Our enemies think NATO is doing too much (when in reality it is doing too little):
https://vdare.com/articles/patrick-j-buchanan-will-putin-submit-to-u-s-imposed-weakeningSaid Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on his return from a Sunday meeting in Kyiv with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy:
The United States wants "to see Russia weakened to the point where it can't do things like invade Ukraine."
"Russia," said Austin, has "already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops ... and we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability."
Thus, the new, or newly revealed, goal of U.S. policy in Ukraine is not just the defeat and retreat of the invading Russian army but the crippling of Russia as a world power.
The sanctions imposed on Russia and the advanced weapons we are shipping into Ukraine are not only to enable the country to preserve its independence and territorial integrity but also to inflict irreversible damage on Mother Russia.
Putin's Russia is not to recover soon or ever from the beating we intend to administer, using Ukrainians to deliver the beating, over an extended period of time.
I fail to see a problem here.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has seen through to the true objectives of some NATO allies:
"There are countries within NATO that want the Ukraine war to continue. They see the continuation of the war as weakening Russia. They don't care much about the situation in Ukraine."
This certainly describes how I (unlike the Ukraine-worshipping False Leftists) feel.
But to increase steadily and substantially the losses to Russia's economy, as well as its military, the war must go on longer.
And a long war translates into ever-greater losses to the Ukrainians who are alone in paying the price in blood of defeating Russia.
I would be even happier to see the war expanding into V4+ territory.
Is Austin committed to fighting this war to the last Ukrainian?
I am not Austin, but if I were, I would be. Why not, especially when Ukrainians themselves claim to be similarly committed?
How many dead Russian soldiers -- currently, the estimate of Russian losses is 15,000 of its invasion force -- will it take to satisfy Austin and the Americans?
Again, I am not Austin, but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia#MilitaryAs of 2021, the military have around a million active-duty personnel, which is the world's fifth-largest, and about 2–20 million reserve personnel.[258][259]
20 million at least, and:
Population
• 2022 estimate
Neutral decrease 145,478,097
145478097 ideally.
Back to enemy article:
To achieve, say, a loss of 50,000 dead Russians, how many Ukrainians would have to lose their lives as well?
I would have preferred all of them never to have been born in the first place, but at least this way many who would otherwise have reproduced will not do so. The effect will still be to improve the gene pool in the long-term.
How many Ukrainian cities would have to share the fate of Mariupol?
I would have avoided bombing the simple apartment blocks (which could have been used to house climate refugees) and only destroyed the Homo Hubris buildings. But it is 100% Russia's fault for doing almost the exact opposite.
Does a war to bleed the other side to death also contradict the moral conditions for a just war?
On the contrary, this is the only way to avoid having to fight them again in the future. It is precisely those who hate war (such as myself) who will aim to bleed the other side to death one and for all. It is Turanian raiders who never do this because they plan to raid again later (they being the ones who positively enjoy war).
Then there are the practical considerations.
When we say we will so weaken Russia that it cannot threaten its neighbors again, we are talking about conventional weapons and power.
Nothing done in Ukraine in this two-month war has diminished the Russian arsenal of 6,000 nuclear weapons, the world's largest stockpile.
And the more we destroy Russian conventional power, the more we force Moscow to fall back onto its ace in the hole -- nuclear weapons.
Unless we counterinvade into Russian territory. Is Russia going to nuke Russian cities in order to kill the counterinvading troops occupying those cities?
Which raises the question:
Will Putin accept a U.S.-induced permanent reduction in Russia's standing as a great nation? Or would Russia resort to weapons that could avoid that fate and avoid as well the long and debilitating "forever war" some Americans want to impose on his country?
If we are going to bleed Russia into an irreversible strategic decline, is Putin a ruler of the mindset to go quietly into that good night?
Are Putin & Co. bluffing with this implied nuclear threat?
It is always better to call the enemy's bluff than let them get away with the bluff.
And again, how exactly does Putin use nukes against troops which have counterinvaded into Russian territory? Yes, he can nuke NATO territory, but that will not stop the troops already inside. To stop those troops, he would have to nuke his own people at the same time. This is why, the sooner we push this war into Russian territory, the less credible Putin's bluff will sound.
When Georgia invaded South Ossetia in 2008, Putin's Russian army reacted instantly, ran the Georgians out and stormed into Georgia itself.
When the U.S. helped to overthrow the pro-Russian government in Kyiv in 2014, Russia plunged in and took Crimea, the Sevastopol naval base, and Luhansk and Donetsk.
When Ukraine flirted with joining NATO and Biden refused to rule out the possibility, Putin invaded in February.
When he warns of military action, Putin has some credibility.
And in this talk of using tactical atomic weapons to prevent the defeat, humiliation and diminution of Russia itself, is Vladimir Putin bluffing?
There is only one way to find out for sure, and that is by not backing down.