The last few weeks have been an awful flashback to my Army days in the mid-80s, running maneuvers in the woods and fields of Germany in preparation for the Russians coming through the Fulda Gap. The survival time for my unit was predicted to be 12 minutes. The pictures I’m seeing are nothing short of an abomination, and I wonder how the West will navigate the tripwires ahead.
I listened to Charlie’s podcast today with General Hertling, and I had to admit his breakdown of the incomprehensible tactics, delusional strategy, and logistical vacuum was riveting. The lack of initiative (or living/training conditions or a strong professional core at any level of the bulk of their military) has apparently never changed and is proving a major weakness of the Russian military even decades later. With the size and lack of humanity of the Russian military, however, I can only hope that the Ukrainians have enough fight and fighters left to hold firm when the Russians attempt to hold what they take. I must admit that I was ashamed to listen to the general’s ray of sunshine at a possible outcome – it seemed a betrayal to let my mind skip over what the Ukrainian people will be suffering for the foreseeable future. I understand the dangers of beginning yet another world war, but bowing to threats and blackmail will only grant the world another temporary reprieve. Events may force our hand. Slava Ukraini!
I agree I find it a betrayal and hard to swallow that we would skip over what suffering the Ukrainians will have to go through. Not that we'd even skip over it but if we don't get in there and fight with them and we just let them take all the hits what are we doing?
I don't know about all the talk anymore. Are we and NATO going to let Putin slaughter the Ukrainians and reduce their cities to rubble? I think we may need to walk softly over and grab our big sticks. Will there come a time when we will have wished we said WTF and just got up and stopped him? Are we going to wait until Ukraine is completely wasted and then go to war over Lithuania? And why are we worried about upsetting him by giving Ukraine jets? What did Zelensky just say about we cannot buy them off with fuel when they are losing their blood?
Putin knows he can keep using his sticks while the west is talking, and he slowly gets what he wants, the destruction of the Ukrainian people. He's counting on our hesitancy.
Vice Ukraine: I can not believe I am saying this; generally see fighting wars as senseless suffering; generally upon innocent civilians.
But I see no alternative here. Even if Putin takes a hit in his ability to control, he will remain in power as long as he is useful to the oligarchs and their financial well being. If they are not willing to oust him now, they likely never will be.
If he stays in power, eventually he will convince himself that he won in Ukraine, no matter how obvious the loss. We need look no further than Florida to see how deluded those in power can become. Nor need we look far to see their ability to fool “some of the people allof the time”.
Inevitably, then, he will do this again. Surely, the Baltic nations and the entire EU see this.
My opinion, free and likely barely worth that, is that they, the EU and Baltics give Russia an ultimatum, back by preparation; either Russia stop bombing cities and civilians in Ukraine and withdraw or we go to war.
If not now, then the only question will be, who is next.
As someone who was present for the destruction of Fallujah & Ramadi, and who then got to watch the destruction of Tripoli/Benghazi/Aleppo/Idlib on TV later on, it's REALLY weird seeing how much more Americans seem to care when it's white European cities getting bombed out of existence compared to when it's a mostly Muslim city that's in some part of the MENASA. Like, there is a stark difference between how Americans perceived the tens of thousands of innocent Shia and Sunni we bombarded with bad-intel airstrikes, white phosphorus munitions, HIMARs rockets, drone strikes, and roadblock shootings over the last 20 years compared to how we react to when Russia is doing it to white Europeans. Like, am I the only one who notices this disconnect or nah? Maybe we ought to think about our principles sometimes and think about why it is that we care sometimes and not so much others. It's telling the world a lot about ourselves.
Humans have circles of compassion. We care more about our families and close friends than we do about our next-door neighbors. We care more about those neighbors than we do about people one state over. Then come Canada, Europe, Mexico, and so forth. Those in the outer circles get less compassion. All humans are like this, everywhere in the world. We have the least compassion for non-humans in factory farms -- despite the constant, extreme suffering of billions of them every day.
Agreed regarding the pure humanitarian aspect of it, but there is a bit of a difference from my perspective anyway. Most of the Muslim countries/cities we attacked did have some history of being our adversaries, right? We didn't go against Iraq in 1990 without provocation. We didn't go into Afghanistan without provocation. We didn't go into Iraq in 2003 without provocation....regardless of the WMD aspect. Iraq had demonstrated for a decade that they weren't going to be the best neighbors in the neighborhood with Saddam in charge.
I would say that our intervention into Kosovo wasn't right away and there was a similar lack of compassion for a long time before we intervened and that was a genocide going on. That involved Muslims though...so maybe that bolsters your argument.
Bottom line is that I do think it is an issue, but at the same time our interventions were in response...not like Russia's BS reasons for attacking Ukraine....so the US compassion was minimized for sure.
Like, can Thomas Freidman come up with some kind of "golden arches" theory of why Americans sit on our asses through a Rwanda or a Syria but then lose our shit when Kyiv catches airstrikes?
It could be because most Americans have ancestors who immigrated from Europe and thus identify with Europeans more readily.
It could be because many Americans have been tourists in European countries and so it is more personal to them.
It could be because more Americans have cultural similarities with Europeans.
It could be because we have treaty obligations to countries surrounding Ukraine.
It could be because, in the cases of Rwanda, Syria, and Libya, they were fighting civil wars. (And in the case of Iraq we were the aggressor and maybe the U.S. should have been sanctioned for its invasion.)
It could be because we are, rightly, horrified of one country simply rolling over another.
It could be because, as the 1619 Project highlighted, we have some deep racism in our country.
I suspect it is a combination of all of the above.
I would just say that Iraq was a western coalition invasion, so the countries sanctioning us would have had to have been the autocracies who probably didn't care much about us messing up a MENASA country.
Yea, I'd say that the degree of our compassions and actions often correspond with the degrees of difference in skin color or religious preference. I'm looking at this from a strictly war-criming and "need to stop X" perspective. When the skin color and religion gets closer to white/christian in a place subjected to humanitarian catastrophe, we tend to get to the "we need to do something about this" point a helluva lot quicker than when it's a non-white/non-christian situation. But if we want to be the shining beacon on the hill for the world to follow, what does it say about us when our policy seems to be "will help out only if you're sufficiently white/christian?" How's that look for us on the world stage? Can Eliot Cohen comment on this please? X-D
"Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola announced the suspension of their operations in Russia;" -- They're saving Mother Russia from the curse of globalism!
Ha, ha...yah...the "coming" globalism that is already here and acknowledged for those who actually pay attention to the world and watch things other than FoxNews.
"The hard truth is that greatest and most powerful nations in the world will watch as Putin pummels and destroys Ukraine." I don't think I've seen a sadder statement in all my life.
I *promise you* that when this conflict enters the insurgency phase, Americans will forget about it just as quickly as they forgot about the last 8 years of insurgency in the Donbas, and just as quickly as they forgot about the insurgencies we were fighting against in two wars. Americans *always* forget about horrible conflicts because they're just not fun or feel-good enough for a decadent society to cling to. People will go back to the mall. In a few months they'll all be saying "Zelenski who?" Decadence is the death of duty.
Remember that Mona (and Bill Kristol as well as much of/most of the Bulwark staff) was/is NeoCon and fully supported the disastrous Iraqi invasion (on false pretenses) and the “forever” occupation of Afghanistan. She also advocated for the U.S. to intervene in Libya and Syria. She has shown, and continues to show, a tremendous lack of humility in examining her previous “traditional” Republican positions.
“Inviting Russia to assert dominance [in Syria]…”. Good luck with that. No foreign country really asserts dominance in the Middle East. It is where empires go to die. Obama was 100% correct in choosing not to intervene in Syria or Libya.
I believe it was SecDef Robert Gates who said “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined.” He was right, on so many levels.
Her main point that we should be grateful that Trump is not President is 100% right. But she has been so wrong on so many other calls before that she basically has zero credibility with me.
Sending people to jail for calling a war a war is one thing, but what can Putin come up with to explain the problem with McDonald's? "You don't deserve a break today"??
I was saying this to a friend of mine. It seems that most politicians are greedy, self centered idiots. I never hear anything from intelligent politicians. It is always the ones with a grudge who want to get their constituents riled up about some nonsense that people don't care about.
Apparently the Polish government sprang this announcement on us and there's a lot of stuff to do to those planes before they can get sent to Ukraine, i.e. removing newer avionics that we don't want to fall into Russian hands. There's also the problem of getting them to Ukraine without them being shot down on the way there.
The US answer wasn't "No" it was not as fast as Poland wants to do it.
The one excuse I don't actually care about is that Putin will see this as an escalation. Putin sees anything short of giving in to his demands as an escalation.
p.s.: I also wonder if Russia tried to use nukes, after seeing the condition of his army, is if they would even work.
I wonder the same thing. His army was a chimera -- probably due to corruption. It's entirely possible those silos are empty. I'm sure he still has nukes, but are we overestimating the capability?
I'm thinking that their Nuke infrastructure is comprised of some very different Russians...not even close to the conscripts in their regular Army. Their accuracy would certainly be in question, but I'm not sure I would give any credence to the weapons not working or causing some very lethal devastation.
Completely agree -- I'm more questioning the numbers. 3,000 vs 6,000, that kind of thing. But that still means he has 3,000 nuclear weapons.
I was a tween/young teenager when the USSR fell apart, but I seem to remember tales of their nuclear arsenal being in disrepair back then once we were finally able to get a look at it. And since this has all felt like "Back in the USSR"...
The pathetic state of their army still blows me away, honestly.
We can't give Ukraine jets until we figure out a way to do it that is not a potential act of war. Fighter and ground attack airplanes flying from NATO bases into hostile airspace would be a huge escalation of NATO's position and involvement, even if the jets were unarmed and piloted by Ukrainian pilots.
I heard the same rationale; plus, some other details: apparently the Poles were looking for a way to recycle/pass on those MiG aircraft, and came up with a plan to offer them to the US in exchange for buying more modern fighter jets from the US--dangling a deal that served their own interests.
A criticism I heard of their move is that it popped up out of nowhere, unilaterally, instead of being discussed in the talks that have been taking place among the EU/NATO countries.
If they wanted to freely donate them to Ukraine and fly them there themselves or get Ukrainian pilots into Poland to fly them, they could easily do it. It's the country next door after all.
It's the country next door, but it's at war, and one of the combatants is more than a bit paranoid and xenophobic, and has openly threatened NATO with nuclear escalation. Some subtypes of the MiG-29 are nuclear capable. It's top speed is at least Mach 2, roughly 1500 mph. If MiG-29s flew from NATO, Russian forces in Belarus would literally have only a minute or two to decide whether to use tactical nuclear weapons to counter a battlefield nuclear strike. Considering how incompetent Russian commanders have been so far, I wouldn't want to give them that decision to make.
I didn't say this in my comment, but I think the whole MiG idea is DOA. I only heard the info about the agenda being to get a deal for US aircraft in a panel discussion on NPR, so it might or might not be correct, but it was an idea that should've been chewed over privately as all the other discussions among allies are.
However some people will now say the US missed a great opportunity to help Ukraine.
I can't discount the possibility that we are already secretly supplying aircraft to Ukraine; it's entirely possible. It's not inconceivable we have covert transport and surveillance aircraft in Ukraine airspace right now. We, the public, won't know until years after the conflict ends.
But doing such openly would be begging for escalation. Also, it would be begging for a "black swan" event. For instance, what if an unarmed plane openly flown across the Polish border by a Ukrainian pilot saw an air attack on a refugee train, and chose to ram the attacking Russian aircraft, contrary to orders?
The last few weeks have been an awful flashback to my Army days in the mid-80s, running maneuvers in the woods and fields of Germany in preparation for the Russians coming through the Fulda Gap. The survival time for my unit was predicted to be 12 minutes. The pictures I’m seeing are nothing short of an abomination, and I wonder how the West will navigate the tripwires ahead.
I listened to Charlie’s podcast today with General Hertling, and I had to admit his breakdown of the incomprehensible tactics, delusional strategy, and logistical vacuum was riveting. The lack of initiative (or living/training conditions or a strong professional core at any level of the bulk of their military) has apparently never changed and is proving a major weakness of the Russian military even decades later. With the size and lack of humanity of the Russian military, however, I can only hope that the Ukrainians have enough fight and fighters left to hold firm when the Russians attempt to hold what they take. I must admit that I was ashamed to listen to the general’s ray of sunshine at a possible outcome – it seemed a betrayal to let my mind skip over what the Ukrainian people will be suffering for the foreseeable future. I understand the dangers of beginning yet another world war, but bowing to threats and blackmail will only grant the world another temporary reprieve. Events may force our hand. Slava Ukraini!
I agree I find it a betrayal and hard to swallow that we would skip over what suffering the Ukrainians will have to go through. Not that we'd even skip over it but if we don't get in there and fight with them and we just let them take all the hits what are we doing?
Charlie - how can it be 1939 all over again when no one had nuclear weapons in 1939?
I don't know about all the talk anymore. Are we and NATO going to let Putin slaughter the Ukrainians and reduce their cities to rubble? I think we may need to walk softly over and grab our big sticks. Will there come a time when we will have wished we said WTF and just got up and stopped him? Are we going to wait until Ukraine is completely wasted and then go to war over Lithuania? And why are we worried about upsetting him by giving Ukraine jets? What did Zelensky just say about we cannot buy them off with fuel when they are losing their blood?
Putin knows he can keep using his sticks while the west is talking, and he slowly gets what he wants, the destruction of the Ukrainian people. He's counting on our hesitancy.
Yes, it's good that Trump isn't President but it's not so good Biden is President. Each of them creates their own kind of chaos.
Vice Ukraine: I can not believe I am saying this; generally see fighting wars as senseless suffering; generally upon innocent civilians.
But I see no alternative here. Even if Putin takes a hit in his ability to control, he will remain in power as long as he is useful to the oligarchs and their financial well being. If they are not willing to oust him now, they likely never will be.
If he stays in power, eventually he will convince himself that he won in Ukraine, no matter how obvious the loss. We need look no further than Florida to see how deluded those in power can become. Nor need we look far to see their ability to fool “some of the people allof the time”.
Inevitably, then, he will do this again. Surely, the Baltic nations and the entire EU see this.
My opinion, free and likely barely worth that, is that they, the EU and Baltics give Russia an ultimatum, back by preparation; either Russia stop bombing cities and civilians in Ukraine and withdraw or we go to war.
If not now, then the only question will be, who is next.
Loved Mona Charen's news article. I share her fear that Trump will get a second term.
As someone who was present for the destruction of Fallujah & Ramadi, and who then got to watch the destruction of Tripoli/Benghazi/Aleppo/Idlib on TV later on, it's REALLY weird seeing how much more Americans seem to care when it's white European cities getting bombed out of existence compared to when it's a mostly Muslim city that's in some part of the MENASA. Like, there is a stark difference between how Americans perceived the tens of thousands of innocent Shia and Sunni we bombarded with bad-intel airstrikes, white phosphorus munitions, HIMARs rockets, drone strikes, and roadblock shootings over the last 20 years compared to how we react to when Russia is doing it to white Europeans. Like, am I the only one who notices this disconnect or nah? Maybe we ought to think about our principles sometimes and think about why it is that we care sometimes and not so much others. It's telling the world a lot about ourselves.
Humans have circles of compassion. We care more about our families and close friends than we do about our next-door neighbors. We care more about those neighbors than we do about people one state over. Then come Canada, Europe, Mexico, and so forth. Those in the outer circles get less compassion. All humans are like this, everywhere in the world. We have the least compassion for non-humans in factory farms -- despite the constant, extreme suffering of billions of them every day.
Agreed regarding the pure humanitarian aspect of it, but there is a bit of a difference from my perspective anyway. Most of the Muslim countries/cities we attacked did have some history of being our adversaries, right? We didn't go against Iraq in 1990 without provocation. We didn't go into Afghanistan without provocation. We didn't go into Iraq in 2003 without provocation....regardless of the WMD aspect. Iraq had demonstrated for a decade that they weren't going to be the best neighbors in the neighborhood with Saddam in charge.
I would say that our intervention into Kosovo wasn't right away and there was a similar lack of compassion for a long time before we intervened and that was a genocide going on. That involved Muslims though...so maybe that bolsters your argument.
Bottom line is that I do think it is an issue, but at the same time our interventions were in response...not like Russia's BS reasons for attacking Ukraine....so the US compassion was minimized for sure.
I would argue that Iraq 2003 was the most like Ukraine 2022.
Today Iraq is a sovereign country with very little US involvement.
Do you think that will be Ukraine’s fate if Russia conquers them?
Like, can Thomas Freidman come up with some kind of "golden arches" theory of why Americans sit on our asses through a Rwanda or a Syria but then lose our shit when Kyiv catches airstrikes?
Because of NATO.
Yeah.
It could be because most Americans have ancestors who immigrated from Europe and thus identify with Europeans more readily.
It could be because many Americans have been tourists in European countries and so it is more personal to them.
It could be because more Americans have cultural similarities with Europeans.
It could be because we have treaty obligations to countries surrounding Ukraine.
It could be because, in the cases of Rwanda, Syria, and Libya, they were fighting civil wars. (And in the case of Iraq we were the aggressor and maybe the U.S. should have been sanctioned for its invasion.)
It could be because we are, rightly, horrified of one country simply rolling over another.
It could be because, as the 1619 Project highlighted, we have some deep racism in our country.
I suspect it is a combination of all of the above.
I would just say that Iraq was a western coalition invasion, so the countries sanctioning us would have had to have been the autocracies who probably didn't care much about us messing up a MENASA country.
Yea, I'd say that the degree of our compassions and actions often correspond with the degrees of difference in skin color or religious preference. I'm looking at this from a strictly war-criming and "need to stop X" perspective. When the skin color and religion gets closer to white/christian in a place subjected to humanitarian catastrophe, we tend to get to the "we need to do something about this" point a helluva lot quicker than when it's a non-white/non-christian situation. But if we want to be the shining beacon on the hill for the world to follow, what does it say about us when our policy seems to be "will help out only if you're sufficiently white/christian?" How's that look for us on the world stage? Can Eliot Cohen comment on this please? X-D
"Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola announced the suspension of their operations in Russia;" -- They're saving Mother Russia from the curse of globalism!
They're saving them from fast food and overpriced coffee
Ha, ha...yah...the "coming" globalism that is already here and acknowledged for those who actually pay attention to the world and watch things other than FoxNews.
"The hard truth is that greatest and most powerful nations in the world will watch as Putin pummels and destroys Ukraine." I don't think I've seen a sadder statement in all my life.
I *promise you* that when this conflict enters the insurgency phase, Americans will forget about it just as quickly as they forgot about the last 8 years of insurgency in the Donbas, and just as quickly as they forgot about the insurgencies we were fighting against in two wars. Americans *always* forget about horrible conflicts because they're just not fun or feel-good enough for a decadent society to cling to. People will go back to the mall. In a few months they'll all be saying "Zelenski who?" Decadence is the death of duty.
I don't agree with you at all. There are stark differences in this conflict.
"Don't believe me? Just watch." - Bruno Mars
When Putin escalates his tactics…it’s going to get uglier than anything you can imagine.
I hope you’re right.
The Patriot missile systems are being sent to Poland, not Ukraine. The article was corrected to reflect the mistake.
Remember that Mona (and Bill Kristol as well as much of/most of the Bulwark staff) was/is NeoCon and fully supported the disastrous Iraqi invasion (on false pretenses) and the “forever” occupation of Afghanistan. She also advocated for the U.S. to intervene in Libya and Syria. She has shown, and continues to show, a tremendous lack of humility in examining her previous “traditional” Republican positions.
“Inviting Russia to assert dominance [in Syria]…”. Good luck with that. No foreign country really asserts dominance in the Middle East. It is where empires go to die. Obama was 100% correct in choosing not to intervene in Syria or Libya.
I believe it was SecDef Robert Gates who said “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined.” He was right, on so many levels.
Her main point that we should be grateful that Trump is not President is 100% right. But she has been so wrong on so many other calls before that she basically has zero credibility with me.
Sending people to jail for calling a war a war is one thing, but what can Putin come up with to explain the problem with McDonald's? "You don't deserve a break today"??
No, they don't!
LOL.
I also wonder if withholding coffee from the Russians (i.e. Starbucks closings) is in the realm of being a war crime? :-)
Starbucks sells coffee?
Really overpriced coffee.
Which is Biden’s fault.
Sorry….I was just on FoxNews.
I knew it!
Thanks for not letting Bill Barr off the hook. He is the worst Attorney General in our nation's history, despite stiff competition from John Mitchell.
Where is *our* Zelensky?
Why is it that 98% of our elected Senators and Representatives are posers?
We have Trump, McConnell, Graham, Cruz, Rubio, Hawley; my God, the list is never ending.
Where is *our* Zelensky?
I was saying this to a friend of mine. It seems that most politicians are greedy, self centered idiots. I never hear anything from intelligent politicians. It is always the ones with a grudge who want to get their constituents riled up about some nonsense that people don't care about.
Apparently the Polish government sprang this announcement on us and there's a lot of stuff to do to those planes before they can get sent to Ukraine, i.e. removing newer avionics that we don't want to fall into Russian hands. There's also the problem of getting them to Ukraine without them being shot down on the way there.
The US answer wasn't "No" it was not as fast as Poland wants to do it.
The one excuse I don't actually care about is that Putin will see this as an escalation. Putin sees anything short of giving in to his demands as an escalation.
p.s.: I also wonder if Russia tried to use nukes, after seeing the condition of his army, is if they would even work.
I wonder the same thing. His army was a chimera -- probably due to corruption. It's entirely possible those silos are empty. I'm sure he still has nukes, but are we overestimating the capability?
I'm thinking that their Nuke infrastructure is comprised of some very different Russians...not even close to the conscripts in their regular Army. Their accuracy would certainly be in question, but I'm not sure I would give any credence to the weapons not working or causing some very lethal devastation.
Completely agree -- I'm more questioning the numbers. 3,000 vs 6,000, that kind of thing. But that still means he has 3,000 nuclear weapons.
I was a tween/young teenager when the USSR fell apart, but I seem to remember tales of their nuclear arsenal being in disrepair back then once we were finally able to get a look at it. And since this has all felt like "Back in the USSR"...
The pathetic state of their army still blows me away, honestly.
We can't give Ukraine jets until we figure out a way to do it that is not a potential act of war. Fighter and ground attack airplanes flying from NATO bases into hostile airspace would be a huge escalation of NATO's position and involvement, even if the jets were unarmed and piloted by Ukrainian pilots.
I heard the same rationale; plus, some other details: apparently the Poles were looking for a way to recycle/pass on those MiG aircraft, and came up with a plan to offer them to the US in exchange for buying more modern fighter jets from the US--dangling a deal that served their own interests.
A criticism I heard of their move is that it popped up out of nowhere, unilaterally, instead of being discussed in the talks that have been taking place among the EU/NATO countries.
If they wanted to freely donate them to Ukraine and fly them there themselves or get Ukrainian pilots into Poland to fly them, they could easily do it. It's the country next door after all.
It's the country next door, but it's at war, and one of the combatants is more than a bit paranoid and xenophobic, and has openly threatened NATO with nuclear escalation. Some subtypes of the MiG-29 are nuclear capable. It's top speed is at least Mach 2, roughly 1500 mph. If MiG-29s flew from NATO, Russian forces in Belarus would literally have only a minute or two to decide whether to use tactical nuclear weapons to counter a battlefield nuclear strike. Considering how incompetent Russian commanders have been so far, I wouldn't want to give them that decision to make.
I didn't say this in my comment, but I think the whole MiG idea is DOA. I only heard the info about the agenda being to get a deal for US aircraft in a panel discussion on NPR, so it might or might not be correct, but it was an idea that should've been chewed over privately as all the other discussions among allies are.
However some people will now say the US missed a great opportunity to help Ukraine.
I can't discount the possibility that we are already secretly supplying aircraft to Ukraine; it's entirely possible. It's not inconceivable we have covert transport and surveillance aircraft in Ukraine airspace right now. We, the public, won't know until years after the conflict ends.
But doing such openly would be begging for escalation. Also, it would be begging for a "black swan" event. For instance, what if an unarmed plane openly flown across the Polish border by a Ukrainian pilot saw an air attack on a refugee train, and chose to ram the attacking Russian aircraft, contrary to orders?