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President Emmanuel Macron is pursuing an old Gaullist dream: a militarily and geopolitically autonomous Europe under the leadership of France.The present strategy by which Macron is pursuing this goal is to present France as the military vanguard of Europe in the defense of Ukraine, through the suggestion that French and other NATO troops could be sent to that country:"There is no consensus today to send ground troops in an official, accepted and endorsed manner," he declared after a summit of European leaders in February. "But in dynamics, nothing should be excluded. We will do everything necessary to ensure that Russia cannot win this war." When this idea was immediately rejected by other NATO governments, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, Macron doubled down rhetorically by accusing the Germans and others of cowardice.Some have dismissed this as mere cosplay, Macron dressing up as de Gaulle, just as British politicians are incapable of resisting the temptation to pretend to be Churchill. Others have suggested that it is chiefly motivated by domestic politics. Faced with a steep rise in support for Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National (formerly the Front National), which traditionally sympathized with Putin, Macron is hoping to damage and isolate it by emphasizing the threat from Russia.These analyses have some truth to them, but also underestimate the seriousness of Macron's aim and Europe's position. His dream has deep roots in French history and culture, and also corresponds in certain respects to the Europe's real needs,Unfortunately — and perhaps, God forbid, tragically— the strategy by which Macron is seeking to achieve his goal is to a considerable degree directly contrary to the goal itself, as well as being completely contrary to de Gaulle's own ideas. It is a military and military-industrial strategy unaccompanied by adequate armed forces, or a real military-industrial base or political strategy, not to mention domestic political support. In the words of Jean de Gliniastry, a former French ambassador to Moscow: "There is a message, a warning to the Russians, while remaining ambiguous…[But] you have to walk on both legs: the military aspect and the diplomatic aspect. And for now, I don't see the latter."Macron stated that Russia must not "win" the war; but, like all the other leaders of NATO, he has never defined what he means by this. Perhaps he means fighting Russia to a standstill followed by a compromise peace. In private conversations, however, French officials simply echo the U.S. line that only the Ukrainians can make peace — and the Ukrainian terms for peace require not a stalemate, but the complete military defeat of Russia.The need for Europe to develop a capacity for self-defense should be obvious. Having nailed themselves to the Biden administration, European governments have very belatedly woken up to the realization that the next president may well be Donald Trump, and that the U.S. commitment to Europe may radically diminish. Indeed, given U.S. problems at home and in the Middle East, plus growing tension with China, this commitment is likely to diminish in future whether or not Trump is elected.However, Macron's hope that the supposed threat from Russia will prompt Europe to unite militarily behind French leadership vastly exaggerates both French military power and European willingness to follow France's lead. After years of budget cuts, the French army is far too weak to intervene in Ukraine without full U.S. support. When in 2011 President Nicolas Sarkozy of France tried to take the lead in the "humanitarian intervention" in Libya, within a very few weeks he was begging an unwilling President Obama to take over the operation on behalf of NATO, for fear of a humiliating Anglo-French failure.In terms of appealing to other European countries, Macron's hawkish stance on Ukraine is targeting East European partners. These governments, however, are precisely the countries with the most deeply-rooted determination to oppose European strategic autonomy and maintain until the bitter end the closest possible alliance with the United States. As Macron has himself stated, long-term European strategic autonomy also depends on a huge growth of Europe's military-industrial base. This however depends on the full participation of Europe's industrial powerhouse, Germany. Quite apart from German unwillingness to accept French leadership, the German economy is faltering and even facing "deindustrialization", in part because of the end of cheap Russian energy as a result of the war and Western sanctions. If the German industrial economy steeply declines, it will wreck Europe's ability to develop an adequate military-industrial base. It is also likely to produce social and political anxiety, gravely undermining Germany's role as a pillar of the European Union and European democracy. And far from leading to support for European strategic autonomy, fear of Russia has already driven Germany into even greater dependence on the United States. When it comes to whipping up French domestic fear of Russia, the danger for Macron is that it will not work, and the danger for France, Europe, and the world is that it will. At present, polls show French public opinion opposed to direct intervention in Ukraine by a margin of almost three to one. This suggests that should Macron actually send troops to Ukraine, there will be a tremendous public backlash against him. Barring nuclear war, very few people in France feel truly under threat from Russia. The risk of course is that all of his efforts to generate fear will lead Macron to be trapped by his own propaganda. If Russia does break through the Ukrainian lines and advance rapidly, he will either have to confess his own and France's impotence in the face of a supposedly mortal Russian threat — or actually send French troops to Ukraine. Russian commentators have stated categorically that if French or any other NATO troops are deployed in Ukraine, they will be attacked. Meanwhile, a limited deployment of French troops would not stop (though they might slow down) an overwhelming Russian advance. France would then have to either accept a qualified defeat and peace on Russian terms, or beg for U.S. intervention — at which point we would be heading rapidly towards nuclear annihilation.Perhaps the oddest thing about Macron's position, and that of the French establishment, is that, while it derives from de Gaulle's dream of European leadership, it completely misunderstands — or betrays — de Gaulle's vision. The General, it may be remembered, withdrew France from NATO's military structures in protest against Washington's refusal to inform France about U.S. nuclear forces on French soil. He sought an independent French role in international affairs, and, as part of this, sought détente with the Soviet Union and spoke of Europe "from the Atlantic to The Urals."De Gaulle's hopes in this regard were frustrated by the iron constraints of the Cold War. When de Gaulle was president, Soviet tank armies were stationed in central Germany, less than 200 miles from the French border. In principle at least, the Soviet Union was dedicated to a revolutionary ideology that threatened everything de Gaulle stood for: at the time Moscow supported a large and powerful French Communist Party. Today, the nearest Russian forces are nearly a thousand miles from France's borders, and both Soviet Communism and the French Communist Party are long dead. It seems overwhelmingly probable, therefore, that instead of lining up with the U.S. against Russia, de Gaulle would have grasped the opportunity for France to take the lead in ensuring European peace by seeking compromise with Moscow. After all, when de Gaulle fought as a French soldier in the First World War, it was as an ally of the Russian Empire against Germany.Sophia Ampgkarian contributed to the research for this article.

The Islamic State terrorist attack in Moscow is the starkest possible reminder that despite the war in Ukraine, Russia and the West also still have some of the same enemies. What the terrorists — ISIS-K, an Afghanistan offshoot of IS, took responsibility — did in Moscow, they have done in Paris and Manchester — and will do (and did do, on 9/11) in New York and Washington, if they get the chance.This horror is also a reminder of the fatal results of mutual distrust. It appears that U.S. intelligence warned the Russian government of an impending attack — and President Putin dismissed this as a U.S. "provocation." In the event that Russian intelligence were to warn the U.S. of a coming terrorist attack, it is only too easy to imagine Washington reacting in the same way. Moreover, the attack should make us think about the degree to which governments and security elites around the world are liable to lose sight of the real interests and safety of their fellow citizens — which it is their first duty to defend. In their obsessive focus on the supposed threat from each other, both the Russian and the U.S. establishments have forgotten this duty.Over the past three decades, Washington has certainly threatened important interests in Moscow, and Russia's international status as a great power. But (at least until Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. provision of arms and intelligence to Ukraine), Washington never killed a single Russian citizen. As to the idea of a direct American and NATO attack on Russia (as alleged in Russian domestic propaganda) this was always absurd. No such plan ever existed. And in any case, if Russia is really so vulnerable, what is its nuclear deterrent for? Meanwhile, over this period, Islamist terrorists have killed hundreds of Russian citizens, at Vladikavkaz in 1999, 2008, and 2010; the Dubrovka theater in Moscow in 2002, the Beslan school in 2004, and now again in Moscow.Russia for its part has (to a much lesser extent) threatened American international interests and aspects of its global primacy, but Russia has never posed a threat to the U.S. homeland or the lives of ordinary Americans. Russia has never had the ability or (at least until the Ukraine War) the desire to do this; and in any case, what is the U.S. nuclear deterrent good for, if not to deter such a threat?As to the idea of a Russian invasion of NATO, this is half Cold War paranoid fantasy, half domestic propagandist lie designed to boost Western military budgets. Meanwhile, over the same period, Islamist terrorists killed thousands of ordinary American citizens on 9/11, tried to do so in Boston, and have every intention of doing so again if they can; and killed hundreds of people in U.S. allies in Europe.This confusion of priorities has also profoundly affected U.S. policy and U.S. media analysis in the Middle East. Russian analysts of my acquaintance simply could not understand how after causing disasters in Iraq and Libya, the U.S. and its allies could have desired to overthrow the Baath state in Syria, and ensure chaos and a very likely victory for IS (as indeed the CIA warned President Obama). Russians asked how, in early 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can have urged continued support for the brutal dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt — on the grounds that otherwise Islamist extremists might triumph — and then later that year described Russian support for the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al Assad as "despicable," though it took place for exactly the same reasons. The only explanation they could find was that much of the U.S. establishment was possessed by a pathological hatred for Russia — and they were not wholly wrong about that.Before and during the second Chechen War beginning in 1999, motivated by blind hostility to Russia, many Western commentators tied themselves in knots trying to avoid acknowledging the growing role of Islamist extremists in Chechnya, and to avoid describing their actions as terrorism. Today, although IS has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack in Moscow, President Putin is seeking to blame it on Ukraine. Unless he can provide real evidence for it, the Russian elites should reject this charge. Otherwise, once again, they will be failing to defend their fellow citizens against the real threats facing them. Similarly, it is to be hoped that no Western analyst will pay attention to the Ukrainian suggestion — with no evidence at all — that this disaster for Russia was the work of the Russian authorities themselves.Finally, there is the issue of responsibility. It is absolutely unconscionable that after the U.S. warning, and the example of the dreadful terrorist attack on a Moscow theater in 2002, the Crocus hall was left unguarded. This was criminal negligence on the part of the Russian authorities, and we must hope that senior officials will resign in shame or be severely punished.But if recent history is any guide, we will hope in vain, as we have hoped in vain that U.S. politicians and officials would take personal responsibility for the disasters into which they have led America over the past generation. This is partly a matter of laws and institutions capable of holding elites to account — things that never existed in Russia and are decaying fast in the West. Much more importantly, it is a question of inner conscience and a sense of duty. We like to think we are better than Russians in this regard. I wouldn't be too sure about that.

President Biden was entirely correct in the first part of his judgment on the death of Alexei Navalny: "Putin is responsible, whether he ordered it, or he is responsible for the circumstances he put that man in." Even if Navalny eventually died of "natural causes," his previous poisoning, and the circumstances of his imprisonment, must obviously be considered as critical factors in his death. For his tremendous courage in returning to Russia after his medical treatment in the West — knowing well the dangers that he faced — the memory of Navalny should be held in great honor. He joins the immense list of Russians who have died for their beliefs at the hands of the state. Public expressions of anger and disgust at the manner of his death are justified and correct. The problem comes with the other part of Biden's statement, that "[Navalny's death] is a reflection of who [Putin] is. And it just cannot be tolerated." If he had said "approved," "justified," or "defended," that would have been absolutely right. But "tolerated"? What can Biden do in response, that he has not done already? The U.S. president has promised major new sanctions intended to "cut Russia off from the world economy" — but that requires Washington to control the world economy. Economic sanctions against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine have failed, and even strengthened the Russian economy and the state's grip on it. They cannot be significantly extended, because this would damage and infuriate countries that are dependent on Russian energy exports, including India, a key U.S. partner. As to sanctions against Russian individuals part of or linked to the Russian regime, there are already thousands of them, and they have had no effect whatsoever.Statements like Biden's are both pointless and dangerous. For the spoken or unspoken implication is that it is impossible to deal with Putin. But like it or not, Putin is the president of Russia. To all appearances, he will remain so for a considerable time to come, and will hand over to a successor of his own choosing. The Biden administration has said that it wants Ukrainian victory (whatever that now means), but it has also said that it believes that the war will end in negotiations, and following the failure of last year's Ukrainian offensive, is now reported to be moving in this direction.Who does Biden think that he will negotiate with, if not Putin? Seeking talks on an end to the Ukraine war does not imply approval of Putin's crimes or his invasion of Ukraine, any more than the Eisenhower administration's negotiation of an end to the Korean War implied approval of the North Korean regime and its invasion of South Korea.By its own account, the Biden administration has supposedly made the promotion of democracy around the world a central part of its diplomacy, with the clear implication that only democratic governments that respect human rights are truly legitimate. Actual U.S. diplomacy does not work like this and never has; not because of American imperialist or capitalist wickedness, but because the world does not work like this. Nobody should be required to like or admire the governments of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Mohammed Bin Salman or Narendra Modi (though we might well wish that U.S. officials had been less effusive in their praise of them). Like Putin, they are however the heads of their countries' governments, and likely to remain so. You deal with Saudi Arabia and India — and you have to deal with Saudi Arabia and India — you deal with MBS and Modi. The other thing to be wary of in the outpouring of outrage at the death of Navalny, is that this is already being used to build a strategy of greatly increased Western official support for the Russian opposition. Many (not all) people and groups in the Russian liberal opposition are personally and politically admirable. Some, like Navalny, have shown tremendous courage. To say this is quite different from believing that they are ever likely to form the government of Russia, and that the U.S. should base its policy towards Russia on the hope that this will be so.The sad truth is that the Ukraine war has placed the Russian liberal opposition in a politically impossible position. Having been largely chased into exile by Putin, they are dependent on Western support. This means however that their principled opposition to the Russian invasion can be portrayed by the Russian government — and is seen by many ordinary Russians — as treason in time of war. As with the Iranian, Chinese, and other oppositions, official support from Washington only allows the ruling regimes to paint the name "traitor" in brighter colors.A combination (differing from individual to individual) of idealism, dependence on the West and hatred of Putin means that instead of advocating a compromise peace in Ukraine, many Russian oppositionists have — willingly or unwillingly — identified themselves with Ukrainian and Western positions that explicitly demand complete Russian defeat. And while not many Russians wanted the war, not many Russians want to see Russia defeated. As I have remarked before, even many Americans who strongly opposed the war in Vietnam were outraged when Jane Fonda went to Hanoi. If she stood a chance of being elected to any office in the U.S. before that trip, she certainly didn't afterwards.Any hope of rebuilding liberalism in Russia (and indeed Ukraine, albeit to a much lesser extent) therefore requires an end to the war. For some degree of authoritarianism is a natural accompaniment to every war, and regimes all over the world have exploited this to increase their own power. Equally importantly, mass support for Putin is critically dependent on the general belief that the West intends not just to defeat Russia but to cripple it as a state, and that to prevent this it is essential to support the government. For the moment at least, this has eclipsed previously widespread resentments —which Navalny channeled — at regime corruption. No amount of Western or Russian opposition propaganda can change this Russian picture. Peace might, if it is given a chance.

President Volodymyr Zelensky's dismissal of the Ukrainian army chief, General Valery Zaluzhny, is a colossal political gamble for Zelensky and seems to indicate an increasing mood of desperation in Kyiv. The background to this move lies in the failure of last year's Ukrainian offensive, and the attempts both to shift blame and to draw up a new strategy that could promise Ukraine future victory.The Ukrainian defeat last year led to a rather discreditable blame game in Washington, with the U.S. military, and some Ukrainians, suggesting that if Zaluzhny had taken their (supposed) advice and concentrated his forces to attack on a narrow front (rather than attacking in several places simultaneously), the Ukrainians could have broken through.This is a rather odd argument, because it was just such attacks on narrow fronts that the Russian army tried several times immediately following the invasion, and that led to repeated disasters. It ignores the fact that just as U.S. satellite intelligence allowed the Ukrainians to identify local Russian concentrations and to concentrate in turn, so Russian satellite intelligence does the same when it is the Ukrainians attacking.The truth is that by the summer of 2023 the Ukrainian army simply did not have the superiority in manpower and firepower that would have allowed it to break through heavily fortified lines manned by a numerous and well-armed enemy. To have succeeded against these odds would have been a quite exceptionally unusual event in military history. Nor is there any significant prospect that the Ukrainians will be able to succeed in the future; for even if they receive new Western weaponry over the next year, Russia will be using the year still further to fortify its defensive lines Zelensky's dismissal of Zaluzhny also reflects the fact that the general has long been seen as Zelensky's most dangerous future political rival, given his prestige in the army and popularity among the Ukrainian people. We do not know how Zaluzhny will react to his dismissal. Perhaps he has made some deal with Zelensky.The risks for the president are however obvious. Although Zaluzhny's replacement, General Oleksandr Syrsky, also enjoys considerable prestige as the defender of Kyiv at the start of the war, he has been blamed by many Ukrainian soldiers for bowing to political pressure and throwing away Ukrainian lives in what was seen as an unnecessary and doomed attempt to hold the town of Bakhmut last year. There is also considerable resentment among the soldiers due to their impression that not only Zaluzhny, but the military in general are being scapegoated for last year's failure.Zelensky is not helped by the fact that after the Ukrainian defeat, he publicly rebuked and contradicted Zaluzhny for stating that the war had reached a stalemate and that Ukraine would now have to go onto the defensive — only then to accept Zaluzhny's position when military reality (and advice from Washington) became overwhelming.It is also not clear that General Syrsky's appointment will change, or improve another critical factor that brought the tension between Zelensky and Zaluzhny to a head: conscription. A striking lesson of this war is that victory depends on a combination of the most recent weaponry with large numbers of fighting soldiers. In 2022, Russian defeats were largely due to the fact that they invaded with too few troops. The spectacular Ukrainian success in Kharkiv in September 2022 owed much to the fact that on that front they considerably outnumbered the Russians.Today, however, Ukraine is running out of men. Russia has more than four times Ukraine's population, and is conscripting more of them, as well as radically improving its tactics and weaponry. The Ukrainian army has been drained by huge casualties and growing unwillingness of the population to serve. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers is now 43 — far too old for full military effectiveness.As a result, in recent months General Zaluzhny became more and more insistent on the need greatly to extend and toughen conscription. This was backed by the soldiers, and became entwined with their growing anger at corruption in Kyiv and the evasion of service by the sons of the elites. However, moves to tighten conscription and increase penalties for evasion of service met strong resistance in the population and among politicians.As a result of this resistance, and perhaps of the unwillingness of the deputies to see their own children conscripted, the initial version of a law strengthening conscription was defeated in the Ukrainian parliament in January. Zelensky has reintroduced a softened version, but it is not clear that this will be nearly enough to compensate for Russia's far greater population and resources.Ukraine's military prospects have also been drastically threatened by the refusal to date of Republicans in the U.S. Congress to agree to new aid to Ukraine. Without this, Ukraine will simply not have the weapons it needs to continue the fight. The European Union has agreed to a 50 billion euro aid package which will be critical to supporting the Ukrainian economy; but European officials have candidly admitted that Europe is in no position to replace U.S. military aid. Ukraine is therefore facing a double threat: of weapons without soldiers and soldiers without weapons. Should this continue, it is unlikely that Ukraine will even be able to sustain a defensive war of attrition against Russia.Furthermore, even if the U.S. Congress reaches a compromise on aid to Ukraine, this issue will not go away for long. The struggle in the U.S. Congress — and particularly the role of former President Trump and his supporters in blocking a compromise — of course reflects political maneuvering as part of the U.S. presidential election campaign. However, the Republican stance also reflects a genuine feeling that extends across much of Europe and helps power the rise of the populist Right there: that the real threat to the security and stability of Western societies comes from domestic dysfunction driven in part by illegal migration; and that what happens in Ukraine is irrelevant to these issues.Whatever one may think of the solutions being offered, it would be wrong and dangerous for advocates of support to Ukraine to dismiss these concerns. For if the war continues indefinitely, it will not be enough for Congress and the European Union to reach agreements providing aid to Ukraine for the coming year. They will have to do so next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. No Western government can seriously and honestly guarantee this.Moreover, for Ukraine to stand on the defensive — even if it does so successfully — implies something that Western analysts and many Ukrainians are beginning to recognize, though few have as yet been willing to state this publicly: that if Ukraine remains indefinitely on the defensive, then the areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia will remain in Russian hands — not legally, of course, but de facto.As I found while visiting Ukraine, even before the failure of last year's offensive, a sizeable minority of Ukrainians were prepared in private to say that Ukraine should compromise with Russia and accept the loss of these territories, if the alternative was years of war and hundreds of thousands more deaths with no realistic prospect that these sacrifices would bring success. According to opinion polls, the defeat of the Ukrainian offensive has led to a significant increase in this sentiment.The Ukrainian government and much of the establishment has however nailed itself to the principle that the only acceptable outcome is complete Russian withdrawal. Changing this position will be exceptionally painful and difficult; and one way of understanding the present political turmoil in Kyiv is that all the different figures and groups are trying to position themselves so as to throw the blame for eventual compromise with Russia on someone else.The danger for Ukraine is that given the fraying of U.S. aid, the growing military odds in favor of Russia and the tensions reflected by Zaluzhny's dismissal, if Kyiv waits too long to seek a compromise it may have nothing left to bargain with — not just because of developments on the battlefield, but because of the collapse of political unity within Ukraine.

The military and economic balance in war has shifted strongly against Ukraine, and it is very hard to see how this tendency can now be reversed. There is still time for Ukraine to win a qualified victory against Russia; but only if the United States commits itself strongly to a compromise peace.
Russia's population is at least four times that of Ukraine, and its GDP is 14 times greater. Western attempts to cripple Russia through economic sanctions have failed. The Russian economy grew by around three percent in 2023, as a result of increased energy exports to non-Western countries and a massive and successful effort to invest in military industrial production. Ukraine is making desperate attempts to boost its own military production, but from a far lower industrial base coupled with an acute shortage of skilled labor.
The Biden administration is therefore correct to warn that without continued and massive U.S. military aid to Ukraine, Russia will quickly win. It is however equally clear that U.S. aid — still less at the levels sustained to date — cannot be guaranteed even in the medium term. Partly due to the new U.S. commitment to Israel created by the Gaza war and the threat of it spreading, the United States is also failing adequately to replenish Ukraine's dwindling stocks of air-defense missiles, which are crucially important both on the battlefield and in the protection of Ukrainian infrastructure and industry. Both the United States and Europe are failing to meet their targets for increased production of artillery shells, which Russia is firing at some three to five times the Ukrainian rate.
And even if the West could vastly increase its military production (highly doubtful given the pressure on Western budgets, supply chain problems, and skilled labor shortages), we cannot provide Ukraine with more soldiers. Ukrainian manpower shortages are becoming increasingly acute, and are leading to increasingly draconian conscription measures and bitter disputes within the Ukrainian government over how to enforce conscription, which is faltering in the face of growing public resistance.
Following the failure of last year's Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Biden administration and the Ukrainian government and military have all shifted to a defensive strategy, including trying to fortify Ukraine's long northern border with Russia and Belarus. This region has been quiet since Moscow withdrew its troops in the spring for 2022, after the failure of its initial invasion from the north. However, Russia's growing advantage in numbers means that at some point in future, its army may be able to attack again along this front.
While smart, and even if successful in the short term, a strategy of standing indefinitely on the defensive has two colossal disadvantages for Ukraine. Politically, it brings with it the obvious implication that Russia will go on holding the areas it now controls. This being so, more and more Ukrainians and Westerners will obviously begin to call for a compromise peace. The danger is that if we leave this too long, the balance will have shifted so decisively against Ukraine that Russia will have few incentives left to compromise.
For militarily, a permanent defensive strategy commits Ukraine to an indefinite war of attrition in which Russia has huge long-term advantages. It is quite true that as in the First World War, recent developments in military technology strongly favor the defensive. This was shown in the defeat of the Russian offensive of 2022 and the Ukrainian offensive of 2023, and the very slow progress that Russia has made in its effort to capture small towns like Avdiivka in the Donbas. However, we should also remember that in the First World War, great superiority in numbers, munitions and economic strength did eventually lead to victory for the Allies.
Faced with this reality, the Ukrainian government and Western backers of complete Ukrainian victory are resorting to a set of optimistic stories, which might be unkindly described as stretching from the doubtful to the magical. One of these is to take the highest possible estimate of Russian casualties in its recent offensives, and on this basis to argue that through repeated failed offensives, the Russian army will exhaust itself to the point where Moscow seeks peace on Western terms. However, unless the Ukrainian army could attack successfully in turn, this would still leave the territories now occupied by Russia in Russian hands.
It is also not at all clear on what basis Western analysis is making these "estimates." In some cases, they come straight from the Ukrainian military. According to Ukrainian military veterans with whom I spoke last year, the belief that in the Donbas, Russia is launching mass "human wave" attacks in the style of World War II appears to be largely wrong. Rather, the Russian army has sought to force the Ukrainians to fight in relatively small, clearly defined areas where they can be pounded incessantly by Russian artillery.
The goal at present seems not to rapidly seize large amounts of territory, but to rely on Russia's advantage in artillery to kill large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers, while trying to keep Russian casualties as low as possible. If this picture is correct, then while Russia's approach will take time, in the long run Ukraine's shortage of troops means that it will simply not have enough left to cover its entire front.
The other hope of the Ukrainian government and pro-war Westerners rests in long-range missiles. If the West can be persuaded to provide many more of them, then it is argued firstly that by knocking out the Kerch bridge and driving off the Russian navy, Ukraine can isolate Crimea and force Russia to sue for peace. This hope is empty. The one major success of the Russian invasion of 2022 was to conquer the land between Russia and Crimea. It was this "land bridge" that last year's Ukrainian offensive was intended to break — but failed to do so.
The other Ukrainian plan — as demonstrated by the latest Ukrainian attacks on the Russian city of Belgorod — seems to be missile strikes on targets in Russia in an effort to put pressure on the Kremlin. As a military strategy, this is also hopeless. The vast size of Russia means that in terms of damage to Russia's economic capacity, even greatly expanded Ukrainian attacks would be mere pinpricks. In terms of civilian casualties, they will anger ordinary Russians without killing anything like enough to produce a mass movement for peace.
It may be however that angering Russians is precisely the Ukrainian intention. A strike by a Western-supplied missile that caused very large civilian casualties or destroyed a high profile target could lead to massive pressure on the Kremlin to retaliate against the West, whether by hitting Western targets in Ukraine or by providing its own missiles and satellite technology to enemies of America in the Middle East. This could in turn provoke much more direct Western involvement in the conflict — which Kyiv desires but the Biden administration and European governments have been anxious to avoid, and which the United States can desperately ill afford given the dangers it is facing elsewhere in the world.
If this picture is correct, then Washington and Kyiv both have a strong incentive to open peace talks while we still retain significant leverage; for if we wait, the terms that we will get in the future are likely to be much worse for Ukraine and much more humiliating for the West. In terms of Putin's goals when he invaded Ukraine, and of the past 300 years of Russian domination of Ukraine, a war that ended today with 80 percent of Ukraine independent and free to seek membership of the European Union should be seen as a very important victory for Ukraine. It would not be a complete victory — but complete victory is simply no longer possible.

In his press conference with President Zelensky on Tuesday evening, President Biden made one statement that was both entirely true, and is the potential basis for a new U.S. approach to the conflict in Ukraine. He said that Ukraine has already won a great victory in the war — by defeating the initial Russian plan to subjugate the whole of Ukraine.If the Biden administration and Washington establishment could recognize the implications of this, they could craft a new narrative that would allow them, and the Ukrainian government, to present a compromise peace as a Ukrainian victory (albeit a qualified one) and a Russian defeat — though not a complete one.In fact, the Ukrainian victory in 2022 was even greater than that. As things stand today, by preserving the independence and Western orientation of 80 percent of former Soviet Ukraine, the Ukrainian forces, with Western help, have reversed more than 300 years of history during which, in one way or another, Ukraine has been ruled from Russia.As the distinguished Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy told the Quincy Institute on Tuesday, this achievement echoes that of the Finns during the Second World War, when their heroic resistance convinced Stalin that conquering the whole of Finland and turning it into a Communist state would be more trouble than it was worth. Finland was therefore the only part of the former Russian empire that was not incorporated into the Soviet Union or turned into a Communist client state.Given the strength and unity of Ukrainian nationalism that this war has demonstrated, it is impossible to imagine that the whole of Ukraine could ever again be ruled for long by Moscow. However, Finnish survival as a democratic state did come at a price. Finland had to surrender a portion of its territory (including the historic city of Vyborg) and sign a treaty of neutrality. It should be obvious though that this was a vastly preferable alternative to sharing the fate of Poland, let alone the Baltic States.In his own remarks to the press conference, President Zelensky categorically ruled out any cession of territory to Russia. Indeed it is very hard to imagine any Ukrainian government formally and legally agreeing to Russian annexation. On the other hand, bowing to military reality and the advice of his military commanders, President Zelensky has now ordered the Ukrainian army to go on the defensive and fortify its existing positions.If this remains Ukrainian strategy, then by default the territory now held by Russia will remain under de facto Russian control; and given the disproportion of forces and resources between Ukraine and Russia, it is very difficult to see how a future Ukrainian offensive would succeed any more than this year's has done. Even if the Biden administration does persuade the Republicans in Congress to agree to another massive aid package for Ukraine, can anyone seriously think that future administrations will be able to procure such U.S. aid next year, and the year after that, indefinitely? Yet that is what will be required if Ukraine is to sustain its fight. And when the aid stops, Ukraine will be defeated. The Biden administration and its NATO allies have declared that their goal in the war is to help Ukraine achieve a better position at the negotiating table. But the truth is that Ukraine is unlikely ever to be in a better position than it is today. It could be much worse.Finally, Biden said something that was probably just evasive phrasing, but could be spun into a new diplomatic approach. Asked about NATO membership for Ukraine, he said that "NATO will be part of Ukraine's future." NATO, for better or worse, will be part of all our futures. That does not mean that we will all become members of NATO.

For the first time — and it is rather remarkable that this is the first time — the United Nations COP28 climate summit beginning this week in Dubai will include a "Global Stocktake" of progress made in achieving the goals set out and commitments made by global agreements since the 2015 Paris climate accords. If this stocktaking is honest, it will also be extremely depressing.In order to prevent the rise in global temperatures since pre-industrial times from exceeding the reasonably safe limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), COP26 in Glasgow established a goal of reducing fossil fuel emissions by 45 percent by 2030. Those goals are now unachievable. Based on present trajectories, emissions will actually rise nine percent above 2010 levels by that date. Since carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years, this means that a rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius is now inevitable and cannot subsequently be reversed, at least with any technology now available to us.The inevitable result will be an intensification of the heat waves, droughts, forest fires and floods that have plagued large parts of the world — including the United States — over the past year. Without a radical change of course, however, much worse lies ahead. If emissions continue to rise until 2030, it is almost impossible to imagine how "net zero" (whereby carbon extracted from the atmosphere equals that put into it) can be achieved by 2050. Even with the commitments made by states under the Paris agreement — hailed as a radical breakthrough in climate change action — it has been estimated that by the end of this century global temperatures will rise by 2.5 degrees Celsius. This would bring us into quite unknown territory. The negative impacts of natural disasters and on agricultural yields in key parts of the world will rise exponentially. Perhaps new crops genetically modified to withstand heat will ward off mass famines, or perhaps not. Apart from anything else, hundreds of millions of agricultural workers in Asia and elsewhere cannot be genetically modified to withstand sustained exposure to temperatures that are lethal to human beings.This will happen even if this rise in temperatures occurs, as it has until now, in a linear and gradual fashion (gradual by the standards of humanity, not of the Earth). There is however a real, albeit unquantifiable, risk that such an increase will lead to "tipping points" and "feedback loops," whereby a rise of two degrees will lead to three degrees and three degrees to four degrees over a short period of time. If so, civilization as we know it will be destroyed. No organized society on Earth could withstand both the physical disruption involved and the immense movements of desperate people that would result.This danger of feedback loops exists primarily in the Arctic, where the melting of sea ice reduces the reflectivity of sunlight back into space, and the melting of the Arctic permafrost risks releasing enormous quantities of methane from frozen rotted plants. Although methane is far less long-lived than carbon dioxide, it is almost 40 times more powerful in terms of its greenhouse effect. And the Arctic is warming at almost three times the rate of the planetary average.This is why the approach of the U.S. security establishment to the warming of the Arctic is so bitterly indicative. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of papers, briefings and articles have concentrated on the supposed threat that the melting of the Arctic sea ice will allow Russia and China to sail more ships through the region. To this, the only sensible answer must be: So what? Russia and China cannot invade Alaska or Canada through the Arctic, and the danger posed by nuclear missiles or bombers overflying the region has existed for more than sixty years and is completely unaffected by climate change. Meanwhile, these writers appear completely indifferent to the likelihood that climate change in the Arctic will drown American cities, wreck much of U.S. agriculture, and inflict grievous harm on the lives and health of hundreds of millions of U.S. citizens. We are suffering from a severe case of "residual elites;" foreign policy and security establishments that grew up to deal with one kind of challenge — in the U.S. case, World War II and the Cold War — but whose structures, ideologies and economic interests render them incapable of meeting a wholly different set of challenges. A parallel might be made with the "Confucian" elites of 19th-century China. They represented by far the oldest and most successful governing tradition in history; but it was one that was wholly unprepared to meet the completely new challenge of Western imperial capitalism.It must be said of course that this criticism applies just as much or more to the security elites of other major powers, including the Indians and Chinese, who are also focused on geopolitical ambitions and risks at the expense of action against climate change. Indeed, they can be considered even more foolish. While, for a long time to come, developed societies in the West will be able to withstand or adapt to the direct physical effects of climate change, parts of Asia are far more immediately threatened. This is especially true of South Asia, where even fairly limited increases in temperatures are projected to have potentially disastrous impacts on agricultural production. Yet too much of the Indian approach to COP28 seems to consist of diplomatic grandstanding intended to boost India's status and prestige by acting as the leader of the "Global South" in demanding reparations and vastly increased aid from Western countries to compensate for their emissions since the Industrial Revolution. This may be just. But it misses the point that the duty of Indian officials today is to do everything possible to minimize damage to India, above all by reducing India's own steeply rising emissions from coal.The other issue exemplified by South Asia is the prospect that rapid climate change will radically increase migration. It is natural that Western commentators and analysts should concentrate on illegal migration to Europe and America and both the human suffering and the political dangers involved. Yet one of the two most ferociously defended anti-immigrant borders in the world is India's with Bangladesh, a line on which more than 1100 Bangladeshis have been shot dead by Indian security forces over the past decade. Indian worries about Bangladeshi migration have been amplified by the fact that Bangladesh is one of the countries both most over-populated and most endangered by climate change and consequent sea level rise. Moreover, mass Bengali migration into the surrounding hill country has sparked numerous bloody instances of ethnic strife in eastern India over the past decades, and contributed to Burmese hostility to the Bengali-speaking Rohingya minority in Myanmar.After a long series of record-breaking years, 2023 is now set to be the hottest since records began. Across the U.S., local heat records have been shattered. Massive forest fires have devastated areas of northern Canada where such events would have been unthinkable in the past. U.S. neighbors in Central America, already under severe social, economic, criminal and ecological stress, are facing a future when the additional effects of climate change will render their governments completely unable to cope. These are threats to American society and ordinary Americans that dwarf anything China and Russia can do (short of nuclear war). While the Biden administration has declared rhetorically that climate change is an "existential threat," the country's security establishment has still failed to reorder its priorities accordingly. If U.S. elites truly believe that America is the "indispensable nation," they should feel compelled to do so. For if we continue with one international "agreement" after another that fails to meet its own stated goals, then historians of the future will consider that U.S. global leadership failed at its most important test.Sophia Ampgkarian contributed to the research for this article.Dear RS readers: It has been an extraordinary year and our editing team has been working overtime to make sure that we are covering the current conflicts with quality, fresh analysis that doesn't cleave to the mainstream orthodoxy or take official Washington and the commentariat at face value. Our staff reporters, experts, and outside writers offer top-notch, independent work, daily. Please consider making a tax-exempt, year-end contribution to Responsible Statecraft so that we can continue this quality coverage — which you will find nowhere else — into 2024. Happy Holidays!

It is now clear that the Ukrainian offensive of the summer and fall of 2023 has failed, with minimal gains and enormous losses. There has been no repeat of the sweeping Ukrainian victories of 2022. Ukrainian army chief General Valery Zaluzhny has admitted that the war has now entered a stalemate.Russia is now attacking in its turn; and although so far its forces also have made only very slow progress, time does not appear to be on Ukraine's side. Russia has some four times Ukraine's population and 14 times its GDP, which give it huge advantages in what has become a war of attrition. Serious imbalances in the U.S. and European military industries mean that Russia is also producing far more shells than Ukraine is receiving from the West.Ukraine's victories in the first months of the war were due to the courage and grit of Ukrainian soldiers, certain particularly effective Western weapons, and extremely bad Russian planning. They were also, however, attributable to the fact that Ukraine was able to mobilize more men than Russia, due to President Putin's hesitation over increasing conscription. That advantage has now been reversed. Moreover, as recent developments in the U.S. Congress and in Europe make clear, there can be no guarantee that Western aid will continue at levels sufficient to allow Ukraine to continue the fight successfully.There is therefore no realistic prospect that Ukraine can significantly improve its existing position on the battlefield. The West can provide more weapons, but it cannot generate additional Ukrainian soldiers. Ukraine is facing greater and greater difficulties in recruiting troops; meanwhile, Russia is calling up reserves and continually strengthening its defensive lines in southern and eastern Ukraine. Voices in the West that promote the idea of complete Ukrainian victory are becoming increasingly desperate; an example is the suggestion by retired American generals that, with additional U.S. missiles, Ukraine can somehow force Russia to evacuate Crimea through bombardment alone — something that the entire history of this war contradicts. To achieve this, Ukraine would also need massive amphibious forces that it altogether lacks.A ceasefire and negotiations for a peace settlement are therefore becoming more and more necessary for Ukraine. Indeed, if the fighting stopped along the existing battle lines, more than 80 percent of Ukraine would be fully independent of (and bitterly hostile to) Russia and free to do its best to move towards membership of the European Union. Given the Kremlin's original aims when it launched the invasion last year, and of the history of Russia's domination of Ukraine over the past 300 years, this would be not a Ukrainian defeat, but, on the contrary, a tremendous Ukrainian victory. If, on the other hand, the war continues indefinitely, there is a real possibility that Ukrainian resistance may collapse, whether through the exhaustion of its manpower or because Russia's additional forces allow it to reopen the fronts in northern Ukraine that it pulled back from last year and that Ukraine lacks the troops to defend.Recognizing this, the Biden administration is reported to be privately advising the Ukrainian government to start talks with Russia. It is however exceptionally difficult for the Ukrainian government to initiate talks. President Zelensky and other leading officials would have to reverse their repeated statements that they will not negotiate with Putin and that the only acceptable terms for even a provisional agreement are complete Russian withdrawal from all the territory that Russia has occupied since 2014. Ultra-nationalist groups are passionately opposed to any compromise. The Russian government for its part is naturally uninterested in a temporary ceasefire at present, since it, too, can see that time is on its side.In these circumstances, it is not enough for Washington to urge talks on the Ukrainians from behind the scenes, while insisting in public that only Ukraine can negotiate peace. Nor is it wise to defer any diplomatic initiative until after the next U.S. presidential election almost a year from now in the hope that both the Ukrainian forces and U.S. aid will hold up that long, and also that an embarrassing about face in the middle of the election campaign can be avoided.Ukraine may not be able to hold out that long, and a major Russian success, involving the conquest of significantly more Ukrainian territory, would confront the Biden administration with an agonizing choice: accept a Ukrainian defeat that would be a grave humiliation for the U.S. and NATO, or threaten direct intervention and risk nuclear war with Russia. Moreover, as the disaster in Israel and Gaza so vividly demonstrates, it is never sensible to trust that an inherently volatile situation like the U.S.-Russian struggle over Ukraine will remain stable. At any time, an accidental clash between (for example) the Russian and U.S. air forces over the Black Sea could precipitate a terrifying increase in tension and a lurch towards nuclear war. Even if the worst outcomes were avoided, such a crisis would have a dire effect on the global and U.S. economies.The full engagement of the United States in the peace process from the outset will be necessary if negotiations are to have any chance of success. Only a U.S. administration can bring sufficient pressure to bear on the Ukrainian government, while also offering reasonably credible security guarantees for the future. And only a U.S. administration can threaten Moscow that, for some time to come, massive U.S. military and economic aid to Ukraine will continue, while at the same time offering the Kremlin compromises on wider issues of vital importance to Russia. If Moscow is to be brought to the negotiating table when the military situation is developing in its favor, it will need to be assured that Washington is prepared to discuss seriously a final settlement involving neutrality for Ukraine (of course, including international security guarantees), mutual force limitations in Europe, the lifting of sanctions, and some form of inclusive European security architecture to reduce the danger of more wars in the future.Initiating such engagement will be extremely difficult for the Biden administration, given its repeated promises of Ukrainian victory and declarations that only Ukraine can negotiate peace. The administration therefore will need outside help if it is to engage in peace talks with Russia.The administration should therefore reach out in private to India, Brazil, and other leading countries of the "Global South" and urge them to issue a strong collective call for a ceasefire and peace talks. In initiating talks, Washington could then present itself as bowing to the will of the global majority. This may also help counteract the disastrous impact on U.S. relations with the "Global South" of the war in Gaza. The U.S. will also need to build support among European allies for a peace effort, including strong public U.S. commitment to NATO.Full Chinese participation will also be essential if a peace process is to succeed. Chinese influence on Moscow will be critical if Russia is to be persuaded to abandon its maximalist ambitions in Ukraine and accept a compromise peace. Amid dangerously rising tensions between the United States and China, such an invitation from Washington would signal to Beijing Washington's willingness to accept China as a partner and legitimate stakeholder in the solution of global problems.None of this is going to be easy, and there will be a strong temptation in Washington to let things slide in the hope that something will happen to let U.S. diplomacy off the hook. To follow this path would, however, be a tragic error and a betrayal of the vital interests of both Ukraine and the United States. The present trajectory of the war is towards disaster. Only the United States can change that trajectory, but it will need a lot of help from its friends.Dear RS readers: It has been an extraordinary year and our editing team has been working overtime to make sure that we are covering the current conflicts with quality, fresh analysis that doesn't cleave to the mainstream orthodoxy or take official Washington and the commentariat at face value. Our staff reporters, experts, and outside writers offer top-notch, independent work, daily. Please consider making a tax-exempt, year-end contribution to Responsible Statecraft so that we can continue this quality coverage — which you will find nowhere else — into 2024. Happy Holidays!

The catastrophe in Israel and Gaza demonstrates yet again the truth of a remark by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan when asked about the greatest challenge for a statesman: "Events, dear boy, events." Governments make elaborate plans for the conduct of foreign and security policy, only to find themselves scrambling to respond to some unforeseen development.However, events like the Hamas attack on Israel or the Russian invasion of Ukraine do not come out of nowhere. They are the product of human decisions; and if the decisions themselves cannot be predicted in detail, the circumstances that produce them can be studied. That after all is why we have legions of intelligence analysts, foreign service officials, and "experts."The first lesson of the present horror for Western policymakers is therefore always to remember that the adversary has a vote, and its actions will be shaped by America's own behavior. The second is that certain parts of the world are much more likely to generate disastrous events than others. The third is that the more areas of the world in which the United States involves itself, the more exposure to such events it has. The last lesson is that adversaries in one part of the world will inevitably try to take advantage of American difficulties in another.In other words, the pursuit of U.S. primacy in every corner of the world (as laid down in the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" of 1992 and followed in effect by every subsequent U.S. administration) is a surefire guarantee that the United States will sooner or later find itself facing multiple crises simultaneously.Twice since taking office the Biden administration has sought to deal with complex and dangerous international problems by shelving them while it dealt with something else. In the words of a European official, "they thought they were kicking cans down the road, but they turned out to be hand grenades".By the Spring of 2021, U.S. officials were declaring in private that the Minsk Agreement to solve the conflict in eastern Ukraine (providing for guaranteed autonomy for the Donbas within Ukraine) was dead. They had, however, no thoughts at all on what to replace it with, other than to go on arming Ukraine and emphasizing support for Ukraine and NATO membership at some unspecified point in the distant future.The administration's hope was that the issue of Russia and Ukraine could be shelved while America concentrated on confronting a far more powerful rival, China. When Moscow made clear that it would not play along with this, the administration had no plan, either for full commitment to Ukraine or a diplomatic compromise with Russia. Only the extraordinary courage and resilience of Ukrainian troops in the first weeks of the war saved Ukraine from conquest and America from shattering humiliation.In the Middle East, a renewal of the nuclear deal with Iran was blocked and delayed by U.S. demands that it should have been obvious would never be accepted by Tehran, in the belief that Tehran was not in a position seriously to harm the United States or Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was basically ignored completely, even as Israeli settlement policy progressively destroyed the possibility of the "Two State Solution" to which the U.S. remains officially committed. Instead, the Biden administration followed the Trump administration in seeking to do an end-run around both issues by promoting a de facto alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia that would contain Iran and leave the Palestinians completely isolated and without support.But of course Hamas was able to see through this U.S. plan perfectly well. The result is a disastrous new conflict that will among other things wreck any hope of Saudi-Israeli normalization, and could destabilize U.S. client states across the Middle East.Certain voices in Israel and the United States are now seeking to widen this disaster by using it to promote an Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran, just as they used 9/11 to promote a U.S. attack on Iraq. One might almost assume that these voices are working for Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping — for very few things are more ardently yearned for in Moscow than a war between the U.S. and Iran. It would distract U.S. resources from Ukraine, allow Moscow to hit back at the U.S. by providing weaponry to Iran, and utterly discredit U.S. claims to defend a "rules based order" in the eyes of most of the world.By seeking primacy in every part of the world, the United States is ensuring that it will face threats and crises in every part of the world; and even if it can in principle muster the resources to address them all, it is very unlikely that the American people will have the will to go on indefinitely making the economic sacrifices required. In the generation since 9/11, it has been proved again and again that the U.S. cannot solve these issues through military force. It is time to give primacy a rest, and let diplomacy have a try.

In his recent address concerning the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and U.S. involvement in both, President Biden quoted the famous line by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, that America is "the indispensable nation." This is indeed the belief by which the U.S. foreign and security establishment lives and works. As Biden's speech reflected, it is one way in which the establishment justifies to American citizens the sacrifices that they are called on to make for the sake of U.S. primacy. It is also how members of the Blob pardon themselves for participation in U.S. crimes and errors. For however ghastly their activities and mistakes may be, they can be excused if they take place as part of America's "indispensable" mission to lead the world towards "freedom" and "democracy."It is therefore necessary to ask: Indispensable for what? Empty claims about the "Rules-Based Order" cannot answer this question. In the Greater Middle East, the answer should be obvious. I suppose that a different hegemon might have made an even bigger mess of the region at even greater cost to itself than the United States has succeeded in doing over the past 30 years, but it would have had to put some really serious effort into the task. Nor is it clear that the absence of a superpower hegemon could have made things any worse.In this time, not one beneficial U.S. effort at peace in the region has succeeded; few were even seriously attempted. And more than this, the U.S. has not even fulfilled the core positive role of any hegemon, that of providing stability. Instead, it has all too often acted a force of disorder: by invading Iraq and thereby enabling an explosion of Sunni Islamist extremism that went on to play a dreadful role in Syria as well; by pursuing through 20 years a megalomaniac strategy of externally-driven state-building in Afghanistan, in defiance of every lesson of Afghan history; by destroying the Libyan state, and thereby plunging the country into unending civil war, destabilizing much of northern Africa, and enabling a flood of migrants to Europe; by repeatedly wrecking or abandoning possibilities of a reasonable deal with Iran; and most gravely of all, by refusing to take an even remotely equitable approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and failing through the greater part of the past thirty years to make any serious effort to promote a settlement.Over the past generation, successive U.S. administrations turned a blind eye, not merely while the Likud governments slowly killed the "two-state solution" and stoked Palestinian and Arab rage through its settlement policy, but while Prime Minister Netanyahu deliberately helped build up Hamas as a force against the Palestine Liberation Organization, so as not to have to negotiate seriously with the latter. This strategy has now proved catastrophic for Israel itself. It was also carried out with no regard whatsoever to the interests of the United States or its European allies in the face of Islamist terrorism.And what have the American people themselves gained from this? Nothing at all, is the answer; while the losses can be precisely calculated: More than 15,000 soldiers and contractors killed in Afghanistan and Iraq; more than 50,000 wounded, and often disabled for life; more than 30,000 veteran suicides; 2,996 civilian dead on 9/11, an attack claimed by al-Qaida as a reprisal for U.S. Middle East policy; some $8 trillion subsequently expended in the "Global War on Terror."Elsewhere in the world, the U.S. record has not been so disastrous, but nor has it remotely justified claims to the necessity of U.S. primacy. The only area where this has been broadly true is in Europe. In World War II and the Cold War, the United States liberated western Europe and defended democracy there; while in the rest of the world, all too often it stepped into the shoes of European colonialism. After the Cold War, populations in eastern Europe genuinely welcomed U.S. protection — though Biden's claim that if not stopped in Ukraine, Putin will invade Poland is baseless. Russia has neither the will nor the capacity to do so; and in any case, if NATO membership is not a sufficient deterrent, what was the point of offering NATO membership to Ukraine?Outside Europe, the only region where the United States can truly be said to have played a largely positive role to date is East Asia (the Vietnam War obviously excepted), and for the same reason: that Japan and South Korea welcome alliance with the United States. And while other states, like the Philippines, wish to balance between America and China, they do not wish America to leave. This role however requires U.S. presence, not U.S. primacy. Since China cannot invade Japan and South Korea — let alone Australia — the United States can perfectly well stand on the defensive behind its existing alliance systems, while sharing influence elsewhere with Beijing.As to Africa, countries there do not have conflicts with each other that America has to control or mediate. Africa's problems are internal, and the U.S. has done very little since 9/11 and the Global War on Terror to help. The recent increase of U.S. interest in Africa is mainly a reaction to Russia's and China's growing commercial stake there.Strangest and most striking of all is the U.S. role in its own backyard, in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, whose problems really do affect the population of the United States. As in Africa, the United States does not need to suppress local conflicts between states, for these have long since ceased. Once again, the threats are internal, but are also driven to a very great extent by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States. One result of the internal decay of these countries is the huge flow of migrants to the United States, which is causing blowback and political discord in America itself.Faced with this threat, and concerned with the interests of U.S. citizens, it might be assumed that the regional hegemon would prioritize this region and devote serious resources to its development. This would also be in tune with the "foreign policy for the middle class" that Biden promised in his election campaign.In fact, the comparative figures for U.S. aid are positively grotesque. Total U.S. development aid to Mexico and all of Central America since 2001 comes to $12.21 billion. This compares to $64.8 billion to Israel and $32.8 billion to Egypt. Even Georgia has received almost twice as much aid as Mexico ($3.9 billion to $2.1 billion) — and Georgia is 6,000 miles from the shores of the United States with a population less than one thirtieth that of Mexico. Faced with problems from Mexico spilling over into the United States, some leading Republican politicians are now calling not for more assistance, but for the U.S. military to be deployed in Mexico to fight drug traffickers — an insane idea that reveals the moral and practical bankruptcy of U.S. primacy on its own continent.The neglect of America's neighbors to the south reveals something else about U.S. primacy: that whatever a region's problems, the U.S. only becomes engaged if it sees a real or alleged danger that a rival power is taking an interest. This could be called the approach of the dog in a manger elevated to a basic strategic principle. It is well summed up in an article by Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution about the previous — and disastrous — attempt of the Biden administration partially to pull back from the Middle East without solving the basic problems there:"The White House devised a creative exit strategy, attempting to broker a new balance of power in the Middle East that would allow Washington to downsize its presence and attention while also ensuring that Beijing did not fill the void."If the U.S. really wants to pull back from the Middle East, it should welcome other states trying to play a positive role — as China has done by promoting détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia.The pursuit of global primacy is also intellectually and morally corrupting for Americans themselves. To justify its costs and sacrifices to ordinary Americans requires on the one hand vastly overblown claims to the promotion of democracy, on the other a colossal exaggeration of both the threat and the evil of other states. The result is a public discourse that all too often resembles baby food spiked with cyanide — the pap being the language of America spreading freedom, and the poison being that of mistrust for other countries and their peoples. Even if a successful — if not "indispensable" — U.S. global primacy were possible, it could not be based on a foundation as corruptive as this.

The existing trajectory of U.S. policy risks sacrificing Western Europe for the sake of Ukraine, and U.S. policymakers need to wake up to this risk. If this were to happen, it would be one of the worst bargains in the entire history of U.S. strategy. Western and Central Europe, and not Ukraine, are and have been for more than a century the area of truly vital U.S. interests on the European continent. Moreover, the crippling of Western Europe and the European Union would destroy Ukraine's own real chances of future democratic prosperity and stability; for these depend chiefly on links to the E.U., not the United States. All the evidence at present suggests that the Ukrainian counter-offensive has failed, with only very small gains and enormous losses. Nor is there any evidence-based reason to hope for greater Ukrainian success next year, given the balance of military and economic forces between Ukraine and Russia. Faced with this reality, there is increasing official and unofficial talk of arming and supporting Ukraine for an indefinite struggle (though of course this cannot in fact be guaranteed given the opposition of one faction of the Republican Party). An analogy has been made to the case of Israel, which developed as a prosperous and secure quasi-democracy while remaining in a state of frozen conflict and unresolved territorial disputes with its neighbors.Quite apart from the dreadful events of recent days, there are many reasons why this idea is profoundly foolish. They include the fact that if Syria were Russia, Israel would not be Israel. In other words, if Israel had bordered not on a shambolic and impoverished country with a fraction of its GDP and technological capacity, but a nuclear armed power with fourteen times its GDP, Israel would most certainly not have developed as a successful and prosperous democracy. There is no way that the U.S. can secure Ukraine permanently in an open-ended war with Russia.Perhaps most important of all however is the way in which this vision totally ignores the effects on Europe, and U.S. interests in Europe. This would not matter much if European countries were economically successful and politically stable, but this is rapidly ceasing to be the case.In the old heartland of the EU, liberal democratic politics are crumbling. Italy is ruled by a radical conservative government. Opinion polls in France suggest that if elections were held today, Marine Le Pen would win by a wide margin. In Sweden — almost unbelievably for someone who lived through the long dull summer of Abbaesque Swedish social democracy — the army is being called on for help in combating violence by immigrant drug gangs, and the radical nationalist Sweden Democrats are the second largest party. Above all, there is Germany, without which no stable and successful European Union is possible. As German historian Tarik Cyrul Amar has written: "Germany's perfect adherence to Western policy on Russia and China has an ominous price…We have assumed that the first country to buckle under the economic strain of the war over Ukraine would be Russia. But what if it is Germany that stumbles first? Germans stressed about their economy, distrusting their elites as favoring foreign interests, and disenchanted with centrist values and methods— a picture too familiar for comfort." The state elections in Bavaria and Hesse this month showed a surge in support for the right-wing nationalist Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) and Freie Waehler (Free Voter) parties. According to opinion polls, AfD now has the second largest support nationwide, behind the Christian Democrats but pushing the Social Democrats into third place, and far ahead of the Greens and the Liberals.Up to now, all the traditional mainstream parties have been united in their refusal to form coalitions with the AfD. If continued, the rise in the party's support will however make this approach increasingly unworkable. Either the CDU will have to form governing coalitions with the AfD (as the CDU's sister party, the Christian Social Union, has already done with the Freie Waehler in Bavaria), or all the mainstream parties will have to form permanent coalitions to keep them out of office.The latter course would recall the last years of the Weimar Republic, and would almost certainly strengthen the radical parties still further, since critics of government policies would have nowhere else to go. The most radical proposal is to dub AfD a neo-Nazi party and ban it, but this would lead to massive protests and drive its supporters towards violence. Whatever happens, Germany seems set for a prolonged period of deep political instability and polarization.The original roots of support for AfD and similar parties in Europe lie in fear of mass migration and hostility to the centralizing (and sometimes dictatorial) tendencies of the European Union. Their support has however been greatly increased by the deepening economic recession into which Germany has been plunged by the rise in energy prices consequent on the war in Ukraine. German economic success in recent decades was largely built on cheap, plentiful and reliable Russian gas.This factor helped mask worsening structural defects in the German economy, which the present crisis is exposing. Coupled with the end of the Chinese boom and U.S.-driven economic warfare against China, the result is that there is now serious talk in Germany of "de-industrialization." Should this in fact occur, the political, social, cultural and psychological results could be catastrophic; for the rebuilding of the German national identity after 1945 took place largely on the basis of the "economic miracle," and the belief that this reflected a superior German model of cooperation between capital and labor, and a strong industry-based middle class (the so called Mittelstand). If belief in these collapses, we could be looking at something akin to a national nervous breakdown.An unending semi-frozen war in Ukraine would drastically worsen Germany's — and Europe's – economic decline and consequent political disorder. Especially if coupled with repeated crises in the Middle East, it would make the restoration of stability in energy prices impossible. Such a conflict would inevitably break out periodically into major battles, possibly leading to new Russian victories. There would be the perpetual risk that an unintended collision between Russia and NATO could escalate towards nuclear war. It should not be hard to imagine what this would do to business confidence in Europe.There is a tendency now for Americans to congratulate themselves on the submission of Europe to American strategy as a result of the war in Ukraine. This underestimates the threat to Europe and of U.S. interests there. The threat, as described, is overwhelmingly an internal one, resulting from a deadly cocktail of economic stagnation, uncontrolled migration, and political extremism, worsened by the war in Ukraine. If present patterns continue, the result will be to cripple Europe both economically and politically.Economic prosperity and liberal democracy in Europe form a key pillar of America's own power in the world and therefore a vital U.S. national interest. Without them, America's own economic power will be gravely weakened, and the prestige of democracy in the world shattered. There will be little point in the U.S. presenting itself as the leader of democracy in Asia if it has collapsed in Europe.Moreover, the United States waged two world wars and a Cold War in Europe to prevent the great economies of Western Europe from falling under the control of a hostile great power. Until a decade or so ago, no American ever dreamed of seeing Ukraine in this way. If therefore the U.S. analysis is that Ukraine cannot win, for the sake of Europe and U.S. vital interests there, Washington should lend all its efforts to bring about an early peace.Sophia Ampgkarian contributed to the research for this article.

The vitriolic dispute between Poland and Ukraine brings out some aspects of the West's approach to the war in Ukraine that the Ukrainian government would do well to study carefully.

The dispute originated in charges by Poland and other central European governments that Ukraine's greatly increased grain exports to Europe — a consequence of the Russian closure of the Black Sea to Ukrainian maritime trade — were flooding European markets and depressing prices for Polish and other farmers.

The relaxation of EU limits on Ukrainian shipments was supposed to allow Ukraine to resume exports to Egypt and other countries where vulnerable populations are suffering from increased prices as a result of the war. A considerable proportion has in fact gone to the EU itself instead. The EU imposed a temporary ban, which, however, it refused to lift when it expired on September 15th. Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have however continued the ban, in defiance of EU rules.

The Ukrainian government has brought charges against Poland at the World Trade Organization, and alleged that the Polish move has been motivated chiefly by the government's desire to hold onto farmers' votes in next month's Polish general elections. Speaking to the United Nations, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Poland and other countries of engaging in theatrics and "making a thriller out of grain." Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hit back ferociously:

"I want to tell President Zelensky never to insult Poles again, as he did recently during his speech at the U.N. The Polish people will never allow this to happen, and defending the good name of Poland is not only my duty and honor, but also the most important task of the Polish government."

Polish President Andrzej Duda added:

"Ukraine is behaving like a drowning person clinging to anything available. A drowning person is extremely dangerous, capable of pulling you down to the depths…and drowning its rescuer."

In a move widely interpreted as retaliation for Ukraine's protests against the grain ban, moreover, Poland has halted arms shipments to Ukraine, insisting that it will now concentrate on equipping its own armed forces to defend Poland.

What makes this so extraordinary is that Poland has long portrayed itself as Ukraine's greatest friend in the West, and has accused other Western governments of cowardice for not doing more to arm and support Ukraine.

The first lesson to be learned from all this is that even in countries whose populations are most supportive of Ukraine, that support will have limits when it imposes high and visible costs on themselves, and that politicians will inevitably exploit the resulting political backlash. This has implications in particular for Ukraine's chances of joining the European Union.

In the case of Poland and other former Communist states of Central Europe, their path to EU membership was helped by copious amounts of EU financial assistance. The EU's Regional Development Fund continues to support depressed areas of Poland and its neighbors. Supporting Ukraine to the point where it could enter the EU will, however, be a task of a different order of magnitude. Even before the Russian invasion, Ukraine was one of the poorest countries in Europe, with an average GDP per capita in 2021 of only $4,828 (compared to an EU average of $38,436) and its chances of joining the EU in the foreseeable future were considered vanishingly small.

Moreover, EU countries (in Western as well as Central Europe) were always fearful of cheap Ukrainian food imports. Ukraine's Association Agreement with the EU explicitly barred most Ukrainian grain exports as part of the EU's strategy of defending European farmers through its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This ban was removed by Brussels only in response to the Russian invasion and blockade. Poland has now restored it.

In March of this year, the World Bank estimated the cost of postwar reconstruction up until then at around $411 billion, and that cost will of course increase further the longer the war goes on. The whole of EU spending on depressed areas within the EU in the seven years from 2014 to 2021 was $200 billion. To judge by Poland's latest moves, it seems improbable that a future Polish government would ask its voters to pay Poland's share of such costs; and if Poland won't, who will?

The other thing to which Ukrainians should pay attention is that, as dramatized by Poland's latest actions, hatred for Russia and real sympathy for Ukraine are not at all the same thing and may even contradict each other. Concerning Polish hatred of Russia, there can be no doubt; but underlying the remarkably harsh rhetoric of recent days has been the fact that historically speaking, Poles and Ukrainians also used to be bitter enemies.
The Polish kingdom, and the Polish republic between 1919 and 1939, sought to Polonize their Ukrainian subjects just as the Russians tried to Russify theirs. Ukrainian revolts against Polish rule massacred Poles along with Jews. Political struggles between Poles and Ukrainians for control of Galicia helped undermine the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the years before 1914. After 1918, Poland annexed the Ukrainian areas of Galicia by force, and held them until they were transferred to Soviet Ukraine by Josef Stalin as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - which is why they are in Ukraine today, and not in Poland.
During and immediately after the Second World War, Ukrainian nationalist partisans massacred tens of thousands of ethnic Poles, and Ukrainians serving in the 1st Galician Division of the Waffen SS participated in ruthless German operations against the Polish resistance. In recent years, both Kyiv and Warsaw have sought to play down this history, but memories of it continue to flow very close to the surface on both sides.

This history is peculiar to Poland and Ukraine; but with regard to the United States too, Ukrainians should ask themselves how much of U.S. support for Ukraine is motivated by real sympathy for them, and how much is devoted to killing as many Russians as possible and weakening Russia as much as possible, no matter how many Ukrainians die and how much Ukraine is weakened in the process — as some statements by U.S. politicians and officials have tended to suggest. Thus Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) recently boasted, "We are destroying the Russian army without losing a single American soldier."

Other hawkish U.S. commentators have argued that it is necessary to defeat Russia in Ukraine in order to weaken China - which is not why Ukrainian soldiers think they are fighting and dying.
An indefinite war with no clear victor will indeed weaken Russia; but it will also ruin independent Ukraine — something that now appears to be a key Russian war aim; and a ruined Ukraine will never be able to join the EU. If this is the case, then Western promises and declarations about Ukraine's Western path will ultimately count for nothing. Ukraine will remain — as it was for most of history — an impoverished borderland between Poland and Russia.That is not an outcome that the West should be working towards, however much Russia may also be hurt in the process.

It is inevitable in any war — even a proxy one — that identical actions by the "enemy" and by your own side will be portrayed as wicked in the first case, moral and justified in the second. In much of the U.S. establishment and media however, belief in the innate righteousness of U.S. actions is so deeply-rooted that it can become a serious danger to the successful conduct of Washington policy. Why? Because it blinds American policymakers to the likely consequences of their own actions.The latest example of this involves the scheduled meeting between President Vladimir Putin and North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un. Most Western analysis has focused — probably correctly — on the likelihood that this will lead North Korea to provide Russia with artillery shells, of which North Korea has enormous reserves and considerable production capacity.The fighting in Ukraine seems to be moving towards a long-term war of attrition, and in such a war, levels of ammunition will play an absolutely central role. This is not an issue of the wickedness of the Russian invasion and the righteousness of support for Ukraine. It is a matter of hard military logistics.In return, Russia will at the very least help Pyongyang's cash-starved economy with subsidized energy. Depending on the scale of North Korean ammunition supplies to Russia, it is, however, very likely that Russia will agree to supply advanced missile technology in return.This would be a very serious step. While North Korea has possessed the capability to make nuclear weapons since at least 2006, its ballistic missile technology has developed much more slowly, limiting the range and accuracy of its arsenal. If North Korea with Russian help develops a significant number of nuclear missiles capable of striking the continental United States, this would mark an important shift in the military balance of power in North East Asia. At the very least, it would strengthen the North Korean regime considerably. In the worst case, the desire to prevent this from happening at all costs could propel a U.S. administration into some hideously dangerous preemptive military action.This anticipated deal between Russia and North Korea has led to predictable expressions of outrage from U.S. officials and journalists. So we must ask: What exactly did the Biden administration expect to happen as a result of its own actions? This spring, Washington brought intense pressure to bear on the government of South Korea to supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition, though Seoul had made its reluctance to do this extremely clear. In the end, a compromise was reached whereby South Korea would not supply Ukraine directly, but would "lend" 500,000 artillery shells to replenish U.S. stocks — thereby allowing the U.S. to transfer a similar number to Ukraine.You do not have to be a Russian sympathizer to see this as a distinction without a difference. Did nobody in the CIA, Pentagon, or State Department warn the White House that this would likely lead to a deal on weapons supplies between Russia and North Korea, and see the potential negative consequences for U.S., South Korean, and Japanese security? This does not mean Washington could not or should not support Ukraine. However, if Washington wished to do this while avoiding broader negative ramifications globally, then there are only two possible paths to follow. First, refrain from certain actions (like the attempt to universalize sanctions against Russia) that have tended in this direction. Second, pursue talks with Russia — such as what took place at the height of the Cold War — aimed at formal or informal agreements that would rule out certain international actions by both sides, such as procuring weapons and ammunition from other countries in regions of high local tensions. Despite this Cold War precedent, all proposals for such talks have been howled down with accusations of "cowardice" and "treason."This is what the great American Realist thinker on international relations, Hans Morgenthau, meant when he wrote that it is a fundamental duty of statesmen to cultivate the ability to think themselves into the shoes of their opposite numbers — not to agree with them, but to understand how they are likely to behave in a given situation, so as to be able to craft your own policies accordingly. As Morgenthau also wrote, blind national self-righteousness is the greatest single obstacle to the cultivation of this ability.In the case of North Korea, this attitude long predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The description of North Korea as a "rogue state," endlessly repeated by an uncritical media, has helped to lock in this attitude until attempts by analysts to understand the conflict from the perspective of Pyongyang become completely impossible. Blind hostility to North Korea extends to relations between North Korea and its neighbors — which in addition to South Korea are, it may be remembered, China and Russia, but not the United States. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia drastically reduced its economic relations with North Korea and generally played a constructive role in cooperating with Washington to constrain Pyongyang's nuclear and missile development. China has maintained trade with North Korea, and this has undoubtedly played a key part in preserving the North Korean state; but Beijing has also used its economic influence to punish overly inflammatory actions by Pyongyang and has put pressure on the recalcitrant regime to engage in disarmament talks.Yet instead of recognizing this – and in consequence recognizing the consequences for America and South Korea if Moscow and Beijing were to move to actual full-scale support for North Korea – the overwhelming U.S. establishment and media response has been to blame Russia and China for not joining the U.S. in strengthening sanctions against North Korea even further. No understanding at all has been shown of the fears of both countries that an implosion of the North Korean state would create a massive crisis on their own borders.The U.S. failure to predict the likely — even inevitable — consequences of the U.S.-South Korean ammunition deal was bad enough. Much worse could be the consequences of the Biden administration's action last month in pulling South Korea into a much tighter security relationship with Japan as well as the United States — a grouping that Beijing will no doubt see as a threat to its interests and a probable future U.S. tool for the containment of China. Once again, has nobody in the U.S. foreign and security establishment warned the administration that the result is likely to be stronger Chinese support for Pyongyang?On the Korean peninsula, in Ukraine and everywhere else, developing the capacity to understand the motivations and predict the actions of other states requires that U.S. policymakers look honestly at the U.S. record and how America is likely to act and react in given circumstances. This includes self-awareness about the history of the Monroe Doctrine and U.S. determination to exclude any potentially hostile alliance or even influence from countries close to America's own borders — even if this means supporting or bringing to power some extremely vile local allies. Thus if American diplomats complain to their Chinese counterparts about Beijing's relationship with Kim Jong Un, the Chinese might reply wo men de wangba dan. This is (I am told) how you say "our son of a bitch" in Chinese; and it is an ancient Chinese principle most famously stated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If U.S. policymakers remembered that aspect of their own history and policies, we can begin to develop a capacity for strategic empathy, and avoid increasing the dangers on the Korean peninsula, which Lord knows are dangerous enough already.

On the second anniversary of the final debacle of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, we should consider the lessons of that disaster for U.S. strategy elsewhere. While the case of Afghanistan itself is by nature unique, Washington's mistakes and failures reflected wider and deeper patterns — and pathologies — in U.S. policymaking and political culture. If left unaddressed, these will lead to more disasters in future.Yet most of the mainstream media and the think tank world are treating the memory of the U.S. war in Afghanistan not as a source of reflection but as an embarrassment to be forgotten as quickly and completely as possible. This parallels the approach to the memory of Vietnam in the U.S. mainstream — and the result was the disaster of Iraq. One of the most astonishing things about the U.S. debate — to give it that name — prior to the invasion of Iraq, was the general failure to consider, or even mention, what the experience of Vietnam might have taught. Today, this refusal to learn lessons applies above all to U.S. engagement in Ukraine.The failure to pursue diplomacy with the Taliban prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan can be explained and excused by the fury naturally felt by Americans at the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the Taliban's refusal immediately to hand over the al-Qaida leadership that was clearly responsible. Nonetheless, given the appalling costs that resulted from the U.S. invasion, it is worth asking whether an approach that allowed the Taliban to save face and remain true to their own beliefs might have produced better results for both Americans and Afghans: for example, exploring the possibility that the Taliban could be persuaded to deliver the AQ leadership to another Muslim country. In the case of Iraq, there was no sincere diplomatic effort at all, since the Bush administration had already made the decision to invade.The second lesson of Afghanistan is as old as war itself and was emphasized by military theorist Carl von Clausewitz: that there can never be certainty of long-term victory in any war, if only because war, more than any other human activity, is liable to generate unintended ramifications and consequences. In the case of Afghanistan, the mission to eliminate al Qaida and remove the Taliban from power morphed into a far greater — and probably innately doomed — effort to create a modern democratic Afghan state through foreign intervention, aid and supervision.This in turn became related to the attempt to destroy the old and exceptionally powerful nexus between Islamic faith and Pashtun nationalism that had generated the Taliban, much of the resistance to the Communist regime and Soviet intervention in the 1980s, and numerous revolts against the British Empire before that. Given that most Pashtuns live in Pakistan, the inevitable result was an extension of the conflict to that country, leading to a Pakistani civil war in which tens of thousands died. Pakistan's refusal or inability to expel the Afghan Taliban led to the threat of direct U.S. intervention in Pakistan — which, if it had occurred, would have produced a catastrophe far worse than Afghanistan and Iraq put together.The failure to anticipate consequences is worsened by conformism and careerism; not that these tendencies are any worse in the U.S. establishment than elsewhere. But America's power and capacity to intervene across the world magnify their negative consequences. On the one hand, they mean that even experts and journalists who are in a position to know better, join officials in unthinking obedience to the establishment line of the given moment, which may have only the most tangential relationship to realities in the country concerned.Returning to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, I encountered journalists whom I had known when covering the Mujahedin war against the Soviets and Communists in the 1980s. I was amused — kind of — to find them parroting a new version of the line that Moscow and Kabul had put out in the 1980s: that the Afghan resistance had no real local support and was not really Afghan, and that it was entirely the creation of outside powers (including Pakistan) and money. This was despite the fact that the Taliban were recruiting exactly the same people from exactly the same areas as the Mujahedin, who were fighting for exactly the same reasons.Matters are made worse by the flood of instant shake-and-bake "experts" who are generated every time the United States embarks on a new overseas venture. Selected for their connections in Washington rather than any real knowledge of the areas concerned, they could not correct the mistakes of U.S. policy even if they had the moral courage to do so. Moreover, their ignorance of local history and culture makes them dreadfully receptive to the self-interested fantasies of their local informants. Thus I was also amused in the early 2000s to hear "advisers" on Afghanistan to the U.S. (and European) governments declare that "Afghanistan in the 1960s was a successful middle class democracy." This U.S. syndrome could well be called Oedipal, since it is both incestuous and self-blinded.Once both political parties have committed themselves to a given strategy, the bipartisan Washington establishment finds it extremely difficult to admit mistakes and change course — a tendency to which the U.S. military has also sometimes contributed in a disastrous fashion. This military refusal to admit defeat has its admirable sides — nobody should want U.S. generals to be quitters.That, however, is why America needs political leaders (including ones with personal military experience, like Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Carter) with the knowledge and courage to tell the generals when it is time to call a halt.Instead, in Afghanistan (as documented by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction and others), generals and administration officials colluded to produce optimistic lies, which were then circulated by a credulous and subservient media. Today, this risks being the case with the Biden administration's refusal to admit that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed, and that it is therefore time to start developing a political strategy to end the fighting in Ukraine and the economic and political damage this is beginning to cause to vital U.S. allies in Europe.The last point about the U.S. record in Afghanistan should hardly need to be made, because it has been made over and over again since the 1950s by a whole succession of great American thinkers, including Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, Richard Hofstadter and C. Vann Woodward. This is the tendency in the U.S. political establishment to colossally exaggerate both the malignance of the enemy of the moment, and the danger it poses to the United States. Instead of a Communist-led nationalist movement to reunify Vietnam, the Vietnamese Communists were portrayed as a force that could start toppling a row of "dominoes" that would end with Communist victory in France and Mexico. Instead of a tinpot regional dictator, Saddam Hussein became a nuclear menace to the U.S. homeland. The Taliban, an entirely Afghan force, supposedly had to be fought in Afghanistan so that we would not need to fight them in the United States. And today, U.S. officials in their rhetoric somehow manage to combine the supposed beliefs both that Russia is so weak that Ukraine can completely defeat the Russian army and catastrophically undermine the Russian state, and that Russia is so strong that if not defeated in Ukraine it will pose a mortal threat to NATO and freedom around the world.As Loren Baritz wrote in 1985 concerning the obliteration of the memory of Vietnam in the United States:"Our power, complacency, rigidity and ignorance have kept us from incorporating our Vietnam experience into the way we think about ourselves and the world… But there is no need to think unless there is doubt. Freed of doubt, we are freed of thought."It would be nice to think that on this anniversary, and faced with even greater dangers in Ukraine, the U.S. establishment and media will devote some serious thought to what happened in Afghanistan.

In an interview with Le Figaro published on August 16 and based on his new book, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy laid out what has been missing from Western thinking on the war in Ukraine: a diplomatic Plan B in case the present Ukrainian offensive fails.


If it does fail, as seems increasingly probable, the most likely alternative to a diplomatic solution is an indefinite and bloody war of attrition along roughly the present battle lines.


Quite apart from the threats of disastrous escalation and a NATO-Russia war described by Sarkozy, Westerners who are or claim to be friends of Ukraine should consider the consequences of an unending war on that country. These include a continuation of dreadful human losses and continued destruction of the Ukrainian economy, with no certainty at all over who will pay to rebuild it. They would also entail the indefinite postponement of the process of EU accession, which would have offered Ukraine its best chance of truly joining the West and the inability of Ukrainian refugees to return home, leading to a catastrophic and permanent decline in Ukraine's population.


In addition to all of this: the possibility that a Ukrainian army exhausted and bled white by years of failed offensives will eventually fall victim to a Russian counter-attack, leading to territorial losses far greater than Ukraine has suffered so far.


This being so, one might think that even those who disagree with Sarkozy's specific recommendations would welcome the chance to hold a serious public debate on ways forward. Instead, the response from the great majority of Western (including French) politicians and commentators has followed the wearisomely familiar path of denunciations of the former president as a "Russian influencer" and "friend of Putin" whose remarks were "shameful" and "shocking."


A survey of Western "news" reports (mostly in fact veiled and hostile opinion pieces) is interesting in this regard. Of the ten top stories about the interview resulting from a Google search, only two focused on Sarkozy's remarks themselves. All the others, in their content and headlines (like "'Shameful' Nicolas Sarkozy Under Fire for Defending Putin" in The Guardian), highlighted and quoted at length the angry attacks on Sarkozy.


What Sarkozy actually said is the following:



"Without compromise, nothing will be possible and we run the risk that the situation will degenerate at any moment. This powder keg could have frightful consequences…


The Ukrainians... will want to reconquer what has been unjustly taken from them. But if they can't manage it completely, the choice will be between a frozen conflict... or taking the high road out with referenda [in territories occupied by Russia since 2014] strictly overseen by the international community… any return to the way things were before [ie Ukrainian rule over Crimea] is an illusion. An incontestable referendum... will be needed to solidify the current state of affairs.



On the question of NATO membership for Ukraine, Sarkozy said that:



"Russia has to renounce all military action against its neighbors … Ukraine must pledge to remain neutral … NATO could at the same time affirm its willingness to respect and take into account Russia's historic fear of being encircled by unfriendly neighbors."


He also described as unrealistic and hypocritical suggestions that Ukraine can join the European Union in the foreseeable future, comparing this to Turkey's hopeless decades-long efforts: "We are selling fallacious promises that will not be kept to."



On French President Emmanuel Macron's previous efforts to negotiate with Putin, Sarkozy said that these had been correct, but that Macron had failed to follow up with any concrete proposals for compromise, partly "due to pressure from eastern Europeans."


Sarkozy asked Europeans to remember that, like it or not, Russia will always remain part of Europe and a neighbor of the EU, with which it will be necessary to co-exist. Therefore, "European interests aren't aligned with American interests this time."


Despite the near-universal vilification Sarkozy's interview has provoked, much of what he said has in fact been stated on background by some U.S. and European officials, and quoted in the Western media. In February, unnamed Biden administration officials told the New York Times that the U.S. goal should not be for Ukraine to retake Crimea (something that they judged both extremely difficult military and a risk for Russian escalation towards nuclear war) but instead to "credibly threaten" the Russian military hold on the peninsula, so as to "strengthen Kyiv's position in future negotiations."


This however leads – or should lead – to the obvious question: Future negotiations about what? Unlike Sarkozy, these U.S. officials and their European counterparts have not been willing to state the obvious conclusion: that if Ukraine could achieve such a military success without actually reconquering Crimea, the resulting negotiations would have to be about returning to Ukraine the territories it has lost since last year, while leaving Crimea (and probably the eastern Donbas, also in practice held by Russia since 2014) in Russian hands.


Nor have they addressed the question of how such a peace settlement could be internationally legitimized. Here Sarkozy has suggested a democratic solution that has also been proposed by Thomas Graham and others, but has been rigorously ignored by the governments of Western democracies: to place the decision in the hands of the populations of the areas concerned through internationally supervised referenda.


At present however — and as the Pentagon correctly in advance warned was likely — the Ukrainian army is still very far from being able to retake Crimea, and will very likely never be in that position. The probable failure of the present Ukrainian offensive is now being widely discussed by Western official and unofficial analysts. Once again, however, few have drawn the obvious conclusion that the result will be a prolonged war of attrition, leading either to an eventual ceasefire along present lines or — possibly — to a new Russian victory.


Even fewer have echoed Sarkozy in arguing that the eventual result will have to be a compromise peace, and suggested what the terms of that peace should be.


As to Ukrainian EU membership, EU officials and analysts with whom I talked in Brussels last autumn echoed in private Sarkozy's profound skepticism that this would be possible for a very long time to come. This is partly because the costs of Ukrainian reconstruction would place unprecedented and colossal strain on EU budgets. Six months ago, the World Bank estimated that the cost of this reconstruction would already be around $411 billion — two and a half times Ukraine's GDP for 2022 and more than twelve times the EU's entire present annual spending on aid to its poorer members.


Severe doubts were also expressed to me about Ukraine's ability to achieve the kind of internal reforms that would enable it to even begin to meet the conditions of the EU's Acquis Communautaire. President Macron believes that even if peace can be achieved, it will take Ukraine "several decades" to qualify. In these unfavorable circumstances for Ukraine and the West, to reject Sarkozy's remarks reflexively and without discussion seems the height of irresponsibility, hypocrisy, and moral cowardice, and also does not serve the real interests of Ukraine.


In 1916 and 1917, as the Western front congealed into a horrendously bloody stalemate and Russia sank into revolution and civil war, dissident voices began to be raised in the European combatants calling for a compromise peace. And in all these countries, these voices were also described as "shameful" and silenced by accusations of "treason" and "surrender."


The result was that three great European states were destroyed, the victors (with the exception of the United States) were irrevocably crippled, and the grounds were laid for Fascism, Stalinism, and the even greater calamity of World War II.


One hundred and six years later, very few historians today would describe those advocates of peace as "shameful," or their critics as correct. What are historians one hundred years from now likely to say about present Western witch hunts against those who propose peace in Ukraine?