An Unforced Error On Ukraine?

pjmedia.com

In an administration that came hot out of the gate sounding and acting like Churchill in lone defense of Western civilization, there is one blind spot where they're sounding more like Chamberlain, and that's in regards to Ukraine. In this administration's attempt to force a square peace treaty into a round hole, they're committing a possible unforced error that will leave America and the West in a worse position down the road.

I understand that conservatives are deeply divided on this issue. Before I lay out my case, allow me to make a few points that I think both pro-Ukraine conservatives and anti-Ukraine conservatives can agree on:

Putin started this war as a direct result of the unabashed weakness of the Biden administration. Biden's unconditional surrender to the Taliban, coupled with his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, convinced Putin that he had nothing to fear from invading Ukraine.

The unnecessary length of this war is also the direct consequence of the Biden administration. Yes, we've been funding Ukraine with billions in weaponry, but this funding has been conditional upon Ukraine following restrictive rules of engagement designed not to "provoke" Russia. Biden has given Ukraine just enough slack of the leash to not lose, but never enough to actually win.

The concerns of the European Union should not factor into anyone's calculations. They've long ago relinquished their right, both morally and practically, to be heard or respected in any forum involving the safeguarding of Western values. If the Russians want Europe, they can have it. Better them than Syrian "refugees."

I personally don't care what Zelensky's approval rating is, be it the 57% he claims or the 4% Trump claims. I'm not interested in the mean, hurtful things that they say about each other. It's irrelevant to the bigger picture.

The actual degree is unknown, but reports of widespread corruption and embezzlement within the Ukrainian government, using our aid money to enrich top-tier officials, is unacceptable and must stop immediately. Any future aid should be contingent upon this condition.

There must also be a complete change of attitude on the part of the Ukrainian government, as Matt Margolis has illustrated here. Too often, American generosity has been met not with gratitude, but with thankless demands for more, to the point that even Democrats tire of it (note to Democrats: this is how most of the country feels about handouts to illegals).

But having said that, allow me to make an argument that it still serves American interests to fund Ukraine's defense, or rather, Russia's quagmire. For the moment, forget the moral arguments and focus solely on the cynically pragmatic. Russia is one of the top three most serious external threats to the United States (the other two being China and Iran). Putin's fifth column sycophants here in America will deny this, but this is more the hallucinogenic aftermath of too much Carlson Kool-Aid than it is a sober geopolitical assessment.

The Russian military humiliations during the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the First World War cemented the idea among Russian nationalists not only that Russia was being wrongly denied its proper place at the big boy table, but that they were constantly surrounded by conspiring enemies intent on holding them down.

Putin is a walking manifestation of this blame-shifting and paranoia. He is an old-school Russian chauvinist and an ex-KGB communist who dogmatically believes in the superiority of Russian culture above that of a decadent and undeserving West. He radiates arrogance and resentment. In 2005, he lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union and all its horrors as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." Certainly, the specter of so many former "republics" under Soviet tutelage fleeing into the open arms of the capitalist West the first chance they got must have stoked his long-burning hatreds.

For anyone paying attention, it's abundantly clear that Putin's overriding goal is the reestablishment of the Russian Empire. Every foreign policy move he makes serves this goal. Since taking power in 2000, the borders of this reconfiguring empire have done nothing but expand, either territorially or influentially, from neighboring countries such as Georgia and Ukraine to puppet dictators in Syria and sub-Saharan Africa.

Putin's authoritarianism is pure instinct, and he has a natural knack for it. He plays this four-dimensional chess game in his sleep while most American presidents struggle with the rudiments of checkers. Trump is the only one of these presidents who understands The Game enough to play Putin, but he's going to find out that Putin is not someone who can be pushed around with tariff threats, as Trudeau and Sheinbaum were.

This is partly because Trump and Putin have different ideas of what success entails. Trump believes that a nation is made stronger by economic prosperity and human rights, and he is correct. Putin believes a nation is made stronger by territorial expansion and the overwhelming domination of smaller neighbors, and he would have been correct three centuries ago. This is Putin's Achilles' Heel, causing him to be his own worst roadblock on the path to unleashing the potential greatness of his country.

It was this ideological blind spot that led Putin to make his unforced error, i.e. the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. What was supposed to be an easy annexation was first halted, then reversed in a series of stunning Ukrainian counteroffensives. The grinding, Ypres-style warfare that the conflict has devolved into has inadvertently exposed the Russian military as an ossified, sclerotic shell of its former self. The Russian military persists in Ukraine not because of brilliant generalship or soldierly courage, but by the sole fact that Russia has a near endless supply of young men to feed into the grinder.

As Napoleon said, don't interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.

But that's exactly what we're doing. We're giving Putin an easy out when we should be funding the continual degradation of his country's power and influence. It's called war by proxy, and to those who shriek that this is some sort of Cheneyesque neocon plot, I'll remind you that we fought the entire Cold War against the Soviet Union by proxy. They funded and supplied arms to fight us in Vietnam. We funded and supplied arms to fight them in Afghanistan. They installed and propped up some real bastards in Cuba, Hungary, Mozambique, and elsewhere. And we installed and propped up some real bastards (far worse than Zelensky) in Chile, Indonesia, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. It was messy and it was bloody, but never do we hear any criticism from the neo-isolationists against President Reagan for using proxy wars and increased military spending to singlehandedly bring down the Evil Empire.

So my argument is that funding Ukraine is worth the investment in the dividends of a weakened and wounded nuclear superpower whose dictator is anathema to every value we stand for. To support this doesn't make one a "globalist" or a "neocon" any more than opposing this makes one a "Putin puppet."

And I readily concede that there are very real and persuasive arguments for ending this support. These were laid out clearly and concisely by Vice President (and, one hopes, 2028 president-elect) Vance in a post on X, which reads:

"Number one, while our Western European allies' security has benefitted greatly from the generosity of the United States, they pursue domestic policies (on migration and censorship) that offend the sensibilities of most Americans and defense policies that assume continued over-reliance.

Number two, Russians have a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons in Ukraine, and that advantage will persist regardless of further Western aid packages. Again, the aid is *currently* flowing.

Number three, the United States retains substantial leverage over both parties to the conflict.

Number four, ending the conflict requires talking to the people involved in starting it and maintaining it.

Number five, the conflict has placed - and continues to place - stress on tools of American statecraft, from military stockpiles to sanctions (and so much else). We believe the continued conflict is bad for Russia, bad for Ukraine, and bad for Europe. But most importantly, it is bad for the United States."

His first, second, and fourth points are spot on. But his third point...we retain "substantial leverage" over Russia? Really? What stick do we have that can possibly budge Putin? Tariffs on Russian mackerel? Travel bans on a few more Russian oligarchs? Putin has sent nearly one million Russians to their deaths in his war, and every night he sleeps like a baby. He'd sacrifice another million tomorrow morning and then calmly eat his breakfast kasha without a second thought.

The only thing that might make Putin see reason would be to threaten a massive increase in military supply to Ukraine, with the caveat that the leash is off, and Ukraine can strike anywhere inside Russia it pleases. But if that's the leverage we're using behind the scenes, why would we remove NATO membership as a bargaining chip before negotiations even begin?

You'll notice that Putin doesn't make bombastic statements such as, "If I wasn't involved, they wouldn't be talking to each other. I'm the only reason they're talking." Putin just does, without finding it necessary to say much. And he always wins. To the extent he's "negotiating" with us, it's simply a tactic to flatter and gain position. Like Islamic terrorists, Putin uses every truce as a stepping stone to the next invasion.

And the terms we're forcing include America being granted 50% ownership of Ukraine's rare earth minerals. So not only will Putin be rewarded for his behavior by keeping every inch of stolen Ukrainian land; what's left over for the Ukrainians will be, for all intents and purposes, becoming an economic colony of the United States? This sounds less like a good faith peace deal and more like Poland being divided up among stronger superpowers.

Finally, it must be noted that most Congressional Republicans support the continued funding of Ukraine. Whether you agree with them or not, Trump will need to take this support into consideration. Would he veto a budget bill that included continued funding and open up a breach in Republican solidarity during a time when we need it the most? Is this a hill worth dying on? Putin, on the other hand, isn't burdened with such democratic niceties.

Putin has outlasted Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump 45, Biden, and, unless old age claims him, will still be there when Trump 47's term ends. Whatever influence Trump has over Putin is gone the day Trump leaves office, along with whatever deal we secure with him now. Putin wants Ukraine. Trump wants credit for a piece of paper from Putin promising to leave Ukraine alone. They might both end up getting their wish.

It is in this desire to make peace just for the sake of saying you were able to make peace that I fear Trump is walking into a Chamberlainian blunder. He made the same mistake with Israel when he strong-armed them into a cease fire with Hamas last month. He corrected this error with his about-face bombshell that Gazans be resettled in Arab countries, which currently has Israel's enemies tripping over each other in panicked scrambling. My hope is that Trump sees Putin for what he is, and has some behind-the-scenes plan to give him the same open-handed pimp slap that he just gave the Arabs.

I understand there is a tiny segment of readers who have already vomited on their keyboards at my suggestion that the Trump administration might possibly be taking the wrong approach on anything ever. That someone could agree with Trump on 999 issues and disagree with him on 1 is simply confirmation to these people of the most dastardly betrayal, to be retorted to with all caps blathering about neocons and endless wars.

But here's the problem, kid. You don't get to set the litmus test for what determines a conservative. Open minded and rational conservatives can disagree on not only a whole host of issues, but also on what the best approaches are to deal with the issues we do agree on. If you're looking for lockstep conformity without question, go join the Democrats.

Neither the rigid neocon position nor the rigid neo-isolationist position is correct. Our power and wealth are only deterrents if we're willing to use them. Unlike with the neocons, they must be used wisely and sparingly. The wars we support, both our wars and proxy wars, must be carefully administered. Our goals must be clear, our strategies flexible, and our limits predetermined. But we can't afford to not play The Game. As the Cuban missile crisis, the Arab oil embargo, Mexican drug cartels, September 11, Tren de Aragua, and Chinese espionage have proven, the problems our neo-isolationists dismiss as "over there" metastasize dangerously into problems "over here."

Trump has proven more than willing to use the leverage of American power to effect better outcomes for us. Let's hope he uses that leverage not just against Zelensky, but against Putin as well, and that Vance's hinting of the existence of such leverage is something substantial. An unearthed picture of a shirtless Putin on horseback with a trouserless Alexander Vindman riding pillion would be a good start. But we'll see.

I've doubted the logic of some of Trump's previous actions, and more often than not I'm proven wrong. I hope that's the case here.