The War Widens Further as the Result of Putin’s Belated and Half-way Measures

November 3, 2022 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

The War Widens Further as the Result of Putin’s Belated and Half-way Measures

Paul Craig Roberts

https://www.rt.com/news/565817-russia-norway-military-alert/ 

https://www.rt.com/russia/565792-russian-nato-troops-border/

https://www.rt.com/russia/565747-us-troops-in-ukraine/  

Putin’s restraint in the use of force has possibly made it impossible for the Kremlin to end the conflict with a Russian victory.  In the eight months that Putin has wasted, Washington has revised its policy governing the use of nuclear weapons.  Washington says its new policy is to use nuclear weapons against threats that are not themselves nuclear threats.  In other words, if Washington believes a decisive Russian victory over Ukraine is a threat to US national security or interest, Washington can use nuclear weapons to prevent a Russian victory.  https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stunning-strategy-reversal-pentagon-will-no-longer-rule-out-use-nuclear-weapons-against-non  

Considering Putin’s caution, this would seem to rule out a clear-cut Russian victory.  As the US opposes negotiating a settlement except one on Ukraine’s terms, the territory reincorporated into Russia could remain under Ukrainian attack for many years, at least as long as Washington supplies weapons. 

Possibly Washington has succeeded in creating a long-lived Vietnam-type situation for Russia.  The many years that the Kremlin permitted US-funded NGOs to operate in Russia has created voices receptive to Putin’s removal, voices that can be organized to push in that direction aided by an inconclusive war.  Whether Putin’s removal is likely or not, the neoconservatives believe it is.  The neoconservatives will proceed by putting more restrictions on Putin’s ability to  act with sufficient force to bring the war to a successful conclusion for Russia without the risk of nuclear war.  Expect Washington to decorate Ukrainian infrastructure with American advisors so that Russian attacks on Ukrainian war capability will involve American deaths and, thus, serve to limit the Kremlin’s ability to prevail on Russia’s terms.

It is extraordinary that after eight months the Kremlin has not realized that its policy of delay is a strategic blunder.

The Kremlin,  Americans,  and people worldwide  do not understand that the view that prevails of the Ukrainian conflict is false.  There is objective reporting of how the military conflict proceeds on Southfront.com , but there is no general understanding that the origin of the conflict lies with Washington’s neoconservatives.

Neither is there  understanding that Putin’s “limited military operation” is not an invasion of Ukraine, but a limited action to clear Ukrainian forces out of the territory of the Russian independent republics, belatedly reunited with Russia as Crimea was 8 years ago. From Russia’s standpoint, the fighting is now on Russian territory.

But from Washington’s standpoint, the fighting is on Ukraine’s territory, and Washington has been able, thanks to Putin’s endless hesitations, to create barriers to the success of the Kremlin’s limited operation.

The Kremlin doesn’t seem to realize this, perhaps because the Kremlin is defensive about its strategic blunder arising from ignoring that Washington would not forgo the opportunity to expand into wider war Putin’s “limited operation.”

When I read Johnson’s Russian List, a collection of articles from presstitute media and Russophobic “foreign policy experts,” I see very little real comprehension.  It its place is  anti-Russian propaganda.  This article in the Wall Street Journal is an example of what passes for analysis in US foreign policy circles–https://www.wsj.com/articles/recaptured-ukraine-collaborators-resisters-russian-occupation-11667315408 

The problem with propaganda is that it not only creates a false picture of the enemy, but also creates a false understanding, a false consciousness among the opposing party to the conflict. In other words, those generating the propaganda fool themselves.  In the US and its NATO puppets a false consciousness prevails.

Putin, having let pass previous opportunities to protect the Donbass Russians without need of war, finally had no alternative to war.  Instead of understanding that the war had to be decisive and immediately concluded, so as to preclude Western involvement, the Kremlin’s go-slow war gave Washington all the time it needed to create a situation  so that a decision by Russia to actually fight and to win victory in Ukraine means Russia has to take the risk of  Washington entering the war to prevent a Russian victory.

To summarize, Washington, with the ruling neoconservative commitment to American hegemony, and Russia, with her commitment to a multi-polar world, does not present a situation open to compromise.  It leaves us with a threat  of war  over whether countries are sovereign or puppets of Washington.

I am for independence and diversity among nations, not within nations.  The question before the world is whether Russia and China can achieve sufficient dominance to check the drive for US hegemony without nuclear war.

During the 20th century Cold War, President Ronald Reagan, despite CIA opposition, was determined to remove the threat of nuclear war by bringing the Cold War to an end. The liberal press was never very supportive of Reagan, but today the liberal press is all for nuclear war.  8/advocating-world-war-three-is-just-mainstream-punditry-now/ 

Putin’s limited, go-slow war has created an image of the Kremlin as irresolute, and this image plays into the neoconservatives’ hands and encourages them to cross more red lines.