The appears to be a move towards peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and that should be welcomed. The manipulation of social media algorithms is entirely suited to the culture wars, and even when a conflict occurs in the real world, to war propaganda from all sides. However, as is now evident, it is much harder to cancel a nuclear power than a citizen, even a sitting president who is the focus of international enmity.
While it might feel morally satisfying to get on board with hashtag campaigns such as #IStandWithUkraine and other social media slogans, in reality it does little for the people of Ukraine. In fact, it could be argued that the more strident statements flooding social media can feed into a drumbeat for an escalation of international involvement which could damage the possibility of a resolution to the war in Ukraine, and make an agreed peace less likely.
Of course, the average citizen feels for the people of Ukraine, and wants to stand both those fleeing in terror and those left to fight or to seek shelter where they can as war rages.
Some of those pushing for EU direct involvement in the conflict seem more interested, however, in standing with the war lobby who, indications suggest, are not against a full blown war in Europe.
One voice which has been raised against such interventions is that of retired US army Col. Douglas MacGregor, whose assessment of the military situation seems at odds with the commentator class in the media. He argued that Ukraine could not win the war, that Putin had no interest in expanding beyond the Russian-speaking territories in Ukraine, and that the West was imputing to the Russian leader things that he “does not want to do”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lasT-5Mrpk
Its four weeks since MacGregor made those claims, and naturally that raises the question of who is right, or who is the most accurate, about what’s happening on the ground in the region, especially since our information is coming through the fog of war? Is it the uniformed military, who know about military tactics, strategy, and logistics, or is it the suited advisors and diplomats who deal in political strategy?
Where is the theatre of War in the Ukraine? Is it outside Kiev, where all the western media is concentrated and reporting from, or is it in the East, where the Russians claimed the majority of the Ukrainian army were stationed along the border of the Donbass? Are the Russians encircling the cream of the Ukrainian army in the East and cutting off their supplies? Have the western media reported sufficiently on fighting in cities like Mariopol or Berdyansk?
It is difficult to know which sources to rely on since media platforms supporting Ukraine are positing a win against Moscow, while other observers claim that Russia is following a strategy that will eventually gain Moscow the upper hand.
We are flooded with stories of Ukrainian resistance, and pluck and success against the odds. However, much of what we are learning is seen through the fog of war, and the failure of the Russian military, it seems, is greatly exaggerated.
Prof Niall Ferguson wrote last week, in regard to the military situation, that he believes “Western analysts consistently present in too favourable a light for the Ukrainians.”
“As I write, it is true that the Russians seem to have put on hold their planned encirclement of Kyiv, though fighting continues on the outskirts of the city. But the theaters of war to watch are in the east and the south.
In the east, according to military experts whom I trust, there is a significant risk that the Ukrainian positions near the Donbas will come under serious threat in the coming weeks. In the south, a battalion-sized Chechen force is closing in on the besieged and 80%-destroyed city of Mariupol. The Ukrainian defenders lack resupply outlets and room for tactical breakout. In short, the fall of Mariupol may be just days away. That in turn will free up Russian forces to complete the envelopment of the Donbas front.
The next major targets in the south lie further west: Mykolayiv, which is inland, northwest of Kherson, and then the real prize, the historic port city of Odesa. It doesn’t help the defenders that a large storm in the northern Black Sea on Friday did considerable damage to Ukrainian sea defenses by dislodging mines.
Also on Friday, the Russians claim, they used a hypersonic weapon in combat for the first time: a Kinzhal air-launched missile which was used to take out an underground munitions depot at Deliatyn in western Ukraine. They could have achieved the same result with a conventional cruise missile. The point was presumably to remind Ukraine’s backers of the vastly superior firepower Russia has at its disposal. Thus far, around 1,100 missiles have struck Ukraine. There are plenty more where they came from.
And, of course, Putin has the power — unlike Saddam or Qaddafi — to threaten to use nuclear weapons, though I don’t believe he needs to do more than make threats, given that the conventional war is likely to turn in his favour.
Ferguson is in a minority in this view because Western countries – and companies – are united in their opposition to Moscow’s invasion, although they also ignore the West’s contribution to the escalating tensions in the region since 2014. The stance against Russia tipped some social media giants into unprecedented territory as shown by leaked internal emails from Facebook which suspended the Facebook and Instagram hate speech policy to allow for calls for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion – though this was eventually overturned.
But it is one thing to oppose Russia’s actions, it is another thing to ignore the reality of what is happening on the ground.
On Sunday, Newsweek became one of the first of the mainstream media outlets to provide some clarity to the wishful thinking that claimed Russia was on the run, or that Ukraine had the upper hand in the conflict.
By their analysis, “Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act.”
They say that US intelligence experts believe that “as destructive as the Ukraine war is, Russia is causing less damage and killing fewer civilians than it could.” UN estimates are quoted which puts the civilian losses at around 900 to date, though it’s also noted that U.S. intelligence puts that number at least five times UN estimates.
“If Russia were more intentionally destructive, the clamouring for U.S. and NATO intervention would be louder. And if Russia were all-in, Putin might find himself with no way out. Instead, his goal is to take enough territory on the ground to have something to negotiate with, while putting the government of Ukraine in a position where they have to negotiate.”
That seems to have the ring of truth. It is now reported that Ukraine is prepared to adopt a neutral status – ditching NATO membership plans – as part of a peace deal with Russia, and President Zelenksky appears to have acknowledged his government would have to concede territory.
The developments bring to mind Strategic Empathy, and Von Clausewitz’s theory of escalating diplomacy combined with military pressure, where he said that war was “a continuation of diplomacy through other means”.
In the legal world this is a perfectly understood principle. It is what enables lawyers to both litigate and negotiate simultaneously.
Strategic empathy is the ability to understand (not agree with) the opposing side’s objectives and strategies. It is a talent that anyone with legal training might understand.
As we have previously written, the war in Ukraine might have been averted if the bellicose posturing and brinksmanship of both Putin and the NATO antagonistas pushing the Ukrainian regime towards war, was a little less inflexible. Russia say their demands of No Nukes, No NATO, and implementation of the Minsk accords, have been steadfastly ignored for a decade, and some argue that this was with the intention of “poking the bear” into a reaction.
Ukraine is a supremely corrupt country and we cannot forget the involvement of Hunter Biden in the Ukrainian gas scandal. Foreign influence is strong in Ukraine, and it looks to many as if their policy towards Russia is not entirely of native origin.
Of the three Russian demands, the NATO non-membership was the highest priority. If that was guaranteed, it looks likely that the invasion of Ukraine would never have happened. If the leaders of the West had the wisdom of strategic empathy they might have been able to see that this was the thing that would likely have stopped Putin taking a leaf from Von Clausewitz’s book and escalated the diplomatic to the military.
This puts the assessment that the Russian military campaign has stalled and is failing in a different context. Do many of the media and consultant commentating know for sure what the Russian military strategy is? It is certainly not the same as the US or NATO strategy of bombing a country flat from the air before setting a booted foot in it.
Again, this analysis is not an endorsement of the Russian invasion, it is an attempt to understand their military priorities and strategies. One thing that events on the ground do not indicate is that the Russians are worried about air superiority.
The admission by the EU’s representative for foreign affairs and security, Josep Borrell, that it was a mistake to offer NATO membership to Ukraine, does bear out the theory that the Russian tactic of escalating military action as their demands are not met, is part of their strategic vision. Borrell’s admission would not have happened four weeks ago, but if it had, this present crisis might have been avoided.
To be clear, this argument doesn’t seek to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but rather to lay out what the issues are, and how to counter the pro-war lobby who are talking increasingly recklessly about a full scale war with a nuclear power. These are reckless and incompetent people, and to be led by them could lead Ireland and other countries to outright ruin.
What any clear-headed person in a position of influence should be doing now is assessing the world as it is, not as they wish to see it. If we are to judge from the rhetoric that is coming from our media and political elite, and flooding through the emotionally laden information space on social media, this is sadly not happening.
So let’s look at the supposition that the Russian people will turn on Putin because of Western sanctions. Anyone who has read any of the Russian authors (and they are amongst the best authors in the world) and historians, will be aware of a stereotype that Russians are well accustomed to a base level of privation. There is some truth in this stereotype. Can they suffer sanctions if they believe in the cause? Of course they can.
But apart from this, the fact is that Putin has considerable social capital in the Russian public, because his reign has brought incredible increases in prosperity and stability to Russian society. Crime, unemployment, starvation shortages, and rampant financial corruption have all been seriously dampened under Putin’s reign. That will stand to how he is viewed by the Russian people.
But the salient thing is this. Russians will not suffer food or energy shortages, and unlike their EU counterparts, the Russian public will not be facing (at least) 50% increases in utility bills, and possibly similar increases in food prices. Russia is far more self-sufficient than it was 20 years ago and its society might well handle economic isolation better than the NATO nations who are highly dependent on global supply chains.
This is a factor that nobody in the US/EU/NATO nexus thought to consider before they threw all their cards on the table leaving no room for escalation or diplomacy. In their haste, they underestimated their opponents. A classic Thucydides trap.
Moscow moved to hedge against sanctions by telling the West last week that invoicing for the billions of dollars of natural gas exports to Europe will now be in roubles. Russia has also engineered a rebound for its currency after it was battered by sanctions.
The fact that the Biden administration went begging to Venezuela and Iran for oil would lead you to believe that the consultant class had no idea for how to deal with what is happening, and had thought none of it through.
The jingoism seeking a broader entanglement in the war underscores that globalism’s chief objective is not about peace, it’s about control. It’s more “Pax-Romana” than “Pax-Fraterna” – more the peace of an empire than the peace of cooperation amongst the nations of the earth. Sure, Putin believes in Pax-Russo, but let’s not fool ourselves that the only option the West have is to show him who’s the toughest gunslinger by throwing the collective forces of NATO into a full scale regional war. That would neither help the Ukrainian people nor prevent the opening of a full scale continental war. The ultimate escalation of this is nuclear, and the fact that the war racketeers seem to have no reverse gear is very worrying.
Let’s not also fool ourselves into thinking that this is Russia against the world. If we were paying attention we might have noticed that the global south and the developing world, including the places where globalism has shifted production to from the West, i.e. India and China, are pretty set against the NATO side.
It’s time to cool the rhetoric and leave some space for Von Clausewitz tempered de-escalation. It’s time to back off from the social media style discourse and start dealing with the real world.