I didn’t make this map and it isn’t based on what I think. I put it up because reader GrimJim sent it to me and I think it’s well done and a good place to start a conversation.
Author: Ian Welsh Page 126 of 437
It’s consensus in the West now that Russia’s military sucks.
Does it?
As Scott Ritter pointed out and as I find it shocking that almost no one else pointed out, Russia invaded with a lot less men than Ukraine has. Regular forces, plus reserves, plus border guards, plus miscellaneous other groups, Ukraine had about 600K. With allies from the Republics, Russia had about 190K.
Russia has air superiority, but not air supremacy over Ukraine, but the bottom line is that they invaded with about a 1/3 ground force disadvantage.
When you look at it that way, the narrative that NATO trained troops are so much better than Russian ones starts looking questionable. Say what you will about the Russians, they have pushed the Ukrainians back and I very much doubt the Western casualty figures are accurate. Perhaps Russian troops are actually superior to NATO ones. It’s certainly at least as viable as a narrative.
There are two important things to note here:
First, the number of troops supports the Russia claim that they never have intended to conquer and occupy the entire country, because even if they thought Ukrainian morale was weak, in no way is a 1/3 outnumbered ground force sufficient to do so.
Second, Ukrainian forces in the east are not getting significant resupply. All roads aren’t held by the Russians, but because of Russian air superiority they are closed to significant supply convoys. As I understand it, Ukrainian forces in the East are down to about 9 days of supply.
If Russia keeps them out of resupply, and keeps them unable to move (fleeing down those roads means Russia’s air force gets a turkey-shoot) then when they run out of supply, they’ll collapse and be captured or killed en-masse.
I don’t know if this the correct picture of the war, I’m not a military analyst and it’s not an area of significant interest to me.
But let’s say this assessment is correct. The entire narrative we’ve been fed about the war will turn out to be false, and will be proven false in a way which cannot be denied.
We’ll know soon enough. It’s hard to be sure. Ukraine is effectively refusing to negotiate, so they think they still stand a chance and they may know something we don’t.
I’ll place one market in the ground, though: if a claim is made that Russia used chemical weapons I will not believe it without incontrovertible evidence. They have no reason to do so. If they want to increase their military force, they can do so easily enough with conventional weapons. Despite rhetoric they haven’t been using strategies like level bombing; they’ve only used a few of their most dangerous missiles and so on. They can ramp up force with causing the sort of backlash chemical weapons will cause. So if there’s a claim, I will suspect it is false flag.
Cui Bono
Finally, as I have stated many times before, the analysis has nothing to do with any preferences of mine about who should win. I want the war over and civilians safe, and I was a critic of Putin back when liberals thought he was their man in Moscow.
So, as many readers will have heard, Russia has said it will only accept rubles in exchange for its exports to “hostile nations” — which is to say, those nations who have sanctioned it over Ukraine.
The main thing to understand is that the West froze hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian reserves on account in the West. They sold us stuff for Euros and dollars and we will now not let them use those dollars or Euros. Sanctions mean that even the dollars and euros they have cannot buy many, perhaps most things, in most Western countries and Japan.
So selling us anything in dollars and euros doesn’t make much sense: they can’t use them without exchanging them for other currencies, and our sanctions make that difficult, since they’re closed out from our banking system.
Thus, rubles. An additional advantage of this is that it increases the value of the ruble, which had collapsed under sanctions.
In order to buy Russian oil and gas, Europeans will have to get rubles. Russians are unlikely to want a lot of euros or dollars because they’re almost impossible to spend, so Europe will probably have to buy Yuan and Rupees, then trade those currencies for Rubles. Paying with gold isn’t really practical, because it would have to be physically shipped to Russia or on account with a country they trust (China, India, a few others). Obviously gold in Western banks is not safe.
Russia’s main exports are oil, gas, wheat and minerals. There are usually other sources, but without Russia there aren’t enough to satisfy world demand. Sanctions on Russia, because they are such a big wheat exporter, may wind up killing a few million people in the global South, more than will be killed in the war.
From the point of view of the West, this is a continuation of de-dollarization. If Saudi Arabia also sells oil to China in Yuan, it will be a big deal. Prices are still set in dollars, but I expect that may end fairly soon.
Payment systems are being set up, and the world will split into two different trade areas. China wants another five to ten years before the big (inevitable) split with the West, they may or may not get it, but if they have any sense they won’t allow Russia to be choked out. They certainly aren’t going to cooperate with US sanctions, and that means they need to cleanly separate their financial system from ours, so that funds can’t be seized in transit, executives can’t be locked up and so on.
The Russians didn’t expect this, they were taken by surprise. Probably because, in fact, it’s a weapon that can only be used against a country like Russia (as opposed to Venezuela or Iran or Afghanistan), once. No one outside the West can now trust the West’s system, and everyone with sense will want their reserves kept elsewhere.
This is mostly a good thing, the West has terribly abused its currency primary to hurt other nations, even before the abuse of sanctions which largely accelerated under Clinton. Control of dollars was part of the arsenal used to keep the South poor and the US in control. China was able to get around this because of American greed and stupidity, and now that it has, it has a veto. Since Russia being taken out will lead it to be surrounded by enemies, it is going to use that veto. Again, Russia cannot be choked out by financial and economic sanctions if China does not permit.
I have been writing about this for almost 20 years now, it was clear it would happen eventually but exactly when and how were unclear. For a few years I’ve been saying we were moving to a Cold War world, and we are.
The difference is that unlike in 1950 or 2000, the West is not clearly stronger than the coalition against it. The USSR was always weaker economically, and though for much of the 50s and 60s they had higher growth (something forgotten today), in retrospect and for some of the smarter people at the time, the outcome was never in doubt, it just needed to be managed so it didn’t turn into World War 3.
This time the outcome is in doubt, and I think the smart money would bet slightly against the West, maybe 3/2. The wild card is climate change, which will hit China very hard, but could also do great damage to Europe and America.
Putin was foolish to get into this situation, reserves should have been withdrawn, but this is a smart move. It’s also going to hurt Europe a lot and damage German industry, whose costs will skyrocket (I have little sympathy, given that Germany has used the Euro to basically de-industrialize most of the rest of the EU.)
The post-American hegemony world isn’t quite here, but it’s being born. Welcome to the Age of War and Revolution and the Twilight of the Neoliberalism.
So, these days, whenever one points out that America, Britain and various other nations have committed the exact same fundamental war crime as Russia: invading another country which has not attacked you first, the rejoinder is always “whataboutism.” The idea is that just because we did something bad doesn’t mean we shouldn’t punish others for doing the same thing, even though we were never punished.
I spent quite a bit of time thinking about this over the last few weeks. It’s a version of “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
I disagree that one should punish someone else for doing what we did ourselves that we weren’t punished for. It’s not justice, it’s wrong, and it destroys all respect for law and for those who insist “me and my friends can destroy whoever we want, but you can’t, because you aren’t one of us.”
At a fundamental level this is one reason so many Chinese and Indians support Russia, not the Ukraine or the West. (The other is that they feel NATO pushed Russia into a corner. You may disagree but I see this over and over again.)
Back in 2017 there was a narrative that Russia interfered in the US election and that it was the worstest thing ever, a great crime and an outrage. Let us assume that Russia did try to influence the election (I sure would, if I were them.)
Americans have interfered in other countries elections many times, on top of launching multiple coups. So when Americans squeal about Russian election interference, I just laugh. Heck, back in 96 the US bragged about helping get Yeltsin elected. You can see a page from the Time article about the interference.
So I don’t care if Russia interfered.
If, however, Americans suddenly realized “Oh my God! Foreign election interference is terrible and we now understand that it shouldn’t be done”, then the principled response would have been for the US to go to Russia and say, “look, we’ve both done it and we both did the wrong thing. Let’s make a pact that neither of us will interfere in foreign elections ever again.”
Now, no one can take Western government mewling about how evil Russia is seriously who has a memory and isn’t a hypocrite. Some individual Westerners, yes: those who opposed Iraq, for example. But governments who went into Iraq or Libya or engaged in various other wars? Grow up.
When America goes on and on about this all that China and India and so do is roll their eyes. They know Western objections aren’t because it’s illegal or unjust or evil, it’s just about power. Nor is it about “territorial integrity.”
https://twitter.com/GhalebM0nz1i7/status/1504891321059786759
So what would we say and do if we were sincere?
We are sanctioning Russia for its attack on Ukraine. At the same time we now realize that our attacks on Iraq and Libya were also unjustified war crimes. We pledge 10 trillion dollars in reparations to Iraq and 5 trillion in reparations to Libya over the next 10 years. We will remove all sanctions from Afghanistan so that their population no longer starves and we will no longer supply Saudi Arabia with weapons, munitions or military aid until it stops its war on Yemen.
Putin is a war criminal, but so are many US politicians. We will immediately start war crimes trials against George W. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton among many others for their roles in Iraq and Libya. We understand that Tony Blair and other responsible UK politicians will also be tried for their participation and we urge other countries involved in Iraq and Libya to do the same.
We call for Russia to remove Putin from power, and try him for his war crime as well. All sanctions will be removed immediately if Russian troops withdraw from Ukraine.
We are sorry that we had to see this war crime committed against Ukraine before we recognized how heinous it was, and promise we will never again attack a country which has not attacked us or a country we are allied to.
Now, of course, the idea that the American government would ever say something like this is beyond ludicrous, but that’s the point.
The West isn’t sanctioning Russia because they are bad, and no one is required to help the West sanction Russia for moral reasons because what we’re doing has nothing to do with morality or justice. If it did, we would either have acted differently in the not very distance past and present (Yemen, Somalia is also being bombed, Afghans are starving) or we would now apologize and hold ourselves responsible for our past actions.
Sanctions and aid for Ukraine, from governments in the West have nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with power and interest.
Still, it’s interesting to think about how we would act if our societies were run by anyone ethical.
Leaders have power. They often don’t have to care what happens to most people, because those people can neither help nor hurt them. As a result, most leaders act badly, and hurt great numbers of people.
There are three qualities you need in a good leader of large groups.
1) kindness to people who can never help or hurt them. This is the origin of seeing how people treat waiters or other service staff.
The problem with this test is that a lot of people want to be liked by everyone they meet and are good at making it happen. Bill Clinton was famous for making everyone he met feel important. He also signed the bill slashing Welfare and did various other things that hurt many Americans and people overseas, in particular imposing murderous sanctions on Iraq and bombing a pharmaceutical factory.
Still, it’s the first test. It’s less important than the second and third qualities.
2) concern for the affect of their actions on people they will never even meet.
Most people a leader will affect he or she will never meet. So they have to care about people they don’t know, or they won’t try and do right by them. Almost no major politician alive passes this test. Jeremy Corbyn did: he cared about everyone.
3) Willingness to take away the power of bad actors, even if that hurts them.
If you care about everyone and won’t hurt a fly, you can’t deal with people who do harm. This was Corbyn’s flaw: he wouldn’t remove staffers and MPs who stood in direct opposition to his policies and beliefs and who made it clear they wanted to do him nothing but harm. The staffers took deliberate actions to make Labor lose the election and in 2017 the margin of loss was so small that Corbyn would probably have been Prime Minister if they hadn’t.
MPs could have been re-selected (made to undergo primaries when the majority of those voting were left-wing, to oversimplify) en-masse, but Corbyn never did that either. If he had, Labour would still be controlled by the left and would eventually back into power, whether Corbyn was leader or not. Instead Keir Starmer has done what Corbyn wouldn’t, and purged the party (of left wingers in his case) and, in fact, will probably back into power not because he is liked at all, but because people are sick of Johnson and the Tories.
The task of any form of selection of who leads is to select good leaders. It is clear that representative democracy does not do so, and so we need to find a better way. This is true of groups we don’t consider governmental, but which really are, like corporations, as well.