As I was sanding and painting a sideboard, I listened to a video produced by Willy OAM, a pro-Ukrainian realist analyst, debating Drew Pavlou, a ‘hard core’ activist pushing the ‘case’ for Ukraine. The reason for this debate was an on-line confrontation between the two which became somewhat ‘heated’, apparently. Willy is pushing back against fake narratives, since they jeopardize the lives of very real people. Over the past couple of months I frequently provided links to his videos, even though we do not see eye to eye on everything related to this war, and what caused it.
In my perception Russia never lost control, as I’ve explained in my own contributions. And I *did* see this war coming, although I explained to friends who asked me about it that the Russians would only go to war if NATO *made* them, by not coming to the table after they issued extensive proposals to NATO to *avoid* an armed conflict, and/or pushing the story that Ukraine was going to be part of NATO soon. NATO ignored the Russian proposals, invited Zelensky to attend the Munich Security Conference of 2022, where the US, and others, restated that Ukraine was going to be a NATO-member, while Zelensky kept talking about American nukes on its territory. Since 2007, when Putin attended the Munich Security Conference, and warned NATO *not* to expand further Eastwards, to avoid the risk of war, and then US ambassador William Burns’ 2008 ‘Njet means Njet’-cable published by Wikileaks, the US and NATO were *aware* of the fact that the Russians regarded Ukraine into NATO as an existential threat. Therefore I do not concur with Willy that Russia only *started* to see the conflict as an existential threat from 2022.
That narrative Willy is clinging on to, is that Russia was somehow opportunistic, and Ukraine was *actually* winning on the battlefield in 2022. While I insist the Russians were retreating in preparation for ‘Plan B’, a war of attrition. In other words, they ‘Gamed’ this entire conflict beforehand, hoping that a show of force would be enough to bring Zelensky back to earth, and the ‘Minsk-Accord’, but if that failed, they would wear down Ukraine and NATO in a war of attrition. They were not improvising. Even though the warplans had not been spread far and wide, like those of the US and NATO, through the Rand Corporation when it published its ‘Strategy Paper’ titled ‘Overextending and unbalancing Russia’. And I explained why the US used this technique of broadcasting their plans, both to impress Russia, and make them think twice about ‘doing something foolish’ as Ukraine would move on the Donbas again, *and* to synchronize the ‘watches’ of a very diverse, politically difficult to manage alliance. The assumption on the side of the US/NATO was that their strategy of teasing Russia into an armed conflict with Ukraine, which gave them an opportunity to unleash ‘Sanctions from Hell’, which were *certain* to destroy the Russian economy, was a flawless plan. If needed, the plan said, they could also unleash Al Qaeda in Syria to keep the Russians occupied. It didn’t work.
Why? Because the Russians outsmarted the US-policy planners and NATO by *not* taking Kiev and declare victory, since that would have exposed them to the same cynical scenario the US used to unseat the communists in the Soviet Union towards the end of the Eighties, using Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, this time using ‘Stay Behind’ Ukrainian forces and Azov militia to ‘Bleed Russia White’. I explained that in detail in previous essays. Moreover, the Russian economy was *much* more robust, since it had become an autarky to a very large extent, and since 2007 they’d had all the time in the world to think about what would be needed to win a war of attrition, and keeping those factories they would need to ramp up production quickly ‘greased’, instead of tearing them down. To the outside world those derelict factories with production lines for ‘outdated’ tanks and artillery, and ammo storages, were likely discarded as posing no threat whatsoever, since the plan was to wear the Russians out after they would have taken Kiev, struggling to control Ukraine with their ill equipped soldiers. Obviously the US/NATO knew that Russia was a formidable nuclear force, but in the kind of war they had in mind nukes were useless. Same thing with regard to some eye-watering new weapon systems, which included hypersonic missiles, nuclear powered cruise missiles, and state-of-the-art fighter aircraft. Of no use when you fight ‘insurgents’. But a different story in a protracted war of attrition between two ‘standing armies’.
Still, the US/NATO were not paying too much attention to the military side of things, because the heavy lifting would be done by the ‘Sanctions from Hell’. Only after the Russians withdrew behind the Surovikin-line, with minimal losses, and the economy of Russia wouldn’t budge, the US/NATO became nervous. Though they provided lots of weapons and training to Ukraine, and helped to fortify cities facing the Donbas, with CIA-‘listening stations’ all along the border with Russia to track logistical movements for the ‘insurgents’ to deal with, Ukraine had *not* been prepared for the war it got. Hastily provided tanks and other weapon systems to enable Ukraine to launch an offensive didn’t even put a dent in the Surovikin-line. Developments *after* that described by Willy are in accordance with my own, with only minor differences. Including the conclusions he is drawing from what we are seeing today, related to what the Russians are doing, what Ukraine is doing, and what Europe and the US are doing. And why Zelensky and Europe somehow want to stick to the plan, hoping that the Russian economy will implode after all, while struggling to stay relevant, as the US is threatening to leave the scene of the crime. Only difference, in a sense, is that Willy seems to think the US is a logical choice for a mediator, while I see the US as the architect, and driving force, planning the war from Wiesbaden, as described in the NYT, even though it wasn’t Trump at the helm.
The difference between myself and Drew Pavlou is ‘out of the ballpark’. You want someone as dedicated and blind to reality as a fan for your soccer-team, but he is useless if you want to save lives and prevent further destruction. He is an ideologue sympathizing with each and every country belonging to the ‘West’, and in his perception of the world NATO is a ‘defensive alliance’, and all the wars it fought since the start of this century were ‘defensive’ wars, since the ‘others’ were the ‘Bad Guys’. He convinced himself that Putin wants to conquer Ukraine, and Europe in due time, and the war with the ‘Axis of Evil’ is epic and eternal, until full and unconditional surrender, or total annihilation of the ‘Bad Guys’. His quest began when he was still a teen, siding with the people in Hong Kong which fought for ‘democracy’ which they had never had, because the British colonizers ruled absolute through their representative sent from London, before they ended their occupation of Chinese lands. That occupation became a time-limited lease after the ‘Opium Wars’, when the British earned handsomely from feeding addicted Chinese opium, much to the dismay of Beijing, way before Mao established himself as the communist ruler over the massive country. I’m afraid that he may be in for some life-shattering disappointments, before he understands that his support for his ‘team’ made matters far worse. Or he will surprise himself one day, looking in the mirror, and seeing a person he fought in his early years when he was still an idealist. But let me compliment him for having the courage to accept the invitation for a debate with Willy, after becoming agitated because Willy sounded like a ‘Putin Apologist’. For which he apologized, while also clarifying some other statements which made him sound like someone in love with war altogether, like what would have to be done if Indonesia accepted long range Russian bombers on its soil.