Ukraine is getting the cold shoulder

You know the problem of a short blanket. If you pull it up to your chin, your feet get cold. If you pull it down to your feet, your shoulders freeze.

US-made Patriot systems are such a short blanket protecting Ukrainian civilians. To be sure, the Ukraine has received various air defense systems from NATO, from portable Stinger and short-range SAM systems like the German Gepard to sophisticated long-range systems like the French SAMP/T. However, only the Patriot is designed to intercept ballistic missiles.

The Russians are stepping up the production of their more advanced missiles, such as the Kinzhal (Dagger). In addition, North Korea eagerly recirculates her own Russian-made missiles back to Russia. Tell me who your friends are… and all that.  

But the Ukraine only has two Patriot batteries and, when they are deployed to protect Kiev, Kharkov and other major cities are denuded – and vice versa. One way or the other thousands die.

Since the protective blanket is too short to stretch over the whole country, how can the problem be solved?

One obvious suggestion would be to supply more Patriot batteries (and missiles for them) to the Ukraine. That would make the blanket long enough to save civilians, who are the prime target of Russian bandit raids. Yet the US, ably led by that great strategist Joe Biden, has come up with another solution: remove the blanket altogether.

White House and Pentagon officials have warned that the US will soon be unable to keep the Ukraine’s Patriot batteries supplied with missiles. You see, at two to four million a pop, the Patriot rockets aren’t cheap, and the sainted American taxpayer can no longer bear such a burden.

This is a specious argument if I’ve ever heard one. If you believe it, then you must also believe that the United States beggared herself when she became “the arsenal of democracy” (and of Stalin’s evil, it has to be said) during the Second World War.

Overall, the US spent some four trillion in today’s dollars on that war effort, and in 1945 defence spending accounted for 40 per cent of the country’s GDP. Did America go broke as a result? Quite the opposite. The vast expansion of the industrial base created millions of jobs, an economic boom and the kind of prosperity not seen before or since.

By placing defence contracts with private concerns, the government in essence pumps money from the less effective sector (public) to the more effective one (private). The money doesn’t leave the country – it just makes her better off.

Nor is it just the Patriot. One detects a general slackening of will when it comes to supporting the Ukraine against the onslaught of the fascist evil threatening us all.

At its base lies a distinct deficit of knowledge and understanding, much of it promoted by the dense smokescreen laid by Russian propagandists, trolls and ‘useful idiots’. They are busily indoctrinating the West that it has no dog in this fight, and that a Russian victory would be the lesser evil than her defeat.

Unfortunately, even Western friends of the Ukraine seem unable to delve into the situation as deeply as it requires. One such is Lt Col Stuart Crawford, military analyst for The Express.

Col Crawford knows infinitely more than I do about the mechanics of warfare, and his heart is clearly in the right place. It’s on the basis of such assets that he tries to analyse the situation. Alas, he falls a bit short.

He states correctly that: “President Zelensky… will not rest until there is a restoration of Ukrainian territorial integrity at the pre-2014 status quo.” However, “as the war drags on this may be more of an opening gambit for future negotiations,” rather than the realistic objective.

Incidentally, a gambit is an oft-misused chess term. It denotes not just any old opening, but one involving a sacrifice. If Col Crawford is using the term correctly, he seems to imply that the Ukraine will have to sacrifice some of her territory for “peace through negotiations – which is how nearly all wars end”.

The colonel then states correctly that: “If Ukraine falls then NATO will have to take on Putin and Russia directly at some point in the future. Better for both the Alliance and Ukraine that the matter is settled via the current conflict, surely?”

Absolutely. So far so good – Col Crawford should get a hotline to the White House and explain to Joe Biden what’s what. But then he undoes much of his good work with one paragraph:

“I have said before, despite public protests otherwise, that Crimea being returned to Ukraine might just be the catalyst for Zelensky to agree to come to the negotiating table. We need to supply him and Ukraine with what they need to bring this about.”

Hear, hear, is my reaction to the second sentence. If the Ukraine is fighting for not only her own freedom but also ours, then it’s our moral and strategic duty to give her the tools to do the job. But the first sentence shows a lamentable misreading of the situation.

The assumption seems to be that it’s Zelensky’s recalcitrance that prevents a negotiated end to the slaughter. “Nobody… want[s] the war to drag on,” writes Col. Crawford. That’s not true: Putin does.

The war legitimises his criminal regime in the eyes of his brainwashed population. His survival, not only political but also physical, hinges on victory – or at least on something that can be presented as such.

On 24 February, 2022, Russian victory was defined as “the demilitarisation and denazification of the Ukraine”, meaning smashing the Ukraine’s sovereignty to bits and reincorporating her into the Stalinist empire Putin aims to recreate.

That the “Russian hordes have been stopped in their tracks and have even been repelled here and there” (in Col Crawford’s apt phrase) constitutes the frustration of Putin’s war objectives, which is another way of saying defeat. And defeat is something he can’t countenance if he wants to live for a while longer.

That’s why the Russians have been redefining their war aims, in response to the changing situation on the frontline. The definitions remain rather hazy, but the leitmotif never changes: victory at all costs.

Ideally, that would mean the revival of the original objective of enslaving the Ukraine. Barring that, it has to be the Ukraine relinquishing chunks of her territory in exchange for Putin magnanimously agreeing to stop firing, catch his breath, rearm, remobilise and come back in force a couple of years later.

Nothing short of that would bring Putin to the negotiating table because anything short of that would put him six feet under. Exactly what parts of the Ukraine he’d insist on keeping is open to discussion. But one absolutely non-negotiable part is the Crimea.

Under no circumstances whatsoever would Russia let go of the Crimea unless made to do so by an irresistible force. To reclaim the Crimea, the Ukraine would have to win a crushing overall victory over Russia, an outcome that Col Crawford correctly states doesn’t seem likely in the absence of all-out Western support.

Such an outcome wouldn’t be “just the catalyst for Zelensky to agree to come to the negotiating table”. It would be Zelensky dictating his terms of Russia’s surrender. That would spell the end of Putin, probably followed by the inauguration of another evil regime (anyone dismissing that probability must have played truant when Russian history was taught).

All this goes to show that no palliatives are possible in this conflict. Either “Russian hordes are stopped in their tracks” for real, ideally for good, or Russian fascism succeeds in destroying the post-Hitler world order built on millions of corpses.

Putin can’t afford the defeat of Russia; the West can’t afford the defeat of the Ukraine. The problem is that the former knows it and the latter doesn’t.

The security blanket covering the Ukraine is getting shorter and, if this trends continues, all of the country will turn into frozen wasteland. Neither you nor I nor Col Crawford wants to see that happen.