Treasonous inevitability

The western warhawk calculation, Azovite doubts on missiles and North Koreans, forever war

Today’s topics:

• Why Biden gave Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles on Russian territory. The pre-Trump calculation

• How Azov’s military analyst argues that these missiles won’t change much, and - shock horror - that there probably aren’t any North Koreans fighting alongside Russia (the putative US rationale for increasing Ukrainian missile capabilities)

• Harsh punishment for any pro-peace sentiment within Ukraine - even for parliamentarians

As usual, I can never shake off the feeling that there is a direct positive correlation between the amount of ‘pro-peace’ editorials published in leading western media, and the degree of NATO-Russia military escalation.

On November 17, the NYT published an article on the war in Ukraine that I can essentially entirely agree with:

Dozens of people, and often hundreds, are dying every day in this grinding war. Mr. Trump should seize the chance to save lives. Nobody is coming to save Ukraine. A settlement will eventually be needed.

…

I believe it’s right to call Ukraine a proxy war, because I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the Biden administration has supported the war not only in deference to righteous Ukrainian determination to fight off Russia but also because the war was a chance to debilitate our enemy without directly engaging it.

…

The United States staked out an awkward middle ground — supporting the war enough to keep it going, but never enough to win.

Remarkable, right? A far cry from the usual sentimental warmongering.

The catch

But then the next day, US president Biden authorized Ukraine to hit Russian territory with western-supplied missiles. This had previously been previously off-limits to Ukraine, though this didn’t stop a range of drone attacks against various targets in Russia, or, of course, Ukraine’s military invasion and occupation of the Kursk region.

Indeed, according to western media, Biden changed his position because of Kursk. Of course, the reason they give is ‘Russian use of North Korean soldiers to take back Kursk’, though there still hasn’t actually been any confirmation that that DPRK soldiers are fighting there.

But this tracks with my recent article on the crucial importance of Ukraine’s control of (parts of) the Kursk region, insofar as it allows Kyiv to make any discussion of a ceasefire impossible. And since Trump’s team seems more likely to push for such a resolution than the Democrats, perhaps Biden decided to make sure that Ukrainian forces wouldn’t be pushed out of the area before Trump’s inauguration.

Ukraine may not have many of these long-range missiles, but it certainly can’t hurt to use them to put some more pressure on Russian supply lines. Like all wunderwaffen, it won’t change the overall tides. But as Keynes said, in the long run we’re all dead. I think the calculation is as follows: if we prolong and intensify the war until Trump’s inauguration, Putin-Trump inaugurations will be more tense and difficult than otherwise. And besides that, neither side is much inclined to look weak. Hence, a hotter situation at the frontline even further increases the chances of negotiations failing. A relatively rational calculation, in my view. Let’s see if it’ll work out.

The home front