat – the latter position being the US stance since they refused to end the Cold War even after Russia ended it for them.
Should the US pull out, as was the context of your question, the Russians would alternatively find plenty of support in both Ukraine and Europe to negotiate an end to this conflict which is only continuing due to American intransigence to stop widening it to the disadvantage of Europe and more specifically Ukraine.
Also, the context of Russia being the ever expanding empire building Stalinist behemoth which was the Soviet Union is quite an historic anachronism, as there is far more support, I would suggest, for that historical comparison to be charged against NATO in its post Soviet search for a reason to exist than it does of Russia in the same period.
But do lend us your skills of historical analysis to prove this statement false.
Peloni,
False. Richard Nixon was elected on an antiwar platform, at near our peak deployment of around 500,000 troops. I can be reasonably sure of this, because I enlisted in the US Army shortly after his inauguration. Only a few months after I enlisted, the US government came out with the lottery system as it steadily reduced US troop strength in country. Two years later, it began pay increases to prepare for an all-volunteer army. Late in 1971, we drastically reduced our direct combat involvement, all the while seeking peace talks in Paris. The American delegation rented rooms month-to-month, while the North Vietnamese took out a long-term lease. When it became obvious that the Communists were not serious about ending the war, Nixon initiated an unprecedented bombing campaign against them to force them to the table. They then came to the table, agreeing to a cease fire — which they broke two years later, pouring a massive surge into the South. The US humiliation caused by that retreat led to a quick succession of governments to fall to the Communists in Cambodia, Laos, several African states, and the collapse of the Portugese empire.
@Ted
And the MIC, but otherwise quite correct.
Even America, if not especially America, would be greatly improve for having finally put to rest her voracious appetite of looking for monsters to slay when there is no reason, right or rationale to do so. Such an action as breaking the cycle of endless wars and constant conflicts would truly serve to Make America Great Again, but then again, it would also require the leadership of someone interested in actually seeing such a reality restored to the world, and sadly, for this to occur, I suspect we will have to await the return of Trump.
20% of Ukraine is a small price to pay for peace. Part of the peace would mean that NATO would no longer have its sites on Russia. Then Europe if not the US also, could restores ties to Russia. Russia would have no reason to align with China or Iran. The NWO would suffer a major hit. The further result will be that we would then have a multi-polar world competing economically for trade and business. American penchant for coups would be greatly reduced also. Such an outcome will be a win-win for everyone except NATO and the WEF.
@Michael
It might be useful to consider how the US has influenced this war, to guess what the effect might be should they pull a Saigon or Afganistan. Recall that the US were fully behind the push for war before it began, the US opposed any meaningful steps which might put an end to the war after it started. The US even blew up an allied nation’s energy infrastructure to help muster and maintain European support for the war as it was causing European govts to fall and economies to fail. Also, without the US funding the full cost of the butchery in Ukraine, it would leave Ukraine to finance the continuation of the war on their own, and recall that before the US overthrew the country, Ukraine couldn’t even muster an army of 6K men, though they had a budget supporting a force of over 100K – back when they had a population of 40+ million, and the mineral rich eastern provinces, and the armed forces did not need to fear being used as cannon fodder to fight a war which the nation did not want and which the nation can not win.
Recall also that the Ukrainian power elites, the barons and the oligarchs, have no interest in doing anything which does not payout solid cash or greater power. Right now, the war fulfills both of these tasks, but only due to the American largess coming directly from the US and indirectly from the US-leaching NATO members. Should that flow of US dollars and US support come to an abrupt end, these oligarchs and barons, including the Fop in a green shirt, will read the tea leaves and flea for their lives to their villas in Florida and elsewhere, leaving their pathetic public to fend for itself.
Hence, should the US cut and run, I would suggest that Ukraine would fold like a deck of cards for a want of cash to pay the barons, to fund the govt, and to feed and arm the army. After all, they don’t call it a proxy war for nothing.
So, yes, I, for one, do believe that America cutting and running would bring peace, and quite quickly, actually. Many in Ukraine will feel cheated and betrayed and may go looking for an enemy from within to target for their own disheartened losses and ineptitude, perhaps presenting another parallel to WWI, but there will be peace, nonetheless.
Hi, Ted. You said,
I notice that lately, “The West” (i.e. the Military Industrial Complex — which actually comes in a n “East” version as well) hasn’t been losing anything! To the contrary, business is booming! and the situation on the ground couldn’t be better for them: a perfect stalemate:
https://liveuamap.com/
A fellow had a vision the other day, in which there was some high-level strategic briefing going on; but behind the curtain, Obama was sitting at his desk and orchestrating everything. On his desk were two phones: a blue-and-yellow one to someone in the Ukraine, and a blue one with the WEF logo on it. Those probably led to Obama’s banker and his boss, respectively. I suspect the people on the other ends of those phones had lines to THEIR bosses and bankers as well; but that wasn’t part of the vision.
So, who is the “Pronto” person who will send Nuland, Blinken and Sullivan to the gallows? Raphael forgot about The Biden Crime Family, Obama and the Shadow Cabinet, Wray, and a cast of thousands!
Russia, meanwhile, is busy cutting deals with Iran. At last check, the latter were a matter of a few weeks away from enrichment to full weapons grade uranium. China, meanwhile, has been cuddling ever closer to Putin, and plans to supply him with highly lethal weapons in, say, a couple of months or so, at the same time it plans to attack Taiwan.
If the US suddenly cuts and runs from the Ukraine, does anyone here suppose that will bring peace to the world? We made a practice run of it in Afghanistan: Some run! Some peace!
https://imgs.search.brave.com/cNlyZlO6nN_j3RI4KPjOmXI_MOfbOjeW7gDoAabE_HU/rs:fit:370:412:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cu/dGhld3JhcC5jb20v/d3AtY29udGVudC91/cGxvYWRzLzIwMjAv/MDIvQmlkZW4tTWFo/ZXItRm9ycmVzdC1H/dW1wLmpwZw
This, (thanks Ted), is the only realistic answer, but Ukraine and the west better move quick or they will lose even more. We might also hope that all those who conceived of, and participated in this proxy war, especially the “gang of four”, Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan, Burns, are held to account, Nuremberg style.