Category Archives: WW3 Watch

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World War III Watch: Warmongers gotta warmonger!

We have previously reported on Bill Kristol, the neoconservative founder and later destroyer of The Weekly Standard, because as a dedicated #NeverTrumper he couldn’t stand to allow any support of Donald Trump in a magazine marketed to conservatives and Republicans. Mr Kristol and the other neocons, such as Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin, all love wars and want the United States to participate in them. Today’s left have managed to become so seduced by President Biden’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia than even the very much not-a-neocon Amanda Marcotte was supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, albeit for different reasons.

I’ll admit the shameful truth: I follow Mr Kristol in Twitter, not because I like or even respect his views, but because he does clue me into some of his silliness. I’m not a subscriber to The Atlantic, and wouldn’t have seen this article, had Mr Kristol not retweeted Adrienne LaFrance’s promotion of it.

The Case for the Total Liberation of Ukraine

Russia must be expelled from all of Ukraine’s territory—including Crimea.

By Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg | Monday, May 1, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In March 1774, Prince Grigory Potemkin, the favorite general and sometime lover of Catherine the Great, took control of the anarchic southern frontier of her empire, a region previously ruled by the Mongol Khans, the Cossack hosts, and the Ottoman Turks, among others. As viceroy, Potemkin waged war and founded cities, among them Kherson, the first home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In 1783, he annexed Crimea and became an avatar of imperial glory. To Vladimir Putin in particular, Potemkin is the Russian nationalist who subdued territory now impudently and illegitimately claimed by Ukraine, a nation that Putin believes does not exist.

Oh, I’m pretty sure that Vladimir Vladimirovich believes that Ukraine exists now, and that he’s not particularly happy about it.

There follows several paragraphs — the magazine is given to longer articles — on the history of Prince Potemkin and the fight over Kherson, before we get to the meat of the authors’ advocacy.

When we visited again a few weeks ago, the lights were on, the restaurants were open, and the trains ran on predictable schedules. A coffee shop in the station was serving oat-milk lattes. Bucha is a construction site, with a brand-new hardware store for anyone repairing war damage themselves. A conversation with Zelensky is now a more formal affair, with simultaneous translation, a videographer, and an array of English-speaking aides in attendance. Zelensky himself spoke English much of the time—he has had, he said, a lot more practice. But behind the more polished presentation, the tension and uncertainty persist, fueled by the sense that we are once again at a turning point, once again at a moment when key decisions will be made, in Kyiv, of course, but especially in Washington.

“Especially in Washington.” Not in Warsaw, or Berlin, not in nations much closer to Ukraine, but across all of Europe and the broad Atlantic Ocean.

For although the war is not lost, it is also not won. Kherson is free, but it is under constant attack. Kyiv’s restaurants are open, but refugees have not yet returned home. Russia’s winter offensive has petered out, but as of this writing, in mid-April, it is unclear when Ukraine’s summer offensive will begin. Until it begins, or rather, until it ends, negotiations—about the future of Ukraine and its borders, Ukraine’s relationship to Russia and to Europe, the final status of the Crimean Peninsula—cannot begin either. Right now Putin still seems to believe that a long, drawn-out war of attrition will eventually bring him back his empire: Ukraine’s feckless Western allies will grow tired and give up; maybe Donald Trump will win reelection and align with the Kremlin; Ukraine will retreat; Ukrainians will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of Russian soldiers, however poorly armed and trained they may be.

Uniquely, the United States has the power to determine how, and how quickly, the war of attrition turns into something quite different. The Ukrainian defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, spoke with us about the “Ramstein Club,” named after the American air base in Germany where the group, which consists of the defense officials of 54 countries, first convened. Still, his most important relationship is with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (“we communicate very, very often”), and everyone knows that this club is organized by Americans, led by Americans, galvanized by Americans. Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, told us that Ukrainians now feel they are “strategic partners and friends” with America, something that might not have felt so true a few years ago, when Donald Trump was impeached on charges of seeking to extort Zelensky.

That’s two slams against former President Trump in two paragraphs; no wonder Mr Kristol liked the article. Unmentioned is the fact that Russia invaded and annexed part of Ukraine while Barack Hussein Obama was President, made no moves against Ukraine while Mr Trump was in office, and invaded the rest of that nation once Joe Biden was in the White House.

In our interview with Zelensky, which we conducted with the chair of The Atlantic’s board of directors, Laurene Powell Jobs, we asked him how he would justify this unusual relationship to a skeptical American: Why should Americans donate weapons to a distant war? He was clear in stating that the outcome of the war will determine the future of Europe. “If we will not have enough weapons,” he said, “that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us. If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova, and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus, and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. That’s three Baltic countries which are members of NATO. They will occupy them. Of course, [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don’t have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union.” The fate of NATO, of America’s position in Europe, indeed of America’s position in the world are all at stake.

And now we get to it: the old “domino theory.” But it ignores Russia’s experience in Ukraine, an experience that tells Russia that, even if it wins, conquers, and annexes all of Ukraine, that their army has to be rebuilt, their industries have to modernize, and their resources have to be better channeled. Even if Russia wins, the nation will not be in any shape to invade another of its neighbors for a long time. And President Putin is 70½ years old.

There follows many paragraphs about the necessity for a Ukrainian victory to validate freedom and democracy, to show that such can prevail against an authoritarian nation bent on conquest. That’s all very nice, but at some point it has to be asked: how can Ukraine win? President Zelensky keeps asking for more and more weapons, telling its allies that if we can just give them enough weapons, they can defeat a nation with thrice its manpower, in a war that is being fought not in Russia, but in Ukraine, a country in which its infrastructure is being slowly demolished. As we have previously noted, some have said that the only way Ukraine could win, in the way that President Zelensky and the authors of the Atlantic article want, “Russia must be expelled from all of Ukraine’s territory—including Crimea,” necessarily involves more than just NATO shipping weapons to Ukraine, but “direct NATO involvement in the war. Only the full, Desert Storm style of deployment of NATO and U.S. troops and weaponry could bring about a comprehensive Ukrainian victory in a short period of time.”

Really? Our “full, Desert Storm style of deployment of NATO and U.S. troops” involved 697,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. That would require calling up thousands and thousands of reservists, and we need to remember: it took the elder President Bush six months of diplomacy and work after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait to assemble and put in place the forces which drove Iraq out of Kuwait. We used staging areas Iraq could not touch to assemble the forces required, but staging areas which Russia could attack.

There is, of course, the small matter of engaging in a direct war with a nation which has a strategic nuclear arsenal, something just blithely waved aside as a serious consideration by the neoconservatives and warmongers. Yes, it would be absolutely great if Vladimir Putin was deposed and Russian forces driven completely out of Ukraine, but I have to ask: how many American cities are we willing to see burned in nuclear fire to see that accomplished? If the answer is greater than zero, I’d like to know what number Mr Kristol believes would be acceptable.

Because that is the risk here, and no one should doubt it. There are all sorts of rational reasons why Russia should not resort to nuclear weapons, even the ‘smallest’ ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons it has, to stave off defeat, but if defeat becomes eminent, who can promise that President Putin or Russian military commanders would base their actions solely on those rational reasons?

The number of American cities I’d be willing to see burned in nuclear fire to save Ukraine? Zero!

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WW3 Watch: Neocons who never served are calling an Iraq war veteran “chicken” because he doesn’t want the US involved in Ukraine

Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) served in the United States Navy, and his military record, via Wikipedia, is shown at the right. Not in combat himself, he nevertheless saw what happened to our soldiers and Marines in the meatgrinder that was Fallajuh.

Bill Kristol, born on December 23, 1952, is the son of Irving Kristol, who has been the managing editor of Commentary and founder of the magazine The Public Interest, “and was described by Jonah Goldberg as the ‘godfather of neoconservatism.’” A son of privilege, Mr Kristol was educated in a tony private school before matriculating to Harvard. In and around government for much of his career, and the author, with Lawrence Kaplan, wrote The War Over Iraq: America’s Mission and Saddam’s Tyranny, which Amazon describes as:

(T)o understand why we must fight Saddam, the authors assert, it is necessary to go beyond the details of his weapons of mass destruction, his past genocidal actions against Iran and his own people, and the U.N. resolutions he has ignored. The explanation begins with how the dominant policy ideas of the last decade–Clintonian liberalism and Republican realpolitik–led American policymakers to turn a blind eye to the threat Iraq has posed for well over a decade. As Kristol and Kaplan make clear, the war over Iraq is in large part a war of competing ideas about America’s role in the world. The authors provide the first comprehensive explanation of the strategy of “preemption” guiding the Bush Administration in dealing with this crisis. They show that American foreign policy for the 21st century is being forged in the crucible of our response to Saddam. The war over Iraq will presumably be the end of Saddam Hussein. But it will be the beginning of a new era in American foreign policy. William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan are indispensable guides to the era that lies ahead.

One thing Mr Kristol did not do was ever serve in the military, though he has certainly been willing to send other people off to war. Continue reading →

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WW3 Watch: Plenty of good Americans are advocating sufficient NATO help for Ukraine for them to win the Russo-Ukrainian War

Patrick Frey, the Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney who runs the blog Patterico’s Pontifications, the site which inspired me to get into blogging, is a very strong supporter of Ukraine and NATO assistance to Ukraine in its war against the Russian invasion:

Garry Kasparov Speaks on Ukraine at UCLA

Filed under: General — Patterico | Thursday, March 9, 2023 | 8:21 AM PST

The other day I had the pleasure of attending the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA. It was given by Garry Kasparov and addressed authoritarianism in general, and Putin and Ukraine specifically. Also in attendance were the lovely Mrs. P. and Dana — not this Dana, of course — and her husband, as well as my old friend David A. (David and Dana’s husband are somewhat less lovely on the outside but very lovely on the inside.) I also saw Eugene Volokh and my old neighbor from Marina del Rey. Everybody wanted to be there.

I wanted to highlight two things Kasparov said that I thought were important.

I responded to Patterico’s original, in a rather long comment, which I wish to use here as well to make my position clear. I have edited my comment slightly, but you can see the original here.

Our esteemed host used a line that he has previously used to criticize my position: Continue reading →

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WWIII Watch: New York Times OpEd says only way for Ukraine to win quickly is for full NATO weapons and troops deployment

My good friend William Teach pointed me to an OpEd in The New York Times. And yes, I stole borrowed the image at the right from him!

America Is In Over Its Head

By Thomas Meaney | Thursday, March 2, 2023

The greatest blunder President Vladimir Putin may have made so far in Ukraine is giving the West the impression that Russia could lose the war. The early Russian strike on Kyiv stumbled and failed. The Russian behemoth seemed not nearly as formidable as it had been made out to be. The war suddenly appeared as a face-off between a mass of disenchanted Russian incompetents and supercharged, savvy Ukrainian patriots.

Such expectations naturally ratcheted up Ukrainian war aims. President Volodymyr Zelensky was once a member of the peace-deal camp in Ukraine. “Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it,” he declared one month into the conflict. Now he calls for complete victory: the reconquering of every inch of Russian-occupied territory, including Crimea. Polls indicate that Ukrainians will settle for nothing less. As battles rage across Donetsk and Luhansk, Ukraine’s leaders and some of their Western backers are already dreaming of Nuremberg-style trials of Mr. Putin and his inner circle in Moscow.

Can we tell the truth here? The only way that there could be “Nuremberg-style trials” of Vladimir Putin and his minions is if Russian forces were not only pushed all the way out of Ukraine, but Vladimir Putin’s government fell, and was completely replaced by, if not Western democrats, strongly anti-Putin forces. This means not just Ukraine retaining its sovereignty, but Russia being wholly defeated. Continue reading →

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WWIII Watch: Will China send weapons to Russia?

William Teach has an article up, WWIII Watch: Former Ukraine President Says They Need Weapons, Sanctions, And NATO Membership:

Well, the US and some EU nations have given them weapons. They’ve invoked sanctions that really aren’t doing much of anything. As for NATO membership, various NATO members have been blocking it for almost a decade, and there are enough to block it now, because that starts WWIII fast. Right now they’re just trying to saunter on up to WWIII. This is Petro Poroshenko, who served as president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.

Former Ukrainian President: We Need Weapons, Sanctions, and NATO Membership

The winning formula for Ukraine is simple: Supplies of weapons, economic sanctions against Russia, helping to strengthen Ukraine’s resilience, the de-Putinization of Russia, and the accession of Ukraine to the European Union and NATO. Only all the elements of this formula combined would guarantee permanent security for Europe and the whole world.

Napoleon is credited with once saying that to wage war, he needed three things: first, money; second, money; and third, money. Money is the fuel that powers the deadly military machine of Russia that kills Ukrainians. To bring this machine to a stop it will take more than military action. There must be powerful financial punches—indeed an economic crisis—and even social upheaval.

The price for aggression must constantly rise, becoming ever more unbearable. This is the way to change the Russian bear’s behavior, drive it backwards, and spoil its appetite. Putin cannot be stopped by half-steps and half-measures. He will always look for gaps, loopholes, and allies of convenience.

I’ll admit it: I’ve kind of stolen borrowed Mr Teach’s title and the illustration he used. There’s more at his site. But then came this, from The New York Times:

U.S. Warnings to China on Arms Aid for Russia’s War Portend Global Rift

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken says Washington has indications that Beijing is strongly considering giving military aid to Moscow for the war in Ukraine.

by Edward Wong | Sunday, February 19, 2023 | Updated 6:29 PM EST

MADRID — When the top foreign policy officials from the United States and China appeared this weekend at Europe’s premier global security conference, both stressed that their governments were not seeking a new Cold War.

Yet, new warnings by U.S. officials that China may be preparing to give weapons and ammunition to Russia ‌for its war on Ukraine portend the worst of the old Cold War.

In that decades-long shadow struggle, the United States, the Soviet Union and occasionally China poured military resources into protracted wars around the globe, engaging in bloody proxy conflicts from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan.

American officials say that China, unlike Iran and North Korea, has over the year of the war in Ukraine refrained from giving material aid to Russia. President Biden has stressed to Xi Jinping, China’s leader, that any such move would have far-reaching consequences.

There is no doubt that China’s entry into the war in that manner would transform the nature of the conflict, turning it into an epochal struggle involving all three of the world’s largest superpowers and their partners on opposing sides: Russia, China, Iran and North Korea aligned against the United States, Ukraine and their European and Asian allies and partners, including Japan and South Korea.

Warnings to China from Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state — made in multiple settings on Saturday and Sunday, including on television — revealed that the Biden administration believes Beijing is close to crossing the line. And the fact Mr. Blinken spoke out publicly shows the desperation of the United States as it tries to dissuade Mr. Xi and his aides from doing so.

Officials in Washington and European capitals, including here in Madrid, one of the staunchest aid providers to Kyiv, say that they are bracing for a new Russian offensive in Ukraine this spring, and that they need to do everything they can this winter to blunt Russia’s chances of breaking through Ukrainian defenses.

There’s more at the original, but the whole idea of the United States and NATO giving more money and war materiel assistance to Ukraine seems to fall apart if China is going to do the same for Russia.

Ukraine has already suffered major housing, industrial, and infrastructure damage; if NATO keeps pouring supplies into Ukraine, and China starts shipping war supplies to Russia, what can this yield but even more devastation for that benighted country? It could, I suppose, actually reduce the probability of Russia crossing the nuclear threshold, something that could be considered if NATO supplies were actually giving Ukraine an advantage; I doubt — but of, course, do not know — that Vladimir Putin would use ‘tactical’ or ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troop concentrations or supply bases if the war was not going that badly for Russia; crossing the nuclear threshold would be a desperation move if Russia was clearly losing the war, something at least possible given Russia’s unexpectedly poor performance militarily, and a Ukraine being propped up by NATO supplies.

If China counterbalances that with war materiel supplies to Russia, it could keep Russia from reaching a desperation point, but it would also seem to prolong the war without any decision. Given that the war is being fought on Ukrainian soil, that’s where the damage will be.