We must not let Ukraine become the next Forever War, by Dr. John C. Hulsman
By its very nature republican government, if it is to thrive, must be meritocratic. In opposition to the aristocratic feudalism which it eventually superseded, the greatest strength of the rule of the people is that it rewards those who have been analytically right-- regardless of rank or title--and punishes those that have been wrong. Except that this beneficial way of being no longer seems to be operative in the United States.
A simple contrast in the fates of those who advocated the disastrous Vietnam and Iraq wars is instructive. After Vietnam, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was all but officially ostracized. Likewise, the far less sympathetic MacGeorge Bundy never became the President of Harvard University, a societal punishment for his terrible analysis over the war.
To put it mildly, this beneficial meritocratic process did not occur after the Iraq debacle. Instead, John Bolton, despite being a poster boy for the whole ruinous neo-conservative cause, was elevated to National Security Advisor. Likewise, Robert Kagan and Anne Applebaum, two particularly influential elite cheerleaders for the war, have gone on from sinecure to sinecure, as though the conflict never happened.
In fact, Applebaum has gone so far as to ludicrously say that she still supports the Iraq war, despite the fact that it cost over $1.1 trillion, thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives, indirectly brought about the abomination of ISIS, and left Iran the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. In a healthy republic, we are supposed to judge people meritocratically, by their records. At a bare minimum, this motley crew should never be taken seriously again.
And yet, they are. Even as we speak, the usual suspects are reuniting around transforming the Ukraine conflict into the next Forever War. They are doing so using their usual magic trick, moving the intellectual goalposts as their initial confident predictions of victory recede in the face of global reality. ‘Wish-casting’--the confusion between making objective analytical assessments and putting forward predictions that entirely echo what one would fervently like to happen--is these promiscuous interventionists’ besetting sin.
Perhaps the best argument making clear that Ukraine, despite its vaunted Spring/Summer offensive, is not winning the war is the deafening silence that has descended on its wish-casting cheerleaders. If I had a dollar for every commentary I read earlier in the year that the tide of the war was turning, that this was Kiev’s Gettysburg moment, I would now be a rich man. Yet now I hear crickets chirping.
Instead, what my firm predicted in our traditional January City AM column of political risk calls has come to pass: After eight extra months of fighting and further tragic loss of life, neither Russia nor Ukraine would decisively tip the strategic scales in either’s favour. In other words, both offensives were doomed to only make marginal tactical gains at best. For all the blood and all the treasure expended, much like the charnel house of World War I, neither side would break through. This is precisely what has happened.
The cannier members of the pro-Ukraine commentariat have adjusted by moving the strategic goalposts. After spending the first 15 months of the conflict reassuring the hard-pressed American taxpayer (a country with a little-mentioned $32 trillion dollar debt, about $98,000 per person) that all this financial sacrifice for a third-order interest was fleeting, they have now changed their tune. Now ‘we must prepare for a longer war,’ a reality that was clear to my firm well over a year ago, but only now is dawning on the wish-casters.
Even worse for the wish-casters, if there is a long-term stalemate on the battlefield, then outside factors (as happened in 1917-1918) will likely determine the outcome of the conflict. And in geostrategic terms, there is no getting away from the basic notion that Ukraine matters far more to Russia than it does to anyone in the West, particularly a far-away United States. In contrast, Ukraine isn’t a priority for Russia, it’s the priority.
To put it mildly, the same cannot be said for the United States. According to the Senate by June of this year, the US government has already spent a whopping $113 billion in assistance to Ukraine, dwarfing the rest of the world put together. Once again, America seems to care more about European security than the Europeans do. After generations of continental free-riding off American defence expenditures, this is not a political state of affairs that can, or should, continue.
This massive infusion of funds is even more strategically nonsensical given that the US finds itself once more with a peer competitor superpower in China, which must be laughing itself silly at Washington’s throwing its precious wherewithal (as happened over Iraq and Afghanistan) at such an unimportant, third-order interest. The Indo-Pacific is the locus of our new era, where much of the world’s future economic growth is located, as well as much of its future political risk. For America, Ukraine is just a dangerous sideshow diverting a superpower that can no longer do everything from focusing on the part of the world that fundamentally matters.
The ‘Roosevelt Rule’ of American strategic thinking makes American grand strategy clear. Given that the Eurasian world island has by far the most people and resources, as FDR cannily noted, all the US must do to remain pre-eminent in the world is see that no other great power controls either portion of this massive landmass. Russia, which cannot take over Ukraine let alone threaten NATO, is not about to seize Europe. But a China in possession of Taiwan would come to dominate first the Indo-Pacific and then Asia itself. That the United States simply cannot allow. Anything that diverts America from following the Roosevelt Rule will eventually be jettisoned, as facts—despite the permanent war cheerleaders—are stubborn things.
The American people understand this instinctively. In the most recent August CNN survey, for the first time a majority of Americans are against any further funding of Kiev. Fully 55 percent of those polled say Congress should not authorise any additional funding for Ukraine, with a dominant 71 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of independents agreeing. The American people can see another ruinous Forever War staring them in the face, even if their utterly discredited foreign policy elite cannot. It is well past time to see strategic sense, and go back to the republican virtue of judging an analyst by their analysis, and not how many Washington cocktail parties they attend.
Thank you John...