Europe is Facing Defeat in Ukraine
Are Euro-Policies Counterproductive?
Europe is facing defeat in Ukraine but European policies are going sideways. Europe’s approach to the Ukraine issue seems to not reflect the growing reality on the ground. Growing efforts to punish Russia and promote sending troops to Ukraine appear counterproductive.
A good example is Germany.
Germany will keep supporting Ukraine and will keep pushing its anti-Russia agenda, with Scholz no longer referring to Vladimir Putin as Russia's president but will now speak of the Russian leader only by his last name, Putin. Germany won't send Taurus missiles to Ukraine where they will be used to attack Moscow, because Russia knows all about their plan and the Russians have told Scholz they will retaliate if he sends them. Exactly how Russia will retaliate is left to Scholz's imagination.
Scholz's behavior is no different than that of other leaders in Europe (other than Hungary) and of the super-governmental EU. All of them now understand that the Russians are winning in Ukraine and, bit by bit, Ukraine is collapsing.
That is why Macron is trying so hard to build a coalition to send NATO-country troops to Ukraine. At least so far, his counterparts are listening, but they are holding back. The lack of support for sending Euro-troops to Ukraine is not surprising.
From an operational perspective, it would not be easy to move NATO troops to Ukraine (beyond those already there). While they might be able to put some troops in western Ukraine, where there is no fighting, they know the Russians would use their long range missiles and air force to destroy them. The Europeans have little in the way of deployable air defenses, and if they transferred more of them to protect their troops inserted into Ukraine they would be naked at home. In fact, they already have drained their air defenses to an unprecedented degree supporting Ukraine.
Most armies in Europe are understaffed and underfunded. European land armies are tiny and inexperienced in combat. Fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq or in the Sahel is not the same as fighting a modern Russian army that is well equipped and experienced in large scale warfare.
It is noteworthy that all the western plans to defeat the Russians have failed. You need to look past the mutual recriminations and understand that "the plan" was a fantasy. If the Ukrainian offensive used a preponderance of western hardware, had exceptional tactical intelligence, thousands of drones, and endless ammunition, and still went belly-up, the future is grim. The leaked Pentagon report that showed casualties at 7 Ukrainians to every 1 Russian (or worse) was the handwriting on the wall.
The French understand the arithmetic, but Macron's "plan" is even worse than the one ginned up by the US Defense Department.
Macron hints at sending 20,000 French troops to Odesa. What would they do there? The Russians also are thinking about Odesa, and might be tempted by the idea of killing two birds with one stone. Dimitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, and former Russian President, said on February 22nd: "We have longed for Odesa in the Russian Federation, because of the city’s history, the people who live there, and the language they speak. This is our Russian city.” French troops in Odesa would serve no military purpose other than to encourage the Russians to attack the city.
The Russians did not start off in the Ukraine war in good form militarily. They made many tactical mistakes. But that has changed as the Russian army has toughened up and its command, with the exception of the Russian navy, is far improved at all levels. Russian industry is producing more and better weapons and is outpacing all of the west, including the United States. While Europe and the US are actively trying to improve defense manufacturing, it will take years to even replace the weapons destroyed in the Ukraine war.
Today Europe is gripped with fear of Russia. That fear is not entirely misplaced. Marine Le Pen, who is parliamentary party leader of the National Rally in the French Assembly, in an interview on March 20th with BFM-TV (Paris) said that Russia is unlikely to attack Europe because it lacks a large enough army for the task. But her appreciation is not shared by those in power in France, Germany, Britain or Poland, no matter what brave words they tell their home audiences. They fear what will happen when Ukraine is defeated.
“There is something that I do not admit in the behavior of Emmanuel Macron, it is that he plays politics with war. Emmanuel Macron seeks to set a trap for his adversaries according to the principle which consists of saying: 'You are either pro-Macron and if you are not pro-Macron, you are for Putin' We cannot play with war or with peace.
—Marine Le Pen
What is unusual is how Europe is responding to its growing fear. Instead of trying to find a way to head off a disaster in Ukraine, Europe is doubling down on trying to "punish" Russia, adding more sanctions and getting ready to take already seized Russian assets and hand them over to Kiev. The Europeans seem oblivious or even don't care how their actions will be viewed in Moscow.
Objectively there is not much Europe can really do to save Ukraine from defeat. A lot is being made of Ukraine's ammunition shortage, which is real, but little said that there isn't any ammunition to ship there. Ukraine's real problem is manpower. They have run out of people willing to serve, and morale in the Ukrainian army is starting to crack. These growing manifestations of collapse are bound to bring about political change in Kiev.
Some of the disintegration is reflected in strange Ukrainian military tactics that border on either the suicidal or stupid. The waste of manpower on meaningless assaults on Krynky is an example of a suicide mission, as was the attempt to hold onto Avdiivka, which resulted in heavy casualties. The latest attacks on Russian territory around Belgorod also qualify as suicide missions resulting in high casualties. Ukraine's apparent interest in seizing Russian nuclear weapons near Belgorod at an installation called Belgorod-22, and a missile and drone attack on the Kurchatov nuclear plant are indicative of a reckless policy by the Kiev government. It is what you do when you see you are in a trap.
Scholz says he won't accept a Putin-dictated peace in Ukraine. This is the rough equivalent of Scholz saying he won't let Trump win the US Presidential election. Not only is Scholz's position nonsense, but it misses the mark.
The likely end of the Ukraine conflict will come when the Ukrainian army decides it can't keep fighting. Then the army will refuse orders from Kiev, or it will seek to change the leaders in Kiev. There already are examples of units refusing orders and even one platoon surrendering on the condition that these Ukrainian soldiers not be part of any exchange with Ukraine, since they know either they will go to prison or be used again on the front lines, meaning certain death.
Ukraine is rapidly reaching the point where the Ukrainian army, or the people, or both have to decide if staying in the war is in the country's national interest, or even if they can hope to survive if they keep fighting.
Europe's leaders on one level know where all this is headed in Ukraine, but they don't want to be honest either with their own people or themselves. So they are doubling down in support of a lost war.
Three observations....
The MSM and government officials in the West refer to this as 'Putin's War.' The fact of the matter is Putin could die in his sleep tonight and the trajectory of this war would not change. There is a universal understanding amongst those who govern the Russian Federation that a NATO aligned Ukraine is an existential security threat to Russia. The war would go on.
Joe Biden insists that there will be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine (or at least none that are acknowledged). Might things change if he were to be re-elected in November? Three US presidents, all Democrats, swore up and down to the voters that they would NOT send our 'boys' to fight in overseas wars when they were running for re-election. They were Wilson in 1916, FDR in 1940 and LBJ in 1964. All reneged on their promise and committed US forces to combat. Might Scranton Joe be number four? He has repeatedly stated that "Putin must not win."
Finally, the West has repeatedly gloated about Ukraine's successful attacks against Russia's Black Sea fleet. Russia is a land power and its navy played a strictly minor supporting role in both World War I and II. In fact, during World War II many Soviet sailors were used as infantry. The sea battle here is a side-show; the operations that matter are the air/land battle.
2,000 or even 20,000 french troops won't be enough to do anything. Nor will the Taurus missiles, which Ukraine will get, sooner or later. If necessary, france and the various other eurovassals will remind germany of something called "european solidarity", which is one of those nebulous concepts that europoliticians use to enforce compliance, only to withdraw when it no longer is convenient.
20,000 french troops will just get mangled. The problem is that, if and when that happens, Macron won't just take his bat and ball and go home. It's the escalation after that that concerns me. With every reckless escalation, the sunk cost of leaving Ukraine grows. That, combined with the fact that european leaders themselves never face any consequences, leads them to keep doubling down. This abuse of The Sunk Cost Fallacy is entirely intentional.
No, that escalation will not be popular. Macron doesn't care, nor do the other vassals, puppets, lackeys, catamites and buttbois in office in europe. Nor are they bluffing. We've seen that with every other escalation in this war. They are deadly serious when they would burn all of us, if that is what it takes for Russia not to win.