How Does It End? Fissures Emerge Over What Constitutes Victory in Ukraine

 David E. Sanger, Steven Erlanger and Eric Schmitt

May 26, 2022

WASHINGTON — Three months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America and its allies are quietly debating the inevitable question: How does this end?

In recent days, presidents and prime ministers as well as the Democratic and Republican Party leaders in the United States have called for victory in Ukraine. But just beneath the surface are real divisions about what that would look like — and whether “victory” has the same definition in the United States, in Europe and, perhaps most importantly, in Ukraine.

30 Years With No Strategy Brought Us the War in Ukraine

Douglas Macgregor

May 23, 2022

Washington DC has not excelled in grand strategy; the art and science of cost-effectively employing the diplomatic, economic, and informational powers of the United States in combination with its armed forces to secure its national goals and interests. Most of the strategic decisions to use American military power that were made over the last 30 years resulted in one of two strategic outcomes: abject failure (Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Iraq) or a new regional status quo that is untenable without a permanent U.S. military presence far from America’s borders (the Balkans).

No Way Out But War

Chris Hedges

May 23, 2022

 The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable COVID relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

Washington’s Tolerance of Death Squad ‘Democracies’

 Ted Galen Carpenter

May 21, 2022

The U.S. government has had a long, dishonorable history of forging and sustaining close relations with murderous dictatorships – as long as they supported Washington’s foreign policy. Such authoritarian US allies as the Shah of Iran, Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, the Saudi royal family, and a succession of South Korean and Guatemalan military rulers (among others) were confirmation of that cynical approach throughout the Cold War. US administrations (especially Ronald Reagan’s administration) also looked the other way or even offered quiet support as the dictatorships in Chile and Argentina executed brutal, indiscriminate crackdowns.

Biden and the Democrats pivot to proxy war

James Carden

May 12, 2022

WASHINGTON – The Russian war on Ukraine has seen ‘the Blob’ reassert itself with a vengeance in the 11 weeks since Russia announced the commencement of hostilities on February 24.

This article will examine the forces shaping President Joe Biden’s approach to the Ukraine crisis, and then move on to explore the state of foreign policy debate, or lack thereof, within Biden’s Democratic Party.

Former high-ranking military officials, intelligence analysts and diplomats who served at various points during the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump administrations paint a picture in recent conversations with Asia Times of the likely policy options being presented to President Biden as he faces the gravest crisis on the European continent since the Second World War.

Finland and Sweden will join NATO at the expense of everything

 Anatol Lieven

5/13/2022

There is a sad and rather pathetic irony about the expected application of Finland and Sweden to join NATO.

Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a military superpower, it occupied most of central Europe, its troops were stationed in the heart of Germany, and Soviet Communism— for a while at least  — seemed to be a genuine threat to Western capitalist democracy. Throughout those decades however, Finland and Sweden remained officially neutral.

I led talks on Donbas and Crimea in the 90s. Here’s how the war should end

 John Quigley

MAY 9, 2022

As the war in Ukraine continues to take thousands of lives, distressingly little attention is being devoted to bringing it to an end.

Negotiations are stalled, and other governments are not pushing for a resumption. At some point, however, hopefully sooner than later, there will be a negotiated settlement that will need to deal with the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine. The Donbas was the focus of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree he issued three days before invading recognizing the claimed separate status of the region’s two provinces.

Bret Stephens: Can we still be optimistic about America?

 Bret Stephens

 May 14, 2022, 10:00 a.m.

The pessimism comes in many flavors. There is progressive pessimism: The country is tilting toward MAGA-hatted fascism or a new version of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” There is conservative pessimism: The institutions, from primary schools to the Pentagon, are all being captured by wokeness. There is Afropessimism: Black people have always been excluded by systemic, ineradicable racism. There is the pessimism of the white middle and working classes: The country and the values they’ve known for generations are being hijacked by smug, self-dealing elites who view them with contempt.

Biden’s Folly In Ukraine

APRIL 5, 2022DOUGLAS MACGREGORAmericans find it difficult to determine whether the Biden administration’s policy decisions regarding Ukraine are the product of a deliberate strategy, extraordinary incompetence, or some combination of both. Threatening Russia, a nuclear armed power, with regime change and then annunciating a nuclear weapons policy that allows for the United States’ first-strike use of nuclear weapons under “extreme circumstances”—responding to an invasion by conventional forces, or chemical or biological attacks—suggests President Biden and his administration really are out of touch with reality.

Five Reasons To Be Increasingly Worried About the War in Ukraine

Ted Snider

May 7, 2022

The New York Times reported on May 1 that "the Biden administration" – the same one that ignored Putin’s warnings about Russia’s red line regarding NATO expansion to Ukraine – "increasingly casts aside fears expressed by some early in the war that too much American assistance to Ukraine risked a direct conflict with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia."

As direct assistance to Ukraine by the US, UK and its other allies intensifies dramatically, there are several reasons to be increasingly concerned.

Who Is The Hero?

 Lawrence Davidson

 April 25, 2022

Part I—The Hero

Our image of a hero has two aspects to it. The first aspect consists of generic, stereotypical traits: bravery, determination in the face of adversity, achievement against heavy odds—the kind of person who saves the day. The second aspect is more culturally specific, describing and contextualizing the circumstances of bravery and determination, and the nature of achievement in terms that are narrowly defined. In other words, cultural descriptions of bravery are most often expressed in terms compatible with the social and political conditions of the hero’s society.

Heroes are ubiquitous. For instance, there are American heroes, Russian heroes, Israeli heroes, Arab heroes, Ukrainian heroes, and so on. Where does good and bad come into it? Well, that too becomes a cultural judgment. Below are two examples of “heroes.” I will leave it to the reader to decide who is good and who is bad.

 

Iran Talks Stall: Does America Even Believe in Diplomacy Anymore?

Ted Snide

April 29, 2022

Joe Biden promised that he would be the president of diplomacy. He promised that, after the turmoil of the bellicose Trump years, he would usher in the age of "relentless diplomacy."

But the US has been absent from negotiations on the war in Ukraine and Secretary of State Antony Blinken hasn’t spoken to his Russian counterpart once since it began. There has been only a weak whisper of diplomacy to Cuba, Juan Guaidó is still the deflated US recognized and backed president of Venezuela and no one seems to remember North Korea.

The resuscitation and survival of the Iran nuclear deal has reached the critical moment. Blinken has recently said that it is still possible to come to an understanding that could pave the way for a nuclear deal.