UKRAINE WAR
You Don’t Poke a Bear in the Eye
You either go for the kill or leave it alone
It’s a very simple rule and one that comes from a variation of the old hunter’s advice regarding wild boars. You don’t wound a wild boar. You either kill it or it kills you. Thus the logical conclusion is that if you can’t kill it you should leave it alone.
It seems that a lot of lies have been dispelled in the past year. In this case, I’m addressing the conceit that Ukraine could win against Russia in an open war. I can’t say for sure, but I think that not even the White House believed this story.
The news that the Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi asked US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to provide him with 17 million “rounds of ammunition” (most likely meaning artillery shells) during his visit in November was understandably mostly absent from Western media. This comes straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, in this case, the Ukrainska Pravda. The same goes for the estimate that Ukraine will need about “US$350–400 billion worth of assets and personnel” in order to liberate the occupied areas. The personnel part can, perhaps, be provided by Ukraine, as it is currently discussing a new mobilization, although the average age of Ukrainian soldiers is over 40 as opposed to 30–35 at the beginning of the war and it’s unlikely that a new round of conscription will help bring this number down. Rather the opposite. And the money? Given the new war in Israel, available funds for Ukraine are drying up.
This isn’t Russian propaganda. Ukraine is asking for more help, much more, and it’s not going to get even a fraction of it.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, this was never about Ukraine winning. This was about giving Russia a few broken teeth and maybe, just maybe, destabilizing Putin’s regime in the process. The closest we’ve come to a coup against Putin was Prigozhin’s half-hearted mutiny, but this ended in a way that fully demonstrates the accuracy of the bear metaphor.
To summarize the story so far, the U.S., under the guise of NATO, poked the bear in the eye, repeatedly, well before Putin even came to power, and there wasn’t one Russian leader that didn’t express their profound displeasure about the poking.
The bear protested, then growled, then finally attacked. And when the poking continued, it attacked again. Only this time it wasn’t a five-day affair, even though Putin would have loved that, but it turned into a long, bloody war paid for in Ukrainian and Russian lives. I’m using the bear metaphor not only because it has been historically associated with Russia, but more importantly because it dispels any notion about morality, the rule of law, or the so-called “rules-based international order”.
There is no such thing as a rules-based international order.
The only international order there is is the one based on that he who holds the biggest guns and the most resources makes the rules. It’s not really hard to understand why. In order for the rule of law to be upheld in any setting, you have to have some sort of law enforcement agency that functions with the safety and rights of the ones it protects in mind and is accountable to them for its actions. This is why all democratic countries have a police force. And this is also why many undemocratic ones are called “police states”.
On the level of international relations, this law enforcement agency is usually the world’s most powerful nation: an empire, as it was once called or a superpower, in more modern terms.
Who was the British Empire accountable to? Who is the U.S. accountable to today?
The rules-based international order is just an empty term we invoke when we want to justify otherwise indefensible actions. And by “we” I mean the ruling empire of the moment. It just so happens that at this time the U.S. represents the “Free World”, which includes also my country, Greece, that nowadays slavishly supports whatever the U.S. tells it to.
So “we”, the Free World, have decided to do whatever is necessary to ensure the preservation of the status quo, at any cost. Even the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and the apparent targeted killing of reporters. But this is far from the first time any of that has happened.
It doesn’t matter if all of these crises could have been solved in a more peaceful way. It doesn’t matter if these wars serve the geopolitical interests of the U.S. rather than the interests of the people they purport to defend. The Empire, any empire, cares first and foremost about perpetuating itself and maintaining the status quo no matter the cost.
I don’t have anything against the U.S. per se. My main issue is the hypocrisy of it all. At least the empires of the past didn’t pretend they wanted to save the world. There are many reasons for this charade and I won’t digress any further. The point is that there is a huge, yawning gap between the idea that is being sold to us regarding a world governed by law and the one we live in, where the ruling Empire is the law.
In a heroic cartoon world, where democracy fights against tyranny and always triumphs, Ukraine would be defended by the Free World Eagles against an invasion by Evil Putin’s Russian Bear. In a more realistic, but honest one, a direct conflict between two nuclear powers would be deemed extremely dangerous and so an understanding would have been reached to safeguard its neutrality. In our world, the U.S. wants Russia defanged and of no use to China as an ally because China is threatening the U.S. in its role as the sole superpower. If Ukraine is to be sacrificed to achieve this, well so be it. Naturally, few will say this openly, but looking at the statements of U.S. officials and the leaders of allied countries it’s clear that they want Ukraine to fight against Russia and keep fighting until the bitter end, whatever that is.
Why? Because they hope that the more the war drags on and the more coffins are sent back home, the more unpopular Putin becomes. If he’s not deposed, at least his army will be damaged enough that it will pose less of a threat to U.S. interests. Even if Russia wins, it will be saddled with a now hostile occupied territory or more probably one ruled by a puppet regime.
There is no accounting in this equation for the actual interests of Ukraine. There never was. Joining NATO would help it if by doing so it could avoid being invaded in the first place. Getting a few fancy toys and a pat on the back only helps to prolong a conflict that devastates the country.
Ukraine couldn’t fight off the bear alone and since no one was willing to engage it directly, this being a bear armed with nukes, teasing the prospect of NATO membership “sometime in the future” was, effectively, poking the bear in the eye. If you can’t kill the bear, leave it alone.
Sadly, NATO did all the poking it could, and Ukraine, as Professor John Mearsheimer likes to say, has been led down the primrose path to face the consequences.
And it looks like it will be left to fight off a rabid bear on its own.
