So, I just finished reading Anne Applebaum's excellent piece The War Won't End Until Putin Loses in "The Atlantic," and I couldn't agree more. Continuing to offer Putin some sort of "off-ramp" should not be the goal because, a) Putin doesn't want an off-ramp, and, b) the type of appeasement that such a strategy represents would only serve to encourage Putin to try again at a later date when his army would have had the time to regroup and rearm. Applebaum makes clear that, contrary to French President Emmanuel Macron's misguided urging, Putin should be, must be, humiliated. It continues to baffle me how Macron, someone whose country knows firsthand what happens when dictators are appeased, can continue to try to help Putin "save face." Again, something Putin isn't looking for in the first place. Perhaps Macron needs remedial training in his country's twentieth century history.
Applebaum makes reference to comments made by President Biden in March of this year, "Putin cannot remain in power," and by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in April, who wanted "to see Russia weakened to the degree it can't do the kinds of things it has done in invading Ukraine." She points out these comments were treated as misstatements when, in fact, they were "half-articulated acknowledgements of an ugly reality that no one wants to confront: Any cease fire that allows Putin to experience any kind of victory will be inherently unstable because it will encourage him to try again. Victory in Crimea did not satisfy the Kremlin. Victory in Kherson will not satisfy the Kremlin either."
It seems like it should be blindingly obvious to the world, but more specifically to western powers who can actually do something, that the recession the world is facing will only continue to get worse, that the food shortages in Africa that will actually help Putin sell the grain looted from Ukraine, will continue to get worse; that these things will only stop when Vladimir Putin is defeated and humiliated in front of the world, and that that needs to happen much sooner rather than later. At this point, is there any good reason that the United States and/or NATO should not immediately commit all the military forces at their command to defeating Russia militarily and bringing all this nonsense to a total and quick end? The short answer, in my opinion, is 'No.'
President Biden has repeatedly said that the U.S. would not become directly involved in fighting against Russia because of concerns about starting World War Three, and over concerns that Putin would employ nuclear weapons. But, as Applebaum points out, "the retreats from Kyiv and Kharkiv indicate that Putin is not irrational after all....They were perfectly capable of understanding that the price of Russia's early advances were too high. The price of using tactical nuclear weapons would be far higher: They would achieve no military impact but would destroy all of Russia's remaining relationships with India, China and the rest of the world. There is no indication right now that the nuclear threats so frequently mentioned by Russian propagandists, going back many years, are real."
I say, even if Russia has half the nuclear weapons they say they have, the United States alone, not to mention NATO, has enough conventional weapons, let alone nukes, to bomb Russia back to the Stone Ages, and we shouldn't be afraid of rattling that sabre. As John McCain said in 2014, "Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country." Their total GDP is roughly the same as the state of Texas, and the amount of money they spend on their military, 65.9 billion dollars, is dwarfed by the United States' 753.5 billion. All that to say that there is no possible way Russia could maintain any serious military operations against the combined forces of the U.S. and NATO for any length of time. The only real help Russia might be able to call upon, China, will not come to Russia's aid for two reasons, a) China is wracked with COVID to the point where they would not be able to field a combat effective military force, and b) China's President, Xi Jinping, is trying very hard to position China as a world leader in the tech industry, and coming to the aid of Putin and his fevered dreams of a reunited Soviet Union, would only serve to set back those aims. Xi, who is evil, as communists are, is not stupid. He knows NATO is a defensive organization that didn't go looking for this fight. I'm betting he also knows Putin brought this on himself.
Russia must be defeated, and humiliated on the world stage, as quickly as possible. Putin and the people around him, his military leaders, and the Russian public as well, must come to the conclusion that the war was a mistake.
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