600,000 Dead What for? Thoughts on Ukraine 30 July

30 July 2024 Thoughts on Ukraine Until 1995 almost all experts in American foreign policy and grand strategy were strongly opposed to the proposal to bring Ukraine into the North American Treaty Organization. In 1998, during the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton, the Republican Senate voted 89 to 10 to do just that. Public discussion of the question stopped, and the minority report disappeared from public view. Now we hear only of an “unprovoked” Russian attack on Ukraine. Here I propose to reopen the discussion and to suggest ways to repair the damage to Ukraine as best we can.            As I see it, two great geopolitical strategists lie behind the current confrontation between the U.S. and Russia in Ukraine. The Russian, Aleksandr Dugin, says that the American Empire should be destroyed. The American, Zbigniew Brzezinski, announced a plan for the dismemberment of Russia. Happily, however, Dugin and Brzezinski were merely advisors, and today’s principal moral agents are the American President and the Russian President. We hope they are men of good judgment. There is also a Ukrainian President, caught between the two millstones.           Both Dugin and Brzezinski agreed with one of the key founders of geopolitics that Eurasia is the key to world power. Their master Halford Mackinder in 1919 put the issue like this: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.” Russia currently occupies the Heartland. To prevent Russia from again emerging as an imperial power, Brzezinski advised the dismemberment of Russia into three republics. To weaken Russia sufficiently to get to that stage, Brzezinski proposed separating Ukraine from Russia. To ensure that Ukraine can be successfully carved out under Western hegemony, he proposed replacing the loose belt of neutral states buffering Russia from the West by an eastward expansion of the North American Treaty Organization right up to the Russian border. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bipolar power equilibrium between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. collapsed, leaving the U.S. as the only superpower at its “unipolar” moment. Brzezinski thought the U.S. had a “narrow window” of supremacy before its power faded into a “multipolar” world. The success of this strategy depended upon the continued weakness and disarray of Russia.           When Paul Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives took over the liberal Democrat Brzezinski’s strategy, Dugin was already publishing his Foundations of Geopolitics in 1997 and did not welcome the plan to reduce Russia to a “regional power.” Russian geopoliticians have been studying Anglo-American grand strategy for over a generation. The neo-conservatives, however, neglected Brzezinski’s caveat: this effort at coercion could only work during the “narrow window” while Russia is weak. They felt confirmed in their judgment of Russian weakness by her “special military operation” using nowhere near the three-to-one ratio of forces normally required for an attacker to dominate a defender. They also neglected the advice of men of practical experience like Kennan, Burns, and others, that the eastward expansion of NATO would provoke a dangerous response from Russia, especially if it touched upon Ukraine.           There are two signs that Russia is not as weak as she was in 1997 when Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard appeared. First, for the economic sanctions to work, the West needed almost total control of the world economy. If that were so, the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline could have balked the growing Berlin-Moscow axis of cooperation that Dugin outlined in 1997. The growing cooperation of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, however, signifies that America no longer dominates the world economy. Accordingly, Russia was able to pivot to alternative markets, while the sabotage of Nordstream pushed the German economy into jeopardy. Second, when it became clear to the Russians that the Brzezinski plan was to move on to the Ukrainian phase, the Russians developed a “special military operation” using a slow, methodical artillery and rocket attack inviting the loyal Ukrainian troops into kill boxes like Bakhmut. The disproportionate firepower of the Russians (at times, I hear, at a ratio of 10:1), left some 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead on the field, a third of its population displaced or in exile, billions of dollars locked into the iron triangle of the Pentagon, the arms industry, and the Congress, and an inflationary impoverishment of the already weak American under-classes. Apparently, the “window of opportunity” did not stay open as long as required even by the technical calculation. Moreover, geopolitical calculation is notoriously thin in considering moral questions. If there were evidence that just war doctrine formally guided American foreign policy regarding the Ukraine, that might count as evidence against Pope Francis’s statement: “In altre parole: oggi la guerra è in sé stessa un crimini contra l’umanità.” How does the American doctrine of “full-spectrum dominance” map into just-war doctrine? Might Osama bin Ladin have had a strategic victory over the United States when he provoked the Bush-Cheney administration to adopt the still-dominant policy of pre-emption at will? Is anyone happier or better off to have a trigger-happy America?           Now that Washington has drawn still more European nations into an expanded NATO, Russia is recruiting 1.7 million troops and there are prognostications that arms production will rise. Perhaps there was no malice on our part in getting the Ukrainians to fight on our behalf. Be that as it may, today the brave and faithful Ukrainians look like Uriah the Hittite fighting against Russian kill boxes. King David had his men abandon Uriah at the front. We already have over half a million Ukrainian Uriahs. What do we do now?          Except for minority reports like those from Douglas Macgregor, John Mearsheimer, Scott Ritter, and Jeffrey Sachs, our current political leaders seem to be locked into the belief that they still enjoy the “unipolar moment” of a generation ago. What evidence do we see that our policymakers are even considering the developing plans for multi-polarity? It is particularly disturbing that the minority views are being ignored rather than refuted. Are the only proponents of multipolarity to be found among Russian scholars of American grand strategy? Such an effort at reflection is especially important before we take irrevocable steps to catastrophe. The last constitutionally declared war of the United States ended in 1945. In matters as serious as an escalating confrontation with Russia, might now be a good time for a Congressional discussion? Is the War Powers Act irrelevant? So far the American public has yet to be told what exactly would count as an American victory. I fail to see how the destruction of Ukraine would count. To keep Ukraine out of NATO all the Russians need to do is to keep the war going at a simmer and gradually let the attrition ratios play out. If that is so, the Russians have basically won the war, and the only question left is how many more Ukrainians are to be killed. If it was a mistake in 1995 to bring Ukraine into NATO, might it still be a mistake now? What then might we attempt now? First, let’s address the suffering and destruction in Ukraine. (Though it might be tempting to shrug our shoulders and just walk away, would that enhance our credibility?) Second, let’s try—perhaps counter-intuitively—to ameliorate the hatred developing between Americans and Russians. How? Might I suggest that we Americans should approach the Russians about jointly rebuilding Ukraine? We cannot bring back those whose lives have been destroyed, but, with God’s mercy, perhaps we can try to make amends and help repair the damage. We have significantly damaged trust, which will be needed for future fruitful dealings with the Russians. Finally, we might ask ourselves whether every transaction we attempt with Russia or China or anyone else must be a zero-sum game. If the answer to that question is yes, we may feel morally obliged to annihilate everyone else in the world. If the answer is no, co-existence is still possible, and we may need to examine our strengths and weaknesses to work out the best deal for ourselves, even at the risk of cooperation. Some leaders are very good at negotiation. It would be a good idea, however, to negotiate from a position of strength—not only military, but also moral.              Your truly,   E. M. Macierowski, Ph.D.     Professor of Philosophy            Benedictine College 1020 North 2nd Street Atchison, KS 66002 Mobile: 913-674-6188 edwardm@benedictine.edu P.S. These are my personal views.