One Year Later in Ukraine: Washington And NATO Got It Very Wrong
BY TYLER DURDEN
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
It’s been a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In spite of claims from the regime and its media allies that Russia was the next Third Reich and would soon roll through half of Europe, it turns out that was never even remotely true.
In fact, things have unfolded more or less just like we predicted here at mises.org:
the Russians aren’t even close to occupying any place in Europe beyond eastern Ukraine.
It’s not Munich 1938. Economic sanctions have not crippled the Russian regime.
Most of the world remains ambivalent on the conflict.
The conflict will likely end with a negotiated settlement - contrary to what the Washington wants.
The fact is that in spite of the United States’ and North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) efforts to turn Ukraine into World War III, the war in Ukraine remains a regional conflict. It seems most of the world is uninterested in making sacrifices to carry out US policy in Ukraine and that many see the inherent hypocrisy behind US talk about respecting national sovereignty.
There’s also an important lesson here about listening to the war maximalists who incessantly promote full-scale war as the “solution” to every international crisis. The US clearly wants to fight the war to the last Ukrainian, in what the US is packaging as a global crusade in the style of World War II. But, it seems now that more pragmatic thinkers—i.e., the French and the Germans—recognize that negotiations are the more humane solution.
Within days of the Russian invasion, the Western global hegemonists got to work claiming the invasion was essentially a war of global conquest. For instance, Matthew Kroenig in Foreign Policy stated that Vladimir Putin had shown a clear interest in “resurrecting the former Russian Empire, and other vulnerable Eastern European countries—Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states—might be next.” Kroenig immediately concluded that the US’s military budget should be doubled.
Another writer insisted the Ukraine invasion contained “a whiff of Munich.” John Storey at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute claimed that “the forgotten lesson of Munich” had allowed “Putin is [to do] his best impression of German dictator Adolf Hitler.” Storey ominously asked, “Will the Baltic states and Eastern Europe be next?” dutifully repeating the party line that Russian tanks might soon roll into central Europe.
Yet the “lesson of Munich”—which is invoked incessantly and certainly not “forgotten”—has never been appropriate for conceptualizing the war in Ukraine. That sort of thing has even led some pundits to proclaim that global nuclear war is "worth it."
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The real lesson to be learned here, however, is the lesson of 1914: that we should not allow military alliances to lead major powers into overreactions that lead to global disasters. The “Munich” crowd wanted mass mobilization against Russia in early 2022. They didn’t get it, and thank goodness.
It has been clear from the very beginning that Russia has never had the capability to sustain an occupation of any areas that do not already contain a sizable number of ethnic Russians or Russian sympathizers. This hardly mirrors the military capabilities of the Third Reich. Thus, it is not surprising that Russia’s occupation endures only in southeastern Ukraine and the Crimea.
At this point, Russia is attempting to push the frontiers of its occupation zone as deeply as possible into areas with a sizable Russian minority. Even this has proven difficult for the Russian regime. Russia simply lacks the resources to take on anyone but its impoverished neighbors.
What’s more, bogging down Russia has required only a tiny portion of the war-making resources available to the NATO coalition. Europe’s NATO members have mostly pledged older weapons, and precious little state-of-the art equipment. The Washington Post recently noted, for example, that the West “is still short on pledges.”
Recent promises of Leopard tanks from Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands turned out to be promises of “refurbished” tanks that are more than forty years old. Moreover, none of these tanks will even arrive before this summer.
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As of late November, contributions of military aid from Germany, the United Kingdom, and France combined totaled a paltry €5 billion. That’s 6.00 percent the size of Russia’s military budget, and a miniscule 0.05 percent of the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $10 trillion that comes out of the UK, Germany, and France combined.
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But what of US military aid? Surely a huge amount is needed to counter the Russian juggernaut? Well, the US military aid totals no more than $50 billion as of early 2023. That’s 6.00 percent of the US military budget, and it’s 0.20 percent of the US’s GDP. In addition to this, the US regime now admits it doesn't even know what happens to the weapons it sends to Ukraine. How much of that $50 billion actually goes to Ukraine's defense? Not $50 billion.
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If that’s all it takes to keep Russia slogging it out in eastern Ukraine, it’s hard to see how the Russian regime poses an existential threat to even western Ukraine, let alone any other state in Europe. This helps illustrate how unnecessary the US is to the conflict.
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Russia poses no threat to the US—unless the US escalates to the point of nuclear war. If the Europeans feel threatened, they can easily defend themselves given the huge size of their economic bloc, relative to Russia.
The Europeans have more than enough resources to "stand with Ukraine" however they wish to define that. Yes, that might require Europeans to give up a bit of their government pensions and enormous welfare states in order to fund their own military defense. But there's absolutely no reason why American taxpayers need be on the hook to subsidize Europeans as they're swilling cappuccinos on month-long vacations.
Perhaps seeing that Russia presents no conventional military threat beyond its “near abroad,” most of the world has not signed off on starting a new cold war. Although NATO mouthpieces have been enthusiastic about the passage of United Nations resolutions condemning Russia, it’s notable how many countries chose to abstain from the vote. Last week, the UN general assembly voted again on a resolution condemning the Russian invasion and calling for Russia’s withdrawal.
One hundred forty-one countries voted in favor, but, notably, thirty-two countries abstained from voting (seven states voted against the measure). Among those thirty-two countries were China, India, Pakistan, and South Africa.
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India, a US ally and the “world’s largest democracy,” was apparently uninterested in joining NATO on the resolution. South Africa, another major world economy and democracy, stayed out of the matter as well. In fact, the only member of the BRICS bloc to vote in favor of the resolution was Brazil.
This has partly been driven by practical matters. The political leadership in these countries is simply not prepared to impoverish its population in order to please Washington. But the resistance also comes from the fact that most of the world knows US pretensions toward respecting national sovereignty and international law are a lie.
The US invasions, bombing campaigns and often permanent occupations against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Serbia and Syria, etc., have made it clear the United States is perfectly at ease with violating national sovereignty when it suits US ambitions.
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The so-called Western rules-based international order obviously means nothing to the US when it becomes inconvenient to Washington. (It should also be noted the Ukraine regime supported invading Iraq and sent at least five thousand troops to help the US occupy that supposedly sovereign nation.)
What does this all mean for Russia? It means that some of the world’s largest economies have signaled they have no plans to cut Russia off from the global economy and that they refuse to cut themselves off from Russian oil, gas, coal, weapons, foods and other goods.
The US has been unsuccessful in securing global compliance in isolating Russia economically. Thus, the US has been forced to rely on coercive sanctions—not just against Russia, but against those who choose to keep doing business with Russia.
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The US must now spend time and resources enforcing “secondary sanctions” designed to bully countries that don’t play along, and now finds itself in the position of repeatedly threatening countries other than Russia with “consequences” for violating US sanctions. That will get pretty tiring, once more and more countries realize the hypocrisy of it all.
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But, for all the US bluster on this, US sanctions have clearly failed to harm Russia,, but had a major adverse effect on Europe.
The post-COVID, EU GDP went from robust growth in 2021 to near-zero growth in 2022. The Euro decreased in value and Inflation stayed at 9% in 2022.
The Russian GDP decreased 2.1% in 2022, with growth resuming in 2023 and 2024, per IMF estimates. The ruble was the strongest major currency in the world in 2022. Russian trade balance is hugely positive, due to selling almost as much, but at higher prices, whereas imports decreased.
The numbers show , the US oil sanctions against Russia “have done little to curb the flow of Russia’s crude.” Or as this article as CNBC suggests, the oil sanctions “failed completely.”
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This isn’t to say that the sanctions have had no effect. Yet it is clear that the sanctions—the harshest sanctions used since World War II—were not a “game-changer.”
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Instead, the sanctions have created additional motivation for states to find ways to get around US sanctions in the future. As Agathe Demarais notes in Foreign Policy:
Russia, Iran, China, and other countries at odds with the United States are doubling down on efforts to vaccinate their economies against sanctions. These measures have little to do with sanctions circumvention: Instead, they represent preemptive steps to render potential financial sanctions entirely ineffective. Such mechanisms include de-dollarization efforts, the development of alternatives to SWIFT (the Belgian cooperative that connects all banks across the world), and the creation of central bank digital currencies.
That reference to “other countries” is key. The more the US employs its financial power as a weapon against other regimes, the further this will push the world’s regimes to find ways to break free of the US-centered financial world. Those efforts will put downward pressure on the dollar in coming years, and reduce the dollar’s role in world trade.
The US has generally saved its “regime change” rhetoric for small, dirt-poor countries that are unable to fight back. Yet, following the Russian invasion, many Western commentators began calling for regime change in Russia as well. Most notably, on March 26, President Joe Biden said Putin “cannot remain in power,” although he was later forced to backtrack.
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Not only are the prospects for regime change in a nuclear-armed country fraught with immense danger, but many observers recognize the fact, toppling Putin is easier said than done. , because the Russian people overwhelmingly approve of him.
Nor would a regime change move guarantee Putin’s regime would be replaced with a regime opposed to Russian expansionism. In fact, the new government could easily be “worse” , more bold, than the cautious Putin.
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This is a hard pill to swallow for Americans who are wed to a long-standing obsession with “unconditional surrender” in every military conflict. They know only the Japanese unconditional surrender in the Second World War.
The reality is, the overwhelming majority of military conflicts are ended through negotiated settlements.
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Nevertheless, throughout the first half of 2022, those who called for negotiations to end the Ukraine war—for purposes of ending the bloodshed sooner—were branded Russian apologists. Only a strategic weakening of Russia, we were told, was an acceptable outcome.
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“Total victory” for Ukraine, defined as the total withdrawal of Russia, was never likely.
The reality is more along the lines of what French diplomats are privately willing to admit.
As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, French and German leaders are now telling the Ukrainian regime, it needs to consider peace talks:
“We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,” a senior French official said. “And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.”
Gen. Petr Pavel, president-elect of the Czech Republic and a former NATO commander, said at the Munich conference [last week]: “We may end up in a situation where liberating some parts of Ukrainian territory may deliver more loss of lives than will be bearable by society. . . . There might be a point when Ukrainians can start thinking about another outcome.”
The endgame is coming into view, and it’s a negotiated settlement.
Unfortunately, it’s a settlement that will come only after an immense loss of life for both Ukrainians and Russians, and at the price of enormous loss of capital and infrastructure.
A settlement could have likely been achieved sooner, and with the same territorial losses in Ukraine that likely would have resulted in any case.
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The US could have avoided:
1) Moving NATO infrastructures from East Germany to Russian borders from 1991 to 2022, including placing future hypersonic missiles in Romania and Poland that can reach Moscow in minutes
2) Financing and instigating, with $5 billion, per Nuland, a violent regime-change/coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014; several hundred were killed over several months
3) Using Ukraine as a NATO-financed/armed/trained/advised proxy to strategically weaken Russia, “for as long as it takes”, or until a totally ruined Ukraine runs out of cannon fodder and NATO “volunteers”
The Ukraine, neo-NAZI regime of extremist nationalists could have given up trying to purify Ukraine, erasing Russian culture, with ethnic Russians treated as second-class citizens, having no viable future in Ukraine, where they have lived for at least 300 years.
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The US and Ukraine could have admitted they're not getting Crimea back.
Instead, The US prevailed upon Ukraine to abandon negotiations with Russia in March 2022, and to prolong the conflict “for as long as it takes”
The result has been several hundred thousand of unnecessary deaths and disabled, and Ukraine totally ruined.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/nord-stream-sabotage-w...
Russia was provoked to invade Ukraine:
1) By the US-led NATO infrastructure expansions to "bark at the gates of Russia", per the Pope in Rome
2) By the US-led, violent Kiev coup d’etat in 2014, which installed an extremist, NAZI sympathizing, nationalist regime, that turned Ukraine into a war-mongering, Russia-hating state
3) To put an end to the Ukraine-initiated genocide of ethnic Russians in the Donbas area, from February 2014 to February 24, 2022; 14,000 people were killed, with many more injured, during these 8 years.
Being a small, poor country next to Russia has always been just an unfortunate reality for some. Thus, responsible foreign policy for those states lies in taking positions that limit unnecessary bloodshed while finding ways to co-exist with the Russians.
Instead, the US and Ukraine have chosen to wax philosophical about moral rectitude while NATO leaders recite their bullet points on regime change, total victory, Munich, and a “rules-based order.” None of this helps save lives.
Those who promoted a need for full-scale war and "no peace until total victory" have been stunningly wrong, and it has proven to be very costly.
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CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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