Amid claims of Ukraine’s potential success with increased support, it is crucial to consider the complexity of geopolitical dynamics and Russia’s strategic interests. Furthermore, historical context highlights the futility of attempting to instigate regime change in Russia.
By Ray McGovern and Lawrence Wilkerson
Special to Consortium News
As U.S. House members grapple with whether to give $60 billion more to Ukraine, they must also grapple with the checkered nature of the intelligence they’ve been fed.
On July 13, 2023, President Joe Biden announced Russian President Vladimir Putin “has already lost the war.” That was six days after C.I.A. Director William Burns, normally a sane voice, had called the war a “strategic failure” for Russia with its “military weaknesses laid bare.”
Earlier, in December 2022, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines reported that the Russians were experiencing “shortages of ammunition” and were “not capable of indigenously producing what they are expending.”
We advise caution, as these same people now say that Ukraine can prevail if the U.S. provides $60 billion more. Do they think they can change geography, overcome Russian industrial might, and persuade the Russians that Ukraine should not be a core interest of theirs?
Obama’s Reasons
Recall President Barack Obama’s reasons for withholding lethal weapons from Ukraine. In 2015, The New York Times reported on Obama’s reluctance: “In part, he has told aides and visitors that arming the Ukrainians would encourage the notion that they could actually defeat the far more powerful Russians, and so it would potentially draw a more forceful response from Moscow.”
Senior State Department officials spelled out this rationale:
“If you’re playing on the military terrain in Ukraine, you’re playing to Russia’s strength, because Russia is right next door. It has a huge amount of military equipment and military force right on the border. Anything we did as countries in terms of military support for Ukraine is likely to be matched and then doubled and tripled and quadrupled by Russia.”
The above words were spoken by then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken on March 5, 2015 to an audience in Berlin. It turns out President Obama was right. It is hard to understand why Blinken (and Biden) chose the way of President Donald Trump, who gave lethal weapons to Ukraine, over the way of Obama.
So much for geography and relative strength. What about core interests? In 2016 President Obama told The Atlantic that Ukraine is a core interest of Russia but not of the U.S. He warned that Russia has escalatory dominance there: “We have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.”
[See: VIPS MEMO: To President Biden —Avoiding a Third World War]
Earlier, when a saner William Burns was ambassador to Russia, he warned of Moscow’s “emotional and neuralgic reaction” to bringing Ukraine into NATO. Braced on the issue by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in February 2008, Burns reported that Russia’s opposition was based on “strategic concerns about the impact on Russia’s interests in the region” and warned then that “Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully”.
Burns added:
“In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”
Regime Change in Kiev
The overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 gave immediacy to Russia’s warnings on Ukraine and its fear that the West would try to effect “regime change” in Russia, as well.
In a major commentary, “Russian Military Power”, published in December 2017, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded:
“The Kremlin is convinced the U.S. is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and the Arab Spring and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts …”
Is Putin paranoid about “U.S. regime change efforts?” D.I.A. did not think him paranoid. And surely Putin has taken note of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s remarks in April 2022:
“One of the US’s goals in Ukraine is to see a weakened Russia. … The US is ready to move heaven and earth to help Ukraine win the war against Russia.”
In sum: Russia has both the will and the means to prevail in Ukraine – no matter how many dollars and arms Ukraine gets.
Obama was right; Russia sees an existential threat from the West in Ukraine. And nuclear powers do not tolerate existential threats on their border. Russia learned this the hard way in Cuba in 1962.
Last, there is zero evidence that after Ukraine, Putin will go after other European countries. The old Soviet Union and its empire are long gone. Thus, President Trump’s recent remarks, in which he threw doubt on the U.S. commitment to defend NATO countries from a nonexistent threat, is nonsense – sheer bombast.
Ray McGovern, former army infantry intelligence officer and later chief of C.I.A.’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch; was also C.I.A. one-on-one briefer of The President’s Daily Brief 1981-1985.
Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary; former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Click Here To Get Your FREE Newsletter No Advertising – No Government Grants – This Is Independent Media
Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Comments
10 responses to “Throwing Good Money After Bad in Ukraine?”
Its a money pit that is making the usual profiteers wealthy with death.
We should not be involved in Ukraine. Russia has every reason to be. Leave it to Russia to solve.
I’m afraid the bad news is that the WA$P Wa$hington/£ondon $€£f-appointed axis of virtue are driven by a megalomanic white supremacism, U$ua££y hidden behind mercenary proxies and glib $€£f-righteoU$ platitudes.
We are confronted by a hydra of collective psychoses that will leave nothing to Russia, the powerplayer on Asia’s resource base which the Brutish Vampire has coveted for centuries.
What is the ‘good money’ referred to in the headline?
I’d imagine Ray is referring to the money that could be spent on constructive projects like infrastructure and education were it not directed by psychotic nutjobs in the ca$ino/marKKKet$ where the tunn€£-vi$ion focU$ is money making money for money, the measure of all va£u€$ according to the collective fixations.
Money itself is neutral…a MEDIUM of exchanging goods and services. The end purpose of its use defines its ethical ‘good’ or ‘bad’ statU$.
Under neo£iberal ideology money is elevated and deified as Moo£ah A£mighty, a d€£U$ory fantasy that nevertheless has actual effects in the real world.
Gaza shows the direction of travel if these global pi££age idiots are not stopped.
Our best bet is that they exaust themselves battering their thicKKK heads against the BRICS wall.
The alternative is their nihi£i$tic Samson option.
As Wilde rearked, ‘they know tthe price of everything and the value of nothing.’
If it is the money that could be spent on constructive projects, then what was the bad money? All I can see is bad money – money knowingly spent for malevolent purposes, with more to follow.
That is why they chose to cashout some of the assets they have…
https://philosophyofgoodnews.wordpress.com/2024/02/19/war-truth-death/
The longer the Ukrainians prolong the war, the more territory will be ceded to Russia when Ukraine surrenders. Zelensky is a puppet of the US/EU/NATO war machine. Ukrainians are cheap cannon fodder to Washington, London and Brussels.
Our goverment in the UK wants us to back the losers so they’ll have more company! loner nutjobs.
A pair of pro-Russian trolls putting a spin on the poor performance of Russia and its increasing economic problems. And there is more than @zero@ evidence that Putin wants to go after further European countries. His problem is that most of the countries he wants to go after are in NATO, and his military forces are not up to the task. Fortunately.
Support the Ukraine to end Russian aggression. And fvck the trolls.