Canadian Cincinnatus

Why the arguments against arming the Ukraine are wrong and stupid

Right now, the fledgling democracy of the Ukraine is fighting for its life against Russian incursion in the East. Currently the war is in a phase that John Schindler, over at the excellent 20committee.com blog, has termed a “Special War”. To counter this aggression, one of the strategic options on the table is providing military aid to the Ukraine. Schindler argues for:

“Ukraine’s pressing military needs exist in a few areas. Conventional weapons — armor and artillery, and ammunition for them — Kyiv possesses in abundance; they have no need for heavy weapons from the West at this point.

However, there are a few areas where modest Western gifts of essentially defensive weapons — particularly light anti-armor and air defense systems, plus counterbattery radars and tactical electronic warfare gear — would prove a serious problem for the Russians.”

This sounds reasonable to me.

One counterargument is that arming the Ukrainians will ‘escalate’ the war. The premise of this argument is that the situation in the Ukraine is ‘spiraling out of control’, much like the summer of 1914 spiraled from a political assassination in the Balkans to a horrific 4-year bloodbath. For this premise to be true, the situation on the ground must consist of multiple actors, each making belligerent moves that inspire their opponents to make other belligerent moves, and so on, with each iteration ratcheting up the intensity towards an end that nobody desires. This is obviously not the case here. What we have is a peace-loving country that only wants to maintain its freedom and independence. We also have another country, much more powerful than the first, who is trying to destabilize and destroy the first. Third, we have a bunch of powerful onlookers paralyzed by fear. In reality, the trajectory of this war is being driven by one man, Vladimir Putin, who is adjusting the intensity of the Ukrainian War on a dial in the Kremlin.

A much more accurate historical analogy would be late 1930’s Europe. One of the lessons of those dark times is that appeasement against an aggressive dictator is counterproductive. Each time an opportunity presented itself to stand up to Hitler, the West chickened out. Each time, the West lost an ally and gave Germany more precious time to continue rearming, raising the stakes until World War II became inevitable.

In the case of 21^st century Russia, Putin invaded Georgia and the West did nothing. Encouraged, Putin took Crimea, and the West did nothing. Feeling no resistance, Putin invaded eastern Ukraine. In 2008, the Russian military was a ramshackled outfit. Russians then began an ambitious modernization program. The Russian army of today is much more capable than it was 6 years ago. This is why the question posed by the isolationist - is the Ukraine worth it? – is so stupid. The premise is invalid. It is not just about Ukraine, just as it was not just about Georgia in 2008. It is about Putin’s next target, and the next, and then the next. Until NATO’s Article 5 is invoked. And now you have a nuclear standoff. And if you blink then, there goes the entire security structure of Europe itself. All the peace that Europe enjoyed under Pax Americana since World War II will have been swept aside.

What we are dealing with is Bonapartism. Though Vladimir Putin’s talents are in no way comparable to Napoleon’s, he has enjoyed enough success for megalomania to have kicked in. History offers few examples of conquerors who stopped. The only example I can think of is Otto von Bismarck. The usual trajectory is for such men to continue until they are killed. So in a real sense Putin is doomed. The only question is how much damage will he do before his demise.

It is for this reason that a proxy war in the Ukraine is the best course of action. The issue here is not even whether Russia gets to keep the Crimean peninsula (ethnically cleansed as it was by Stalin of its native Tartars) or Eastern Ukraine (containing a significant Russian minority). It is that the price Putin pays for his Ukrainian adventures must be maximized. The more he pays now, the less willpower and resources he can muster in the future. Eventually, the Russian people will turn on him.

Which leads to another popular counterargument: that we must leave Putin alone because he is popular with Russians. This is an absurd standard. Should the West have acquiesced to Hitler because he was popular with Germans? In either case, they were (or are) popular because they were (or are) winning. Everybody loves a winner, not so much a loser. Right now, Russians have been shielded from the bad effects of the war by the state subsidies and propaganda. It has been said that Russians are good at suffering, but this is only because they have had a lot of practice. It is not because they like it. After a defeat, or after the oil money runs out, their opinions will be different.

One objection to arming the Ukrainians is that this would be a dangerous move. You know what? This is correct. But you know what is even more dangerous than a proxy war in the Ukraine? A direct conflict between NATO and Russia. It is precisely for this reason that it is in everybody’s interest to keep the conflict with Russia as far east as possible, and, if possible, confined to non-NATO allies. That is why we should do everything in our power to help the Ukrainians win.

The exact parallel here is the Russian Afghan War. This was a proxy war, and against a much more formidable adversary. It worked then, and it can work again. The Ukrainians have a rich history of partisan warfare to draw upon. Dictatorships are brittle in a way that democracies are not. The Soviet Union could not withstand the defeat in Afghanistan in the same way that the Tsar could not stand the defeat against Japan.

Another argument made for abandoning the Ukraine is that the Ukraine, Kiev specifically, is historically the birthplace of Russia; that for Putin, the Ukraine is a holy cause, and that for the US to interfere there would be like for Russia to interfere in Mexico. How would the US like that? The proper answer to this is, do the Ukrainian people have a say in this? If Kiev is the ancient heart of Russia, why do the current inhabitants of Kiev hate Russia so much? The answer does not lie in the 10^th century but in the 20^th. Does not the Holodomor trump what happened a millennia ago? The Ukrainians hate the Russians because Stalin starved to death 2.5 to 7.5 million Ukrainians. That is why, after World War II, the Ukrainians fought an epic partisan war against the Soviet Union for a decade – another recent epic historical event to trump medieval trivia.

The same can also be said about Russia’s need for buffer states. Do not the inhabitants of these states get a say? There is a reason that the pepole in those countries hate the Russians and prefer the West. The have experienced freedom and know what Russian tyranny really is like. This motivation also speaks to Putin’s strategic stupidity. As I have argued before, for all of his tactical cleverness, Putin is a strategic dunce. He is allying with and helping Russia’s long-term strategic enemies (like Iran and China), while taking the only peaceful border he has, his Western border, which is composed of countries who want nothing but peace with Russia, and turning it into a war zone.

The West needs to understand what it faces squarely and begin to take straightforward action against a menace that has been allowed by wishful thinking and neglect to fester. A long overdue step in this regard would be to help the peace-loving Ukrainian people defend themselves from an unprincipled, power-hungry dictator, who bombed his own citizens to get into power.

I told you so: “Images Show the Buk that Downed Flight MH17, Inside Russia, Controlled by Russian Troops”

When I first wrote about the Malaysian Airlines 777 that was shot down over the Ukraine, I stated that the Kremlin’s fingerprints were all over the shoot-down. In response, I received a number of comments chiding me for jumping to conclusions, with at least one speculating that it was a Ukrainian ‘false flag’ operation.

 

The more time lapses, the more it becomes clear that I was right in my ‘premature conclusion.’ The latest bit of evidence comes from some investigative journalists who present detailed photographic evidence that the Buk launcher used to down MH17 is from a Russian unit.

 

Take that, Kremlin stooges and Putin-lovers!

 

 

 

 

Announcement: United for Ukraine Rally on Parliament Hill on Wednesday

I want to pass on an announcement I received from the Ukrainian community for an important upcoming event. Considering all the horrible aggressions visited on the Ukrainian people by Putin’s Russia, please try to attend this rally if you at all are able:

“Good evening friends and colleagues.  This is to invite The Estonian community to attend the United for Ukraine Rally on the 17th of September at 2pm on Parliament Hill.  The purpose of the rally is to welcome to Canada President Poroshenko of Ukraine.  This is an historic visit at a critical time in Ukraine's history.  

Where: Parliament Hill

Date and Time: Wednesday, September 17th, 2-4PM

Bring Canadian, Ukrainian, Baltic, Polish national flags etc...

There will be screens outside on Parliament Hill to watch and hear President Poroshenko's speech in Parliament.  He will also come outside with Prime Minister Steven Harper and briefly address the crowd.  Some buses are also being coordinated from Toronto and Montreal.  Please advise if you would like to arrange for transportation to Ottawa.

Kindly share this invitation with your friends, family and colleagues, and share it broadly through your e-mail distribution networks and social media forums.  We also encourage you to print copies of the poster and circulate it within the community such as on grocery store bulletin boards, coffee shops, community centers, churches, and other newsworthy places to help us spread the word about the rally.

Kind regards,

Jane Kolbe”

Malaysian MH7 truthers in our midst

Here is an article by Ron Unz questioning whether the Russians shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. I bring it to your attention only because Ron Unz is not a nut (or rather, he used to not be a nut), and he is not a leftist whacko. He is – or was – a respectable conservative. For instance, he was one of the driving forces behind Proposition 227, the successful ballot measure that banned bilingual education in California. So when he outs himself as an MH17 truther, one must wonder, how many less-well-credentialed conservatives are similarly deluded.

The primary evidence he highlights is via a left-wing Washington Post blogger, Erik Zuesse, who claims that a photograph of a piece of aircraft wreckage proves that MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian jets. His argument is that this photo shows penetrations coming from both sides, which is inconsistent with an exploding SAM. Earth to Erik Zuesse, I have a one-word rebuttal: secondary explosions.

Of course, my assertion that secondary explosions occurred is just as much speculation as Zeusse’s elaborately constructed theory based on a picture one piece of evidence. A catastrophic aircraft loss is a complex event that requires a full analysis to make sense of each piece of evidence. To this Zuesse states, “Only idiots would trust Britain to interpret these black boxes to determine what or who brought down that plane.” Well it must be nice to cavalierly dismiss evidence, even before you see it, simply because you do not like it.

But this remark perfectly illustrates the most debilitating intellectual error made by conspiracy kooks, their shifting standards of evidence. The weakness of their conclusions does not come, as is commonly supposed, because they are ‘ignorant’ or they ‘don’t know anything’. This is not true. Often quite the opposite is true: their heads are positively bursting with facts. It is just that they don’t judge facts dispassionately. The tiniest fact that supports their conclusion is hailed as a world-beating revelation, while, at the same time, entire lines of reasoning and fact are cavalierly dismissed as evidence planted by the Freemasons or the Jews or the neocons.

In this case, the fact that a Ukrainian Air Force IL-76 was shot down on June 14 was ignored, as was a report on June 19 from Russian News agencies that the rebels had acquired a Buk missile system from a captured Ukrainian military base; as was a tweet the same day from rebels confirming the same; as was the downing of a Ukrainian Air Force AN-26 on July 14; as was subsequent social media claims from rebels that it was shot down by a Buk missile; as was the shoot-down of a Ukrainian Air Force Su-25 on July 16; as were eye-witness reports of a Buk M-1 missile system in rebel-held territory operated by men with Russian accents16 km south of the crash site; as was a tweet appearing shortly after the shoot-down from an account of a prominent rebel leader claiming credit for the shootdown, a tweet that was quickly deleted; as is the fact that the range of a BUK M-1 missile (35 km) requires that it must have been fired in rebel-held territory; as was the fact that rebels shot down several aircraft after the MH17 shoot-down; as was  the fact that the rebels systematically obstructed crash-site investigation.

Hmm… Ron Unz and Erik Zeusse. Wouldn’t Occam’s Razor conclude that the most likely explanation is that Putin’s ne’er-do-wells in Eastern Ukraine deliberately shot down the Boeing 777 in the mistaken belief that it was a Ukrainian Air Force transport? Wouldn’t the evidence at hand make this explanation so likely that the burden of proof now falls on the proponents of opposing theories to provide the extraordinary evidence now required to make their case?

At this point, the conspiracy kooks reading this might sputter, “oh yeah, well what about global warming, aren’t the experts and authorities wrong there?” Let me tell you Mr. Kook, if the evidence opposing anthropogenic global warming (AGM) were as weak as the case put forward by kooks like Unz and Zeusse, then I would an evangelist for AGM. The reason AGM can today be legitimately doubted is that people like Steve Macintyre went into the weeds with the data and deconstructed the evidence in a rational manner. In other words, they provided the extraordinary evidence required to challenge the scientific establishment. Macintyre isn’t a conspiracy kook who babbles on about dark forces. He makes rational arguments based on a dispassionate analysis of all the evidence. And he has a treasure trove of East Anglia e-mail backing him up.

Until they can do that, the isolationist MH17 truthers should crawl back under the rock they came from and leave normal people be.

 

The Need to Act Immediately in the Russo-Ukrainian War

John Schindler, over at the XX Committee blog, has the most illuminating article about the current war in the Ukraine I have yet read.

While he has no illusions about the straits that the Ukrainians find themselves in, he also has no illusions about Vladimir Putin, whom he correctly notes is not as strong as he seems. He quotes one of the last remaining independent journalists in Russia, who says:

“Time, that trickiest of strategic concerns, is not on Putin’s side any longer, as Felgenhauer observes accurately, between weather and the Russian military’s conscript cycle:

“There is not much time left. Fall is approaching. The short hours of daylight and low clouds will complicate the matters for the air force. It will have difficulty supporting ground troops — pilots in Su-25 ground-attack planes need to see the targets on the ground. In addition, starting 1 October, it is necessary to conduct a new draft and begin the demobilization of those conscripts who are stationed on the border as part of the artillery battalion groups. It is specifically for these reasons that the question must be resolved now.”

We will know in a few days, then, if Putin has achieved his relatively limited military aims in eastern Ukraine. If he does not manage a quick win, there is every reason to think Ukraine and Russia will become embroiled in a protracted war for which neither Moscow nor Kyiv is ready.”

As I have been saying all along, Putin’s Achilles heel is time. The longer his military operations take, the more unpopular he will get at home. The anti-Putin resistance in the 2012 Presidential election really spooked him, and this is why he is cultivating an us-against-them mentality in Russia. Maybe next time, ballot-box stuffing and a 24/7 non-stop orgy of pro-Putin propaganda on every TV station in Russia won’t be enough.

Schindler’s remedy is spot on:

‘Sanctions will have no short-term impact on Russian behavior at this point. Vaunted Western “soft power” has been run over by Russian tanks. The decision for war has been made in Moscow, and it will be prosecuted until Putin achieves his objectives or the cost — rising numbers of Russian dead — becomes politically prohibitive. Putin knows that the Russian public, heady after the nearly bloodless conquest of Crimea, has no stomach for a costly war of choice with Ukraine, their “Slavic brothers.”’

As I have said, the worst case scenario for Putin is that he gets himself mired in lengthy counterinsurgency operations. In that situation, he will have to mobilize the less-than-elite conscript and reservist units. When conscript sons and reservists called back to active duty start coming home in body bags, Putin’s days in the Kremlin will be numbered. Already, as Schindler points out, “Dead Russian paratroopers are coming home for burial.”

“If the West wants to prevent more Russian aggression and save Ukraine from further Kremlin depredations, it must offer Kyiv armaments, logistics, training, and above all intelligence support without delay. Nothing else will cause Moscow to back down. Only by arming and enabling Ukraine’s military can the West make the cost of Putin’s war prohibitive for Russia. Ukraine’s defense ministry and armed forces require major Western aid to transform its underperforming military from bad Soviet habits to real fighting capability, but that is a long-term enterprise. Right now, Kyiv needs direct military aid. If NATO does not provide it, a wider war for Ukraine becomes more likely by the day, with grave consequences for the European peace that NATO has preserved, at great expense, for sixty-five years.”

This proscription is absolutely right. The sooner the West takes a stand, the better it will be. As in the 1930’s, appeasement only postpones the problem, allowing it to metastasize into something bigger and more terrible. Right now, time is of the essence. If the Ukrainians are backed to the hilt with weapons and training, they will do all the heavy lifting for us. Not because they owe us, but because they have no choice. If we let the Ukraine fall, NATO will have to fight Putin directly – with all the strategic risk that portends.

Anybody but a strategic nincompoop (like Pat Buchanan and the Pauls –father and son) should be able to see that.

 

Putin warns west that he can take Kiev in two weeks, I say just try it

Apparently, Vladimir Putin said this to the President of the European Union Commission, “If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks.”

If the United States had a real President, he would resound, “Go ahead, and try it. See what happens to you.”

The implication being that Putin would end up with a repeat of the large-scale partisan warfare the Soviet Union faced in the Ukraine after World War II, and that didn’t really end until Stalin died in 1954; except this time with the West funneling material aid to the Ukrainians through neighbouring countries like Poland. One of the lessons military history teaches us about guerilla insurrections is that their chance of success are greatly increased if they have a source of foreign support, support that the Ukrainian freedom fighters lacked the last time around. Occupy the Ukraine and Mr. Putin will spend years on the wrong end of asymmetrical warfare.

Many western commentators have remarked on the great increase in the professionalism of the Russian military since the military reforms of 2008 were enacted. What has not been evident so far to outside observers is that the professionalism of the Russian military has likely not extended past its elite units, like the 76^th Airborne Division and the Spetznaz units of the GRU. These are exclusively the forces that have been employed in Georgia, the Crimea and eastern Ukraine – as well as Chechnya. Faced with a lengthy counterinsurgency campaign, Putin will be forced to rotate through conscript and reserve units.

When conscripts and reservists start dying en mass in the Ukrainian hellhole, Putin’s popularity will follow the trajectory of Leopoldo Galtieri – and early 21^st century Russian government will follow the trajectory of the Russian Empire after the Battle of Tsushima Strait, and the Soviet Union during the Afghanistan debacle in the 1980’s.

If the United States had a real President, this would be made crystal clear to Putin. Unfortunately, the US currently does not have a real President, and, as Ralph Peters has pointed out, Putin has the current White House inhabitant’s number: zero.