Ukraine crisis: Outlook for 2023

“Now for the inconvenient truths that mainstream media (MSM) refuse to present to their audiences regarding the Ukraine war. This happens both in the US and in Europe but especially on the old continent,” writes Seppo Niemi, independent political, economic and military analyst, Master of social sciences (Helsinki University), Finland, in his report “Ukraine crisis: overview of 2022, outlook for 2023”. It’s a very realistic research and detailed review with analytical conclusions. He writes in particular:

- In 1990/1991 when Soviet Union collapsed, the western powers (NATO and the US) promised to then Soviet leaders not to expand their membership after Germany’s reunification. The Soviet withdrawal did occur. However, NATO started expansion eastward, which is now culminating in Ukraine crisis. NATO expanded anyhow, including in Poland for which they had also explicitly stated they would not. But that is not the only promise NATO has broken with Russia.

- In 2008, former US Ambassador to Russia William Burns and the current CIA director warned that any effort by NATO to bring Ukraine into its fold would be viewed by Russia as a threat to its national security and, if pursued, would provoke a Russian military intervention. That memo by Burns provides much-needed context to the Dec. 17, 2021, initiatives by Russia to create a new European security framework that would keep Ukraine out of NATO.

- Now, based on calculated numbers of destroyed equipment and material, one can say that by now, Ukraine has lost the nominal equipment of two larger armies. The stocks of two complete armies have by now been destroyed in Ukraine! The resources for a smaller third one will be delivered in the next rounds of western equipment deliveries during the next months.

- The European public discussion is getting hot, “send or not to send battle tanks, particularly German Leopards” but right now decisions were made “yes, we send”? What MSM and decisionmakers did not realize, was the fact that Ukraine already have had thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles, which were eliminated by Russia so far. Supposedly, Russia will destroy Ukraine’s third army just as it has destroyed the first and second one. It is doubtful that the West has enough material left to provide Ukraine with a fourth one.

- That then leaves only two options. Send in western infantry troops (boots on the ground) with the equipment they still have and try to resume warfare as long as they can. The neo-conservatives as ever favor the first option.

- The second option is to declare a non-existent victory (with the help of western MSM!) and forget about the whole issue and go home. MSM may declare that “Putin tried to conquer Europe but we stopped him after he took only half of Ukraine.” This will sound like ‘victory’. But it is of course extremely far from the truth. Anyway, the media may well buy it.

Outlook for 2023:

- President Putin’s keynote address at the Valdai Club, late October 2022, appears to have put Russia on a collision course with the US-led “Rules Based International Order”. The Biden administration two weeks earlier released its 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS), a full-throated defense of this order, which all but declares war on “autocrats” who are “working overtime to undermine democracy.”

These two visions of the future of the world order define a global competition that has become existential in nature. In short, there can be only one victor. The battle lines have been drawn now, American-led unipolarity on one side and a Russian-Chinese led multipolarity on the other.

- America’s strategy of failure is coming to Ukraine, the US mission follows in the fatal footsteps of ultimately failed war campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq or in Libya. Public critics in America, regarding US military missions in the name of “global war on terrorism” have lamented the lack of a coherent strategy.

As the old line from Carl von Clausewitz goes, “war is an extension of politics through other means.” Warfare, therefore, is an inherently political act.” Thus, whenever military force is used it must have clear ends, set forth by the political leadership ordering the use of that military force. Those clearly defined political ends must be supplemented by reliable ways to achieve that realistic political objective.

- From US viewpoint: Once Kiev was secured and the survival of President Zelensky’s government was assured in autumn 2022, the logical course of action would have been to sue for peace, to negotiate a settlement that kept western Ukraine free and ceded the Russian-speaking provinces of eastern Ukraine and Crimea officially to the Russians.

- But then, Washington doubled down and encouraged the Ukrainians to shift their objective from one of realistic territorial defense to an insane attempt to restore Ukrainian control completely over occupied territories. So, Ukraine has been duped into a war it cannot win against nuclear-armed Russia, while the West does little to prepare itself for the wider war it has provoked.

- Washington’s ruling class has blundered for decades at the strategic level. With each foreign policy disaster, America’s overall standing atop the world system has declined until it has reached its current nadir. The United States now has a stark choice to make:

1. a) either Washington manages to pull out a miracle in Ukraine;
2. b) or the Russians will crush Ukraine and then break the back of the NATO alliance too.

By this way Russia will end the US strategic position in Europe and likely create an entirely New World Order, where there are multiple power centers, as opposed to American unipolarity. This fate was avoidable had the US simply given more attention to strategy rather than ideology.

- After 11 months of nonstop warfare in Ukraine, the US-backed western coalition finds itself in a worse position than when it began. Aside from the fact that the economic sanctions have severely impacted Washington’s closest European allies, the West’s control of Ukraine has plunged the economy into a protracted slump, destroyed much of the country’s critical infrastructure and annihilated a sizable portion of the Ukrainian Army.

- More importantly, Ukrainian forces are now suffering unsustainable casualties on the battlefield which is laying the groundwork for the inevitable splintering of the state. Whatever the outcome of the conflict may be, one thing is certain: Ukraine will no longer exist as a viable, independent, contiguous state.

- One of the biggest surprises of the current war, is simply the lack of preparedness on part of the US and the West in general. The Western policymakers seem surprised by the fact that the economic sanctions backfired and actually strengthened Russia’s economic situation. They also failed to anticipate that the vast majority of countries would not only ignore the sanctions but proactively explore options for “ditching the dollar” in their business transactions and in the sale of critical resources. The level of incompetence in the planning of this war is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

- It appears that all the preparation was focused on provoking a Russian invasion, not on the developments that would happen soon afterwards. What’s clear, is that the Pentagon never “gamed out” the actual war itself or the conflict as it is presently unfolding.

- On January 20, at a ceremony of the Euro-Atlantic alliance in Madrid, Josep Borrel, the Head of EU diplomacy, recalled Russia’s victories over Hitler and Napoleon, from which he concluded that it is necessary to continue to increase military pressure on it and continue arming Ukraine. No doubt, Russia understood it so, that he voiced the real goal of the western military campaign, which is the destruction of Russia and the seizure of its territories, as Hitler and Napoleon had previously attempted to do.

- On January 25, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock publicly confirmed, at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the fact on the ground: “We are fighting a war against Russia”. With the word “we” she meant that the EU and Germany are fighting a war against Russia. Perhaps this is “the Fourth Reich”.

- Then the question arises again as to what should happen with the deliveries of the tanks at all. The West can send 200 tanks there but they don’t change anything in the overall military situation – to take over the Crimea or the Donbass, those tanks are not enough. In eastern Ukraine, in the Bakhmut area, the Russians are clearly advancing and probably will have completely conquered the Donbass before long. One only has to consider the numerical superiority of the Russians over Ukraine. Russia can mobilize up to two million reservists!

- However, those new capabilities cannot prevent a NATO defeat. In other words, US and western commanders will sooner or later have to face an even worse choice: defeat or nuclear war and Europe (the EU) is sleepwalking with the US into the same Armageddon.

- Ultimately, that is no longer an option for Ukraine either. The key to solving the conflict does not lie in Kyiv, nor does it lie in Berlin, Brussels or Paris, it lies in Washington and Moscow…

- A broader front for Peace must be built in Washington… Otherwise we wake up one morning and we’re in the middle of World War III.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs