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 →