Where to begin? Almost every sentence contains an incorrect assumption, or some kind of misinformed opinion. The US can be legitimately criticized so many different ways for its failed military policies, yet the author somehow manages to botch it up beyond repair.
The U.S. has been reckless and fickle with its proxy war in Ukraine – resulting in thousands of lives lost – but no one seriously thinks, or ever thought, Ukraine was actually going to win the war. The war was expected to be over in a couple weeks. That it has lasted this long is a testament to the bravery of ordinary Ukrainians, and the willingness of the U.S. to spend billions sacrificing other people’s lives. Putin is the big loser here, even though he will ultimately succeed on the battlefield.
This conflict has very little in common with Israel. And again the author messes this up. Israel is not wiping Hamas off the face of the earth, even though it could easily do it militarily. No one expects that. It faces too much international political pressure that extends way beyond the U.S.
To compare these tw o conflicts to Iraq and Afghanistan is laughable. The U.S. had boots on the ground in those two countries for many years. I actually stopped reading about halfway through, when the author suggested that China could simply march into Taiwan and take it over. Even if the U.S. doesn’t lift a finger there, China isn’t waltzing through Taiwan.
Interesting. My gut reaction was the precise opposite: wrong conclusions despite a mostly sensible analysis of the last twenty years.
His two main conclusions appear to be that the US is in the process of being defeated and its global role is ending AND that Ukraine and Israel should ignore suggestions that they make compromise peaces but fight on to the better end. Not only are both points individually dubious but they appear incompatible.
Overall, the most apposite parallel for the big picture today is the Cold War. As last time, we need to contain the threat – China and allies – until it mellows. During this process, there will be a number of limited or proxy wars on the boundary of the opposing bloc. In each case, it is necessary to show resolve and deter further attacks after which some local compromise deal can shut down that specific clash. Last time round, this involved accepting e.g. division in Germany, Korea and IndoChina. This time it might to involve pragmatic deals on Donetz and Gaza.
There are two good arguments for shutting down local conflicts. One is the risk of escalation into a global or even thermonuclear war. The other is that the Americans have always had a proclivity for flip flopping on small wars after initial enthusiasm. They often start gung-ho and refusing to take acceptable deals on the table then suddenly switching to being desperate to disengage and walking away – often threatening or replacing their local client ruler if he fails to cooperate with sufficient alacrity (a process seemingly now being repeated in Ukraine). There is no point getting exercised by this pattern of repeated sub optimal behaviour. It is just the way they are.
The articles wandered over a lot of ground but it was the opening which I thought most mistaken. Cold War II has only just started. Suggesting that American defeat is inevitable within twelve months is unduly pessimistic. “There is a lot of ruin in a nation” as Adam Smith said after the British experienced some defeat had provoked forecasts of national ruin. Even if Ukraine accepts both the loss of the eastern provinces and formal neutrality and Isreal ends up accepting more or less the status quo ante, Cold War II will continue. The West should pace itself. As last time, local conflicts should be shut down whenever a tolerable compromise is available.
I agree that there are some correct assessments, as you point out. He starts out promising. But already the paragraph that there are many similarities between the war in Ukraine and Israel’s actions in Gaza is baffling – in truth, there are very few similarities. That Israel and Ukraine are losing because soft-hearted US imposed restraints on its allies and so hamstrung their effectiveness is grotesque.
The JCPOA was a diplomatic breakthrough, and the US’ flagrant breach of the agreement – which was adopted by the UN Security Council and was therefore binding in international law – destroyed US attempts at rebuilding a reputation for US willingness to engage in diplomacy and adherence to international law.
Frankly, so far as I am concerned, it goes downhill from there.
I agree with you on many points here (though I don’t really see how Putin is ultimately the loser in the situation with Ukraine). Nevertheless, I think Europe has just as much blame (if not more) blame to carry. Their unwillingness to stop, and often desire to appease, dictators and authoritarian regimes is certainly a big part of the problem. Further more, the EU is by far more of a hot bed of the “Violence is bad” point of view than the US.
The only point I agree with the author is that Obama was a disaster for American foreign policy.
I think Putin has already lost because he’s still fighting two years later, for an operation that was supposed to be over in weeks, if not days. I think it has exposed the weakness of the Russian military. And although the sanctions imposed by the west are pathetic, they are still disruptive.
In my youth and young adulthood (when the Cold War was still a thing), people used to fear the mighty Soviet Army, and wonder just how quickly it could overrun Western Europe. I don’t know whether it could have then, but as a result of the war in Ukraine, everybody realises that the Russian Army now really isn’t much of a fighting force, given that it is riddled with corruption, incompetence and cowardice, and the principal function of its tanks seems to be cooking their crews. If I were Putin, I would have preferred the world not to find all that out.
I’m not sure you realise how many losses the Russians are prepared to accept. It doesn’t matter if your troops are braver or better trained, or have better tanks. The Russians will just take the losses, like they did in WW2. It’s exactly what they’re doing now, and Ukraine is losing as a result. If you think the likes of Britain’s tiny army can make a difference you’re deluded.
I am absolutely sure I know how many losses Russia is prepared to accept. Putin (in common with all other Russian leaders throughout history) doesn’t give a hoot about ordinary Russians, and the “body bags coming home” thing simply isn’t a factor for him. However, it is unarguable that Russia is making extremely hard work of the Ukraine war. Even if it does ultimately “win” (in the sense of occupying all of Ukraine), the idea of it successfully invading (say) Poland is fanciful. Also, a guerilla war can hopefully be waged in Ukraine which will take its toll. I mean, the one thing we can be sure of is that most Ukrainians do not want to be part of Russia.
Ukraine running out of troops and millions of the population having fled the country doesn’t strike me as Russia losing, let alone a rather large amount of territory now being Russian.
The Saturday FT had an interesting essay that claimed that the average Ukrainian Infantry ‘grunt’ was about 44.
Even Roman Legionaries had generally retired by then!*
(*An excellent exhibition on the subject has just opened at the BM.)
Both can be losers. Ukraine was never ever going to win this war. They were supposed to be toppled in weeks. Russia no longer looks like the great bear.
I now rather doubt that the USSR ever WAS a threat to Western Europe. Quite likely the Cold War was totally unnecessary. As Bevan pointed out a country which produced so little steel was hardly a threat ( can’t immediately find the exact quote…)
But, once again, the West’s politicians are pumping up the threat of Russia…quite probably to distract from the total mess they’ve made of their own countries.
I think that is right, in retrospect. Most of Russia’s territorial “gains” in Eastern Europe came at the end of WW2, and the Western allies weren’t particularly motivated to try to stop it, having just fought a long war.
There’s a big difference between defending your country and invading other countries. Like I said earlier, Russia would have its hands full against Poland.
I think people continue to misread Putin’s initial intent, as if he had planned some sort of blitzkrieg of Ukraine. He didn’t. There is a great deal of common ground between the countries’ people. Ukraine is home to no small number of Russians. Putin’s intent, from what I’ve seen, was to make enough noise that the two sides would sit down and figure out something about the two Eastern provinces. But the US principally, aided by the EU, cut that idea off at the knees.
I am always amazed by attempts to find, first of all, the ethnic side of this conflict.
PS. For those who disliked me – I’m from Mariupol, I’m familiar with this region from inside, I know more about this conflict than all of you combined, and I don’t give a 4ck about your opinions.
This will inevitably take time, because unlike the commenters here, I don’t want to write something clickbait. I don’t promise, but I can try if you are willing to agree that this war did not happen because of the “bad behavior” of the West, but has its origins in the internal logic of Russia, Ukraine and the relationship between them. Of course, external forces influence the development of the conflict, but they are so incompetent and lack of initiative that they are unlikely to influence its outcome
But not today, try to understand me
Not sure I would agree with you. I think Russia would have been happy with control over Crimea and the Donbass region, and Western Ukraine being neutral. This could have been negotiated before the invasion started but NATO would not participate.
That is, you are sure that Putin will fulfill such an agreement. And you don’t remember how, before the invasion, one of the Russian Foreign Ministry officials demanded that NATO go back to hell with the borders that existed before 1991. This means that the Baltic countries, Moldova, Poland, etc. should belong to Russia again.
Honestly, I cannot understand the reasons for such a selective perception of reality. Putin tells you to your face what his intentions are, he says that there is no such state as Ukraine, no matter what Ukrainians think, and you claim that he did not mean what he said, but what you want hear.
Don’t you remember that Ukraine, having wanted to join NATO, buried the Budapest Memorandum? Or did they forget that France and Germany admitted that they did not intend to implement the Minsk Agreements? Let me remind you that on March 24, 2021, Zelensky signed a document that crosses out the Minsk agreements. According to it, Ukraine intended to return the Donbass republics by force. So who here is not fulfilling their obligations?
Maps going back 500 years show that the tribal/ethnic make-up of the Donbas is very different to western Ukraine.
Given the size of the Ukraine this should not be a surprise. If the east/west total width of the Ukraine is overlaid north/south over western Europe we are talking about the distance from Gatwick airport south of London south all way across France and out into the Mediterranean to one of the Spanish Balearic Islands.
The notion that a huge country with a complicated history like the Ukraine does not have ethnic divisions, is absurd.
Putin is now doing what Stalin already did in the 1930s. He populates the “liberated territories” with Asian peoples, just like the British populated Britain with Muslims (sounds racist, but it’s true)
There is some mockery in your words. People have the right to live on the lands where their ancestors are buried. And they are not obliged to move somewhere if they do not like a national policy that denies them the right to exist. Therefore, Donbass has the right to join Russia not only with its people, but also with its lands.
This is not and has never been enough to start a war.
But the public here, including you, seriously believes that this is the key factor. This is more than absurd, this is the overconfidence of complete incompetence, a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
It’s not so much an ethnic divide, or even a linguistic one (Kyiv speaks Russian) but a cultural one. There mostly isn’t a very clear distinction between ethnic Russians/Ukrainians, especially in the cities. The only large, clearly ethnic Ukrainian area is Galicia, ie the far west. Donbas (the most pro-Russia area) is populated by ppl from all over the former USSR, who were moved there as an industrial workforce, though in Donbas the rural pop is more ‘Ukrainian’ (even then, remember in pre-WW2 Ukraine collective agriculture meant ppl were moved around quite a lot). Ethnic mixing was a Soviet policy, partly because of the directed economy and partly as a way of destroying national loyalty. So there are general patterns but it’s not clear at all. The conflict within Ukraine is more cultural (pro-West/pro-Soviet).
Everything you say looks historically accurate but you omit recent events. After 2014 the Kiev government instituted a form of anti Russian apartheid in the south and east of the country against its own citizens.
There is no going back, western Ukraine will have to accept a new map. The details now have to be worked out, the principal issue is whether west Ukraine retains access to the Back Sea.
After 2014 the Kiev government instituted a form ofanti Russian apartheid in the south and east of the country against its own citizens ————————
I understand that some people believe in Russian propaganda, but it takes a special skill to select such idiotic statements
Thankyou, I am British but lived in Ukraine for six years, travelled all over the country, speak some Russian, had my own business there and took an interest in the social/political situation. I was living in Kyiv through the whole Maidan protest period, and was actually in Donetsk and saw the city hall being overrun by the early ‘separatist’ reaction. In my view it’s difficult for anyone who hasn’t at least spent time in the former USSR to have much idea of how things work there, it’s kind of doubly confusing to western Europeans because it looks not too dissimilar but psychological factors are very different.
By the way, those who dislike my post above are clones of people from Obama’s office. They think they understand people living in other countries better than those people themselves, and then they wonder why things went wrong.
It’s interesting to see how Obama’s critics share his way of thinking.
Leaving aside the ethnically Russian people in the East, there is no common ground between Ukraine and Russia. Russia is a horrible country ruled by an appalling regime, and I can’t imagine any (non-Russian speaking) Ukrainian would want anything to do with it. If Putin’s plan was indeed to make enough noise so that the two sides would figure out something about the Eastern provinces”, then it would seem that he badly miscalculated.
Russia is a horrible country ruled by an appalling regime, and I can’t imagine any (non-Russian speaking) Ukrainian would want anything to do with it
Prior to the war it was routine for Ukrainian parents to send their children off to attend University in Russia, it was as normal as it is for a 19 year old in Scotland to study at an English university.
The cultural unification between Scotland & England and Ukraine & Russia are broadly similar.
Prior to the war 60% of Ukrainians could speak Russian.
It seems that missiles have become a great leveler in wars. We are now on a rapid path in anti-missile protection; but we are not there yet with mobile systems – permament installations like the iron dome seem less vunerable.
To Jim. Lot of valuable thoughts in your post ; thanks. In particular let’s emphasize again that Ukraine failure in its “great offensive” would not, repeat not, never ever have been avoided by some F16 or more missiles. Putin’s army is entrenched between a multi-layered defense zone. This type of defense is hugely difficult to crack, unless the attacker has at least a 3:1 advantage in manpower and (not or) can act in total surprise and has airpower superiority. None of these cumulative conditions is available to the Ukrainian, not to speak about other strategic or tactical errors.
The Russian Army got entrenched behind its defensive zone because Ukraine wasn’t given enough weapons to rout them during their initial counter-offensive.
Excellent criticism. Saves me a lot of writing. The US failures over the past two decades hardly need to be pointed out as they’re glaringly obvious for all to see. The reasons are more debatable. What the author has failed to say is that the same globalist optimism that gave us a hollowed out manufacturing sector, an empowered China, rising wealth inequality, and domestic political strife also gave us a failed foreign policy. We can see it in that quote from Rice and the assumption that the US could bring Democracy to Iraq. We see it in the assumption that opening China to global trade would open their society. We see it in the assumption that democracy in the middle east would be better than tinpot dictators. The failures are plain. The source has a name, and we’re remiss if we don’t name it.
Globalism, that optimism in the human condition, that notion that we can all get along if we just trade with each other and let economics rule, that rejection of human history, that enshrinement of hope as a strategy, that is the driver of our discontent. That is the seed that spawned the poisoned tree. There is no utopia at the end of the rainbow. No, we cannot all just get along. Universalism has failed. Multiculturalism has failed. I don’t know whether the globalist oligarchs who defended these things will fall to revisionist foreign powers like China/Russia/Iran or to homegrown populism or even revolution, but I know they will eventually be replaced. As Machiavelli once observed, the Prince who fails to do what is necessary to hold power will eventually be usurped by someone who will. The ruling class is weak. The blood is in the water and the sharks are circling. Trump, Sanders, RFK Jr. from within, Xi, Putin, and Khameini from without. They are besieged. They may hold for a while, but not forever, because they’re weak and unwilling to do what it takes to defeat their enemies, and everyone can see it.
Good post Steve, you fail to mention USA’s bullying foreign policy and the fact that it illegally has bases in other peoples country, how would you Americans like China putting a base in say Colorado?
The Middle East wants America gone, I can see their point.
You live in a dreamworld Jim, US foreign policy is a debacle, whichever side of politics you take, they have f#cked up the world, thanks America!
Ex Nihilo
8 months ago
The simplest rebuttal to this ill-informed anti-American screed is just to ask, “why hasn’t Europe stepped up to guarantee the fates of Ukraine and Israel?” US contributions in both cases dwarf European.
Scant US trade transits the Gulf of Aden (ours is trans-pacific, trans-atlantic and trans-Panamanian), while Europe is utterly dependent on the Red Sea channel; yet whose navy is there protecting your merchant shipping and whose navies aren’t? The UK has a grand total of 11 usable surface warships in its entire navy, a pathetic embarrassment to its traditions. BTW, one of the merchant ships recently struck by a Houti missile in the Red Sea was the Marlin Luanda, of the UK registered firm Oceonix Services, and was carrying Russian oil. So much for sanctions solidarity.
Europe has been meddling in Israel’s conflict with its neighbors for years and always working against Israel’s interests. Europe has repeatedly shown no desire to support Israel. In the current conflict, the moral dimension and fear of total conflagration created a notable exception to the rule. However, as you point out with regards to the amount of clout Britain could muster to ensure that the Red Sea passage remains open, the ability of either Britain or Germany to provide substantial support is rather limited as they themselves rely on the US for their own defense. In the meantime, the US, after its decisive initial support, has scared itself of its capability to us its vast resources and military power to support an ally in need, and is now intent on seeing how it can sell us out as quickly as possible to our enemies in order to create quiet for Joe Biden in his election year. Fortunately Hamas are holding out for even more scandalous conditions of Israeli surrender which even Benjamin Netanyahu can’t give them, although opposition leader Yair Lapid has promised to prop up his coalition should he cave in.
How ungrateful can you get?
If General Allenby and the British Army hadn’t ejected “Johnny Turk” in 1917-1918 you lot would presumably still be ‘wandering’ as you had done for centuries?
Israel is indeed eternally indebted to Earl Balfour and General Allenby, but much has changed since then. Just like that the US was far more ambivalent to Israel in its early years, whereas the USSR was initially friendly to the new socialist state. Things change with shifting interests. As an aside on the subject of the USSR, there were ideological and emotional debates in fledgling Israel that tore at the fabric of society whether Zionism was part of the proletarian revolution and whether or not Josef Stalin was the “sun of the nations”. Fortunately reason won.
Historically, the British are blamed here by both sides of the conflict as bearing a lot of responsibility for the mess that transpired of the British Mandate of Palestine – though for opposing reasons.
I was referring in my comment to the EU, which has meddled incessantly against Israel’s interests through funding of so called “peace” and “human rights” political NGOs related to Palestinian military organizations.
The problem for your position is that the US’s ‘vast resources’ are not currently configured in such a way as to produce the necessary munitions to support the campaigns it keeps embarking on. This won’t change in at least the next decade. They’ve not now got the industrial or educational base to support it, even if they had the political system capable of addressing these many deficits..
Europe’s problem was not recognising this and to not take steps to disentangle ourselves from them sooner. We are all in for a bumpy ride now.
Europe has been meddling in Israel’s conflict with its neighbors for years and always working against Israel’s interests.
I really don’t think so. I cannot understand why the conflict gets so much coverage in the UK, but then you look who is writing the articles
Foreign policies derive from many influences and often do not stand the scrutiny of time and perspective. When the history of the fallen American “empire” is written, it will likely be concluded that the US surrounded itself with too many impotent and resent-ridden “allies” that had no capacity to defend themselves let alone contribute meaningfully to anyone else’s defense.
That missile strike was after the US & UK had bombed Yemen – after that all bets were off. Prior to that the Yemenis had restricted their attacks to Israel bound or Israel owned vessels. The French, Spanish and others recognised this so chose not to participate in the laughably titled ‘Prosperity Guardian’.
Bombings came only after dozens of Houti missile attacks on ships of a variety of nations (including US) and warnings to desist, so I don’t get your point. That the Houtis are justified?
Not only has Europe gotten itself into a predicament by depending upon the US for its defense; it is also deeply handicapped by an inability to accept responsibility for its fecklessness; instead, Europeans too often default to just blaming the US for all perceived ills.
I think that the whole world is in a bit of predicament about the USA.at this time. Perhaps even the Democrats what Pres. Trump to win the 2024 election.
Ukraine is fair enough seeing as it’s a European nation. However the continent has no obligations towards Israel
Nell Clover
8 months ago
If you consider the modern world less an American geographic empire and more a borderless empire of money then many of these apparent strategic blunders aren’t blunders. Yes, these decisions have damaged the American geopolitical empire, but they’re helping advance the borderless global empire of money.
Let’s start with Russia. The country’s financial sector proved impossible to “integrate” with global finance. The oligarchs could be tempted to London, but not their property rights. Foreign investments more often than not resulted in disputed ownership and large losses. Western sanctions have now severely punished Russia’s banking class but left its ability to finance its wars undimmed, and meanwhile damaged the real economies of the supposed European bulwark to Russian expansionism but hugely benefited global energy financial investment. Is the war really about Crimea and the Donbas when we’re not taking all steps to defend them, or is it about securing global financial interests in Ukraine and punishing Russia’s past infringements of foreign investments inside Russia?
Turning to Iran. The prize at the end of the JCPOA road was to be the lifting of financial sanctions barring US investment (and coupled to this, Western investment) in Iran. A huge prize given the vast opportunity to financialise its economy. Even as Iran’s recalcitrant behaviour has become ever more dangerous to the USA’s geopolitical interests, there has been an inexplicable reluctance to deviate from the Iran Deal. Does opening Iran to financialisation trump any concerns about geopolitics, does it matter to financial interests if the Mullahs control more of the Middle East so long as global financialisation can operate with less impediment? Perhaps it isn’t Iran’s continued sponsoring of terrorism that’s causing friction with global interests, but Iran’s proxies’ disrupting global financial flows through the Red Sea?
Lastly, China. China opened itself up and Western finance offshored Western industrial assets lock, stock and barrel. In terms of financialisation, it has been a huge success. Less so for geostrategic interests of Western nation states who are now industrially hobbled and facing an economic behemoth. Does it matter if Western nation states are weaker so long as global financialisation can operate with less impediment? Perhaps the bigger problem presented by President Xi is not any threat to Taiwan (after all, China lacks the means to mount an amphibious assault across nearly 200km of open sea) but his revanchism that threatens to disrupt global financialisation inside China.
It can’t be denied that it is a dream of financiers everywhere to divorce their business from the messy, irrational realities of geography, history, and peoples. What if we’re living in the moment where that’s exactly the world that’s being created? A global East India Company?
The East India Company overreached itself and nearly went bankrupt in 1772, and had to be ‘rescued’ by the crown. Hence the Regulating Act of 1773 and the India Act of 1784.
Thus were these ‘merchants’ chastised, and no doubt we shall have to do so again.
The West has printed trillions of dollars to bail out its financiers without much reform or any change of governance. At the centre of every single Western net zero energy investment is complex financial engineering that disguises the huge appropriation of public money for little to no risk (or energy). The die is cast: nation states now serve the financial elite, there isn’t a nation state left that will allow itself to be used to regulate the financial system for the benefit of the public. The interests of finance trump every other interest and will do so from here to the end of our civilisation.
I couldn’t agree more! In fact it is rather bad for my blood pressure
However I live in hope, as even the Ancien régime eventually imploded with very interesting results.
“At the centre of every single Western net zero energy investment is complex financial engineering that disguises the huge appropriation of public money for little to no risk (or energy).”
Summarised one sentence!
Ah, what about the Permanent Settlement of 1793 and those collaborationist Bengali zamindars to whom EIC leased out rent collection at the highest rates?!
Of course given Wall Street’s enthusiastic response to Xi in SF, think I know who the equivalents to my ancestors are….
It’s much easier to understand US policy once you accept that it is formulated in Wall Street, not Washington, and has little or nothing to do with the interests of ordinary Americans.
Yes , even Hitler had a problem with the English channel, he does not seem to have been so circumspect with Russia (re WW2)
Carlos Danger
8 months ago
This article focuses too much on talk and too little on action. If you are not careful, it is easy to start thinking that strategy is key. That abstract reasoning will give you a solution to a complex problem that you can then implement. Voila, problem solved.
Real life does not work that way. Strategy and reasoning are helpful, certainly, but only in that they give you ideas about what to try. The only way to solve a complex problem is trial and error. You have to take some steps and see what works.
That is where Joe Biden fails. He’s not doing anything. For one thing, he does not know what to do. As former defense secretary Robert Gates said, Joe Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy issue for four decades. For another, he’s too old.
Joe Biden does have people in his administration who do things, but they are not the president so they cannot do the right things. Meanwhile, the president dozes away his days in the White House, his assisted living center.
I remember when we had a president who was not afraid to take action, who was willing to take a risk to see what the enemy would do. Once when Iranian proxies were sending missiles against the United States embassy in Baghad the president himself sent out a simple tweet:
Some friendly health advice to Iran: If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible. Think it over.
Iran did think it over, and Iran backed down. We need a president who will do things again. A president who will be talking to Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. To Benjamin Netanyahu and Shi Jinping. A president who will focus not on positions and strategies and speeches, but who will focus on getting things done.
And we need him now.
I think Nixon was the second most unhinged President ever. Still, only Nixon could go to China….
Chris Whybrow
8 months ago
No serious military analyst thinks either side on Ukraine is going on a massive Spring offensive to seize huge chunks of territory. Do you see what the Russians are doing in Avdiivka? How they’ve given up trying to encircle the city and are just directly advancing into it like lemmings? That is the largest kind of offensive the Russian army is now capable of. As for the rest… the take on Syria is correct. The rest is more dreams of the pipe.
David Giles
8 months ago
The answer appears to be – a phrase I can scarcely believe I am writing -Vote Trump! His clear sightedness -again, am I really writing that? – stands in such contrast to the muddled analysis of his predecessors/successor.
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago
Thank you Mr. Samuels for this important contribution to public discussion of Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Hamas.
Respectfully, the author makes a better case than some commenters give him credit for doing. The key point is the recurrent theme that America will arm its allies, but will place ill-conceived limitations on their capacities, limitations that make the struggle ultimately more bloody and more difficult for their allies (and in a nasty way, ultimately messier for the enemies attacking their allies). His criticism of the Obama policy of rewarding enemies and punishing allies seems to me right on target. Indeed, it seems undeniable. His breakdown of the Obama Administration’s catastrophic mismanagement of the Syrian crisis also strikes me as accurate and quite damning.
I am puzzled by the harsh tone of some of the comments.
I agree with you – we might raise issues about minor details, but Bush’s fantasy about Afghanistan and Iraq’s ability to govern by a non-tribal government that protects woke “rights” was a desastre , and Obama/Bidens desire to release funds to Iran and let them create a nuclear capacity after 10 years (from 2015) – not to mention Biden’s cowardice – borders on treasonous negligence. The bit about China as I read it was what will happen the result of Bush/Obama/Biden. None of this happened under Trump, just sayin’.
The comparison between the wars in Ukraine and Gaza is far fetched, but the similarities are that Putin and Netanyahu are human rights abusers, notwithstanding unspeakable provocations, and both seem to be coming out on top. The US seems to be inconsistent in picking the right side.
A D Kent
8 months ago
Another day, another neoconservatively-revisionist essay at Unherd. I could cut and paste any one of a number of responses I’ve made to them here in the last few weeks but I’ll just bullet point some issues here:
It’s par for the course for Unherd writers to accept Samuels assertion that “In other words, both Ukraine and Israel are conflicts in which America’s interest in supporting its allies is crystal-clear.” Why? They’re both thousands of miles away. What’s it got to do with them?
Samuels rather blandly says “while the goal of wiping Israel off the map will seem plausible again to a new generation of poverty-stricken young Arabs in shattered countries like Syria, Iraq, Libya and Egypt.” but only mentions the US role in the shattering of one of them – and then only that it was ‘blundering’. Samuels thinks that adding Iran to that list of shattered countries will make things all better – what makes him so certain of this?
Samuels is right to criticise Obama, but for all the wrong reasons. Obama didn’t activate his ‘red-line’ for the alleged Ghouta Syrian sarin attack because he was told the intelligence did not support the assertions that the Syrian forces had conducted it (see Seymour Hersh’s ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’. Subsequent ballistics and open-source investigations proved that it was almost certainly the ‘rebels’.
Far from supporting Iran in Syria Obama’s CIA instigated Operation Timber Sycamore – funnelling billions of dollars to support Sunny extremists who were active opponents of Iran.
What ‘balancing act’ was there in Obama’s destruction of Libya? Or for his support of the violent Maidan coup in Ukraine – sending Victoria Nuland to hand out biscuits to the demonstrators and later picking the post-coup government? Such blatant interference nullified the Budapest Memorandum – where was the balance in that?
And he ends with this: “t this moment, the only way out of America’s current cul-de-sac is for Israel or Ukraine, and preferably both, to defy American advice and strategic aims — and actually win the wars they are fighting.” Which asks to the rather obvious question of ‘How’s that going then?’ Neither can with or without US support. Both are losing – it’s time for the West to cut their losses and pull out.
Wow. He sees it all, has all of the information to hand, has watched it all intently for many years and yet, almost implausibly, comes to absolutely the wrong conclusions.
Listen up, cupcake, both Putin and Hamas have been very seriously smacked – to a level way beyond their worst nightmares. Putin looks like a fool and a loser. Hamas has lost the north of Gaza which is in the process of being raised to the ground, a la Carthage – the correct approach. Both have been profoundly humiliated. Nobody in their right mind (ok, that’s a big ask) is going to view this from afar and think “what a great idea”. Far from being the wrong approach, the West has got this finely balanced approach pretty close to as right as they could under the circumstances.
Now,it may be true that we will now lose our collective marbles and fail to follow through when we should. There are some signs of this happening. However, to suggest that the West has got this wrong up to this point is to adopt a childishly simplistic analysis to a very complex problem. No credit is given where credit is clearly due. Could more have been done? Yes, that’s almost always true. However, for once, we’ve got more right than wrong.
You are the one who doesn’t understand. Look at Hamas’ history of declaring glorious victories and you will understand that their definition of a victory and yours are totally different. If Yihye Sinwar and Mohammed Def come out of this alive then they have won, and everyone in the Middle East will see it. The number of deaths or destroyed buildings does not play a role. If they survive to continue the jihad, then they have won.
They have already won by striking fear into Israel with the 7th October attacks. Israel now needs to annul that victory by making sure they will not be alive to brag about it.
It’s not so much that this is wrong, but the conviction with which the wrongness is defended.
Ida March
8 months ago
Does anyone know how to unsubscribe from UnHerd.
I don’t do apps and there’s no other way to contact them.
And my bank says it can’t stop the payments.
LOL can’t believe someone down voted you for that! Should be in settings, no doubt a lot of people will be unsubscribing soon…
Christopher
8 months ago
Looking at you’re resume of who publishes you, leftist tags, you’ve promoted this. Why? “ orange man bad” ?
Johann Strauss
8 months ago
When the author equated Hamas and Putin, he lost me. That is such nonsense. There is nothing he Russians have done in Ukraine that comes even remotely close to what Hamas did on Oct 7. It seems to me, when writing about such topics, it is best to try and remain completely objective rather than insert personal biased views.
No, it’s very similar and has deep roots. You are unfamiliar with what happened and is happening in Russian torture cellars in Ukraine and are not very aware of the behavior of the Red Army in East Prussia.
The veneer of civilization in the behavior of Russians is easily eliminated and should not be misleading
Not at all.
All the classic features of the Red Army are present in the Russian Army. Total incompetence of commanders, blind obedience to orders, complete indifference to their own losses, widespread looting in the occupied territories, terror against the occupied population – the whole set.
It’s not for nothing that in Ukrainian villages neighbors ask locals, “Did you have Germans?” Is it over the top?
George K
8 months ago
“ In response, she asked me if I thought that people in Muslim countries were inherently different from Europeans.”
It’s unbelievable. Where are the armies of Arabists, Middle East experts and even the simple knowledge of basic facts?
Daniel Lee
8 months ago
It’s hard not to see Obama as a wannabe post Great War Wilson for the Middle East. The result of his too-clever-by-half maneuvering promises to have the same effect as Wilson’s 14 points, contributing to instability that will almost inevitably lead to even wider conflict – which we’re now seeing.
Alex Lekas
8 months ago
It seems unlikely that America will make it to this November without being forced into a very public reckoning with a decade of disastrous foreign policy failures. — I hope the rest of the article is a step up from this ridiculous opening line. No one here is interested in a reckoning of any sort for any topic, least of all foreign policy. Are you serious?
We can’t muster an honest investigation of what went wrong during Covid, of why millions of illegals have been allowed to pour in, why crime is rampant, why policies ostensibly meant to curb homelessness have the opposite effect, and so forth. The idea that everything is going to stop for a bit of introspection and navel-gazing over foreign policy is laughable.
One side is petrified that Donald Trump might win another term. The other side is petrified that the current husk of a president will be re-elected. In the middle are millions of powerless, politically homeless Americans who are slowly understanding that the “team” approach has failed them.
Well said! I love the expression “politically homeless”. Many days I feel like a destitute wanderer in a land that no longer wants me, a place where raw confusion swirls cold around me. I come to political homeless shelters, like this one, in hopes of a friendly voice and maybe a bit of palatable food for thought. Thank you Alex Lekas!
R.I. Loquitur
8 months ago
It’s way past time for the US to cease its’ military misadventure business. It has proven time and again that it is incapable of success and that the only party which benefits from its’ actions is the MIC. NATO needs to be abolished–if Europe is afraid it needs to remember how to take care of itself. Perhaps the cost of doing so might smack its woke Left back into reality.
Nell L
8 months ago
Anyone here in the US up for isolationism again? Seems we are damned when we do and damned when we don’t. If we have a record of “failed overseas adventures” as one commentator put it then I guess even the blood and treasure we spent helping Europe and Asia defeat fascism doesn’t count. So let’s take our weapons and head home. From the tone of these comments, the world would be better off without us. Let’s focus on our poor, our drug addicts, and our border. It’s about time we did.
Oh, winning as in Vichy France and Dunkirk for the Brits? I guess all those convoys of thousands of ships crossing the North Atlantic were filled with cruise vacationers instead of the supplies that kept our erstwhile “friends” alive.
Way off the mark re WW II.
We had been kicked out of mainland Greece and Crete by German and Italian forces in April 41.
The carrier Ark Royal had just been sunk in the Med weeks before Pearl Harbor after an overly enthusiastic abandon ship order not far from Gibraltar.
The Desert War did not swing our way until 10 months after Pearl Habor.
The Nazi panzers were on the outskirts of Moscow.
Britain was about the loose Singapore two months after Pearl Harbor which led to a loss of credibility.
We had kicked Vichy French forces out of Syria and Lebanon mid summer 41 which was one piece of good news but overall a negative picture.
Does this system automatically bin all posts with the German N**i word?
I wrote an long post to illustrate to Billy Bob just how inaccurate his claim was in view of the British military situation December 1941 but the system just gobbled my long post, no pending review amber warning or evidence in my comments log.
Because without its empire the US dollar wouldn’t be a reserve currency and the US would be unable to fund its debt?
When the $ was backed by gold (terminated in 1971) and then by being the only currency in which to buy oil (the Petrodollar) the situation was different…not so now…
Ha ha really? USA does it for itself not for anyone else, so the playground bully is a philanthropist?
Ron Kean
8 months ago
I was for GW Bush and the effort to depose Saddam Hussein then establish something like the United States, a democratic republic with freedom and power to the people. They found 300,000 civilians buried in the sand killed by Saddam Hussein. Men like him were evil. It was good against evil and the American way was the best. America had self-confidence and a belief in its philosophical superiority.
Communists believed and may still that American freedom allowed moral decay and corruption. Communists believed and may still that people should be reined in under a secular philosophy and controlled to an extent so they wouldn’t be contaminated by the excess freedom allows. So Communists believed and may still that the United States represents the evil of excess and the spread of American style freedom is very bad.
Islam feels the same way. The Great Satan with its competing Judaeo/Christian religion is wrong and evil. They believe the freedoms America champions fly in the face of Sharia and America is a very bad place also.
In walks Barak Hussein Obama who was raised on the knee of Frank Davis who no doubt spoke of the evil of American capitalism and the excesses which were said to be very bad. Frank Davis was one of many who were called in front of Congress because he wrote of benefits and moral superiority of Communism in a Hawaiian newspaper. The saying goes if you can get them before the age of 5…
Then there was Barak Hussein Obama who converted to, lived as, practiced Islam in his youth being taught the tenets of Mohammad and submission to Islam. Then again there was the Reverend Wright and G-d damn America for twenty something years.
So let’s say Obama hated America from his youth. He was taught that the American way was bad so why wouldn’t he want to destroy it? Michelle said his election was the first time she ever liked America even after being coddled at Princeton University.
He came to power, fired much of the military leaders and appointed his own. Axelrod’s parents were communists. Valery Jerrod’s family is Iranian and who knows how many people of similar sentiments they imbedded in powerful positions? Biden is titular.
So the ruling powers in the United States may think the United States is the evil one and deserves a radical transformation. We typically want to transform something we hate – something we think is evil. So The United States doesn’t win because its leaders hate it and the governments with which it has much in common are to be hated too rather than allied because the shared values are in need of radical transformation. They’re evil. They’re bad. That’s why the United States doesn’t want to win and allows communists and Islam to assert their power, influence and philosophy. American leaders hate America.
Doug Israel
8 months ago
I don’t agree with everything said here but one thing is indisbutably true, the desire to manage wars to avoid casualties etc. has the effect of literally eliminating the advantage that stronger militaries have. And the openly telegraphed inistence on avoiding “escalation” at all costs has the effect of destroying deterrence.
Well said. I am always puzzled that in the western culture the singular example of just war is the overwhelming defeat and destruction of Germany and Japan by the Allied forces, recreated and celebrated with unalloyed righteousness countless times in movies, television and books to this day. In all the decades of blatantly xenophobic aggression against Israel and the West, there has never been anything near the equivalent of Dresden or Hiroshima as a response, and never a categorical holding responsible the culture that endlessly produces it. The historical and cultural consensus about WW II remains that German civilians all bore responsibility for what the Nazis wrought. Today we just blame the victims.
William Brand
8 months ago
Biden has been wrong on every foreign policy question for 50 years, but this is not the Biden administration. It is Obama’s 3rd term. Obama uses Biden as a sock puppet. Biden’s cabinet all take their orders from Obama rather than the nominal president. In addition, it appears that America is not capable of executing the duties of a world power. It should retreat behind the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and leave world politics to other nations. American allies should all develop nuclear weapons and not depend on the fickle ways of America’s rulers.
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
8 months ago
“A second Trump presidency, meanwhile, will plunge America into even greater internal chaos”
If that happens we will know who to blame
Stephen Gosling
8 months ago
The only strategy to pursue regarding the Middle East is to ‘stand down’ and withdraw all armed forces from the Middle East as part of a grand strategy of retrenchment in this new unipolar world. Whatever happens in the Middle East from any perspective is no threat to American Security. False notions of geopolitics will tell you differently. Defense of the Continental United States should be the core of the US Grand Strategy accompanied by a strong global naval presence. No more interventions or interference in the global political realm.
Flibberti Gibbet
8 months ago
Oh dear, the author should be advised to do more thinking and less typing. He might also try thinking before typing.
The readership at Unherd is far more astute than his prior readers at Harper’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic
Bullfrog Brown
8 months ago
Obama’s enabling of Iran, has backfired, just like Netanyahu’s enabling of Hamas,
Iran and Hamas have no problem destroying American & Israeli lives and interests.
The world waits in fear.
B Davis
8 months ago
We don’t know what we truly want.
We ignore what we truly need.
And we pursue, always, ‘what the little boy shot at’.
Western foreign policy is just a minimally different version of Western domestic policy: we want to play nice (we want the world to play nice)…we want to get shiny awards from glamorous talking heads, to place on highly-polished bookshelves (open floor plan / industrial chic) …we’re waiting for the knowing applause for sitting, always, at the cool kids table while we watch the market go UP. Nation-building? Sure, sounds like fun and definitely a super-cool thing to do…until it isn’t. Until we’re bored. Until it’s kinda painful, you know — that blood & treasure thing.
We want to save the Planet. We want Greta Thunberg to like us. We want the best seats at Davos…and just maybe get an invitation to speak knowingly at TED about, you know, being Woke, being Diverse, being Inclusive, and having the most Transgendered Cabinet Heads and Gender Fluid Generals in the whole damned place! How great is that?!
We’ve legalized pretty much everything anyone wants & normalized the rest. I mean appetites exist to be fed, don’t they? And who are we to judge the “angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating..” crap. That, too, is pretty cool, just ask Gavin (but be careful where you step, should grab that updated Human Fecal Matter Map!).
As for Bad Guys? Heck, we know the real truth: we’ve been watching it for decades on Big Screen TV’s, streamed constantly on 4K Ultra HD Virtual Reality Goggles. The real Bad Guys are us. Or Them anyway. The Systemically Racist Establishment; the Misogynistic Man; the Corporate Sexist Greedmeisters who don’t care about snail darters or herds of methane producers or chickens who — heaven forbid — are NOT free range. They’re the ones we hate! The Real Bad Guys are the ones who tear tampon machines off the wall of Men’s Restrooms (provided special for New Men Who Need Them). They’re the ones who looked at the ravaged dead of October 7th and said of Hamas, ‘Kill ’em all…burn their cities to the ground and sow salt in the ruins.’ (oh how gross! how culturally insensitive!)
Those same ‘Bad Guys’ who look now at the Houthis and their drones and the constant harassment of Red Sea shipping and wonder when, in God’s name, will we end them?
What an outre perspective! How so totally uncool is that? Who do we think we are? (after all we probably deserve it!)
Cause the Woke know: understanding and empathy….chilling out….a little weed, some Vicodin….listen to some tunes, chant some mea culpas and go on global apology tours….and c’mon now what’s really more important? Carbon Sequestering Conversations, the elimination of gas stoves, Covid 12 Vaccinations, Cholesterol Control, and the ability to kill our children when they’re inconvenient….or the destruction of those who would destroy us?
Can’t we all just get along? Isn’t the answer obvious? Do we really need to mandate more sensitivity training? more diversity seminars? Do you need yet another copy of Kendi’s book? Can i get another reparations check?
Is anyone really surprised that the West’s foreign policy is a Beatles lyric? “Turn off your minds, relax, and float downstream….lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void…listen to the color of your dreams” It’s not that we can’t act decisively; it’s that we just don’t wanna, not really.
Sensible Citizen
8 months ago
There are two possible Americas. One under Trump, and one under any of the dozen neocons who could take the helm in November. My bet is on Michelle Obama.
According to the neocons, it is America’s birthright to rule the world via a handful of billionaires who make decisions in their own best interest. The naive orange man thinks that America can return manufacturing to its shores, working men can make a good living, and the world can be relatively at peace — simply by not doing monumentally dumb things.
Trump is one man and the powers aligned against him are vast. The US could be entering a new dark age.
Where to begin? Almost every sentence contains an incorrect assumption, or some kind of misinformed opinion. The US can be legitimately criticized so many different ways for its failed military policies, yet the author somehow manages to botch it up beyond repair.
The U.S. has been reckless and fickle with its proxy war in Ukraine – resulting in thousands of lives lost – but no one seriously thinks, or ever thought, Ukraine was actually going to win the war. The war was expected to be over in a couple weeks. That it has lasted this long is a testament to the bravery of ordinary Ukrainians, and the willingness of the U.S. to spend billions sacrificing other people’s lives. Putin is the big loser here, even though he will ultimately succeed on the battlefield.
This conflict has very little in common with Israel. And again the author messes this up. Israel is not wiping Hamas off the face of the earth, even though it could easily do it militarily. No one expects that. It faces too much international political pressure that extends way beyond the U.S.
To compare these tw o conflicts to Iraq and Afghanistan is laughable. The U.S. had boots on the ground in those two countries for many years. I actually stopped reading about halfway through, when the author suggested that China could simply march into Taiwan and take it over. Even if the U.S. doesn’t lift a finger there, China isn’t waltzing through Taiwan.
I agree.
It is amazing how the author comes to broadly correct conclusions from such a welter of not just incorrect, but back-to-front assumptions.
Interesting. My gut reaction was the precise opposite: wrong conclusions despite a mostly sensible analysis of the last twenty years.
His two main conclusions appear to be that the US is in the process of being defeated and its global role is ending AND that Ukraine and Israel should ignore suggestions that they make compromise peaces but fight on to the better end. Not only are both points individually dubious but they appear incompatible.
Overall, the most apposite parallel for the big picture today is the Cold War. As last time, we need to contain the threat – China and allies – until it mellows. During this process, there will be a number of limited or proxy wars on the boundary of the opposing bloc. In each case, it is necessary to show resolve and deter further attacks after which some local compromise deal can shut down that specific clash. Last time round, this involved accepting e.g. division in Germany, Korea and IndoChina. This time it might to involve pragmatic deals on Donetz and Gaza.
There are two good arguments for shutting down local conflicts. One is the risk of escalation into a global or even thermonuclear war. The other is that the Americans have always had a proclivity for flip flopping on small wars after initial enthusiasm. They often start gung-ho and refusing to take acceptable deals on the table then suddenly switching to being desperate to disengage and walking away – often threatening or replacing their local client ruler if he fails to cooperate with sufficient alacrity (a process seemingly now being repeated in Ukraine). There is no point getting exercised by this pattern of repeated sub optimal behaviour. It is just the way they are.
The articles wandered over a lot of ground but it was the opening which I thought most mistaken. Cold War II has only just started. Suggesting that American defeat is inevitable within twelve months is unduly pessimistic. “There is a lot of ruin in a nation” as Adam Smith said after the British experienced some defeat had provoked forecasts of national ruin. Even if Ukraine accepts both the loss of the eastern provinces and formal neutrality and Isreal ends up accepting more or less the status quo ante, Cold War II will continue. The West should pace itself. As last time, local conflicts should be shut down whenever a tolerable compromise is available.
I agree that there are some correct assessments, as you point out. He starts out promising. But already the paragraph that there are many similarities between the war in Ukraine and Israel’s actions in Gaza is baffling – in truth, there are very few similarities. That Israel and Ukraine are losing because soft-hearted US imposed restraints on its allies and so hamstrung their effectiveness is grotesque.
The JCPOA was a diplomatic breakthrough, and the US’ flagrant breach of the agreement – which was adopted by the UN Security Council and was therefore binding in international law – destroyed US attempts at rebuilding a reputation for US willingness to engage in diplomacy and adherence to international law.
Frankly, so far as I am concerned, it goes downhill from there.
WHY is that very take on the situation “grotesque”? You appear to not feel even the slightest need to attempt an explanation!
I agree with you on many points here (though I don’t really see how Putin is ultimately the loser in the situation with Ukraine). Nevertheless, I think Europe has just as much blame (if not more) blame to carry. Their unwillingness to stop, and often desire to appease, dictators and authoritarian regimes is certainly a big part of the problem. Further more, the EU is by far more of a hot bed of the “Violence is bad” point of view than the US.
The only point I agree with the author is that Obama was a disaster for American foreign policy.
I think Putin has already lost because he’s still fighting two years later, for an operation that was supposed to be over in weeks, if not days. I think it has exposed the weakness of the Russian military. And although the sanctions imposed by the west are pathetic, they are still disruptive.
In my youth and young adulthood (when the Cold War was still a thing), people used to fear the mighty Soviet Army, and wonder just how quickly it could overrun Western Europe. I don’t know whether it could have then, but as a result of the war in Ukraine, everybody realises that the Russian Army now really isn’t much of a fighting force, given that it is riddled with corruption, incompetence and cowardice, and the principal function of its tanks seems to be cooking their crews. If I were Putin, I would have preferred the world not to find all that out.
I’m not sure you realise how many losses the Russians are prepared to accept. It doesn’t matter if your troops are braver or better trained, or have better tanks. The Russians will just take the losses, like they did in WW2. It’s exactly what they’re doing now, and Ukraine is losing as a result. If you think the likes of Britain’s tiny army can make a difference you’re deluded.
I am absolutely sure I know how many losses Russia is prepared to accept. Putin (in common with all other Russian leaders throughout history) doesn’t give a hoot about ordinary Russians, and the “body bags coming home” thing simply isn’t a factor for him. However, it is unarguable that Russia is making extremely hard work of the Ukraine war. Even if it does ultimately “win” (in the sense of occupying all of Ukraine), the idea of it successfully invading (say) Poland is fanciful. Also, a guerilla war can hopefully be waged in Ukraine which will take its toll. I mean, the one thing we can be sure of is that most Ukrainians do not want to be part of Russia.
I have my doubts that it could even defeat Poland, although Poland has a much larger army than any country in Western Europe.
Ukraine running out of troops and millions of the population having fled the country doesn’t strike me as Russia losing, let alone a rather large amount of territory now being Russian.
The Saturday FT had an interesting essay that claimed that the average Ukrainian Infantry ‘grunt’ was about 44.
Even Roman Legionaries had generally retired by then!*
(*An excellent exhibition on the subject has just opened at the BM.)
Going next week.
44 was a lot older 2,000 years ago than it is now.
Ver few, if any people, man or beast pass SAS Selection at 40.
Both can be losers. Ukraine was never ever going to win this war. They were supposed to be toppled in weeks. Russia no longer looks like the great bear.
I am sorry. I wrote my post before scrolling down and seeing this.
Both can lose. It’s not a zero sum game. Ukraine has lost people and territory, while Russia has lost being thought a threat for Europe.
I now rather doubt that the USSR ever WAS a threat to Western Europe. Quite likely the Cold War was totally unnecessary. As Bevan pointed out a country which produced so little steel was hardly a threat ( can’t immediately find the exact quote…)
But, once again, the West’s politicians are pumping up the threat of Russia…quite probably to distract from the total mess they’ve made of their own countries.
I think that is right, in retrospect. Most of Russia’s territorial “gains” in Eastern Europe came at the end of WW2, and the Western allies weren’t particularly motivated to try to stop it, having just fought a long war.
There’s a big difference between defending your country and invading other countries. Like I said earlier, Russia would have its hands full against Poland.
The territory held by Russia hasn’t changed materially since the early days of the war.
I think people continue to misread Putin’s initial intent, as if he had planned some sort of blitzkrieg of Ukraine. He didn’t. There is a great deal of common ground between the countries’ people. Ukraine is home to no small number of Russians. Putin’s intent, from what I’ve seen, was to make enough noise that the two sides would sit down and figure out something about the two Eastern provinces. But the US principally, aided by the EU, cut that idea off at the knees.
rubbish. the drive on Kiev disproves that in its own right, not to mention the mass slaughter of ukrainian civilians from day 1.
Ukraine is home to no small number of Russians
I am always amazed by attempts to find, first of all, the ethnic side of this conflict.
PS. For those who disliked me – I’m from Mariupol, I’m familiar with this region from inside, I know more about this conflict than all of you combined, and I don’t give a 4ck about your opinions.
The map linked to below shows the clear ethnic divide in the Ukraine.
From the presidential election of 2010. Blue= Pro Russian winner and Red = Pro West candidate.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xusxrq/2010_ukrainian_presidential_election_map/
Complete nonsense, but I’m already used to it. Check who chose Zelensky, smart guy
I’d be interested in your views if you’re happy to give them.
This will inevitably take time, because unlike the commenters here, I don’t want to write something clickbait. I don’t promise, but I can try if you are willing to agree that this war did not happen because of the “bad behavior” of the West, but has its origins in the internal logic of Russia, Ukraine and the relationship between them. Of course, external forces influence the development of the conflict, but they are so incompetent and lack of initiative that they are unlikely to influence its outcome
But not today, try to understand me
Not sure I would agree with you. I think Russia would have been happy with control over Crimea and the Donbass region, and Western Ukraine being neutral. This could have been negotiated before the invasion started but NATO would not participate.
That is, you are sure that Putin will fulfill such an agreement. And you don’t remember how, before the invasion, one of the Russian Foreign Ministry officials demanded that NATO go back to hell with the borders that existed before 1991. This means that the Baltic countries, Moldova, Poland, etc. should belong to Russia again.
Honestly, I cannot understand the reasons for such a selective perception of reality. Putin tells you to your face what his intentions are, he says that there is no such state as Ukraine, no matter what Ukrainians think, and you claim that he did not mean what he said, but what you want hear.
Don’t you remember that Ukraine, having wanted to join NATO, buried the Budapest Memorandum? Or did they forget that France and Germany admitted that they did not intend to implement the Minsk Agreements? Let me remind you that on March 24, 2021, Zelensky signed a document that crosses out the Minsk agreements. According to it, Ukraine intended to return the Donbass republics by force. So who here is not fulfilling their obligations?
Maps going back 500 years show that the tribal/ethnic make-up of the Donbas is very different to western Ukraine.
Given the size of the Ukraine this should not be a surprise. If the east/west total width of the Ukraine is overlaid north/south over western Europe we are talking about the distance from Gatwick airport south of London south all way across France and out into the Mediterranean to one of the Spanish Balearic Islands.
The notion that a huge country with a complicated history like the Ukraine does not have ethnic divisions, is absurd.
My own view is that to the extent that Eastern Ukraine contains ethnic Russians who would prefer to live under Putin, they should move to Russia.
Putin is now doing what Stalin already did in the 1930s. He populates the “liberated territories” with Asian peoples, just like the British populated Britain with Muslims (sounds racist, but it’s true)
Would you have said the same thing about Northern Ireland and going back to Scotland and Liverpool.
There is some mockery in your words. People have the right to live on the lands where their ancestors are buried. And they are not obliged to move somewhere if they do not like a national policy that denies them the right to exist. Therefore, Donbass has the right to join Russia not only with its people, but also with its lands.
This is not and has never been enough to start a war.
But the public here, including you, seriously believes that this is the key factor. This is more than absurd, this is the overconfidence of complete incompetence, a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
It’s not so much an ethnic divide, or even a linguistic one (Kyiv speaks Russian) but a cultural one. There mostly isn’t a very clear distinction between ethnic Russians/Ukrainians, especially in the cities. The only large, clearly ethnic Ukrainian area is Galicia, ie the far west. Donbas (the most pro-Russia area) is populated by ppl from all over the former USSR, who were moved there as an industrial workforce, though in Donbas the rural pop is more ‘Ukrainian’ (even then, remember in pre-WW2 Ukraine collective agriculture meant ppl were moved around quite a lot). Ethnic mixing was a Soviet policy, partly because of the directed economy and partly as a way of destroying national loyalty. So there are general patterns but it’s not clear at all. The conflict within Ukraine is more cultural (pro-West/pro-Soviet).
Everything you say looks historically accurate but you omit recent events. After 2014 the Kiev government instituted a form of anti Russian apartheid in the south and east of the country against its own citizens.
There is no going back, western Ukraine will have to accept a new map. The details now have to be worked out, the principal issue is whether west Ukraine retains access to the Back Sea.
After 2014 the Kiev government instituted a form of anti Russian apartheid in the south and east of the country against its own citizens
————————
I understand that some people believe in Russian propaganda, but it takes a special skill to select such idiotic statements
Not the Russians but one of the most highly respect UK conservative newspaper reporters who spent months travelling in southern Ukraine at the time.
Do you mean that conservative newspaper reporters can’t be the idiots?
Hi! Congratulations! You are the first here, who understands the situation more or less clear.
Thankyou, I am British but lived in Ukraine for six years, travelled all over the country, speak some Russian, had my own business there and took an interest in the social/political situation. I was living in Kyiv through the whole Maidan protest period, and was actually in Donetsk and saw the city hall being overrun by the early ‘separatist’ reaction. In my view it’s difficult for anyone who hasn’t at least spent time in the former USSR to have much idea of how things work there, it’s kind of doubly confusing to western Europeans because it looks not too dissimilar but psychological factors are very different.
By the way, those who dislike my post above are clones of people from Obama’s office. They think they understand people living in other countries better than those people themselves, and then they wonder why things went wrong.
It’s interesting to see how Obama’s critics share his way of thinking.
Leaving aside the ethnically Russian people in the East, there is no common ground between Ukraine and Russia. Russia is a horrible country ruled by an appalling regime, and I can’t imagine any (non-Russian speaking) Ukrainian would want anything to do with it. If Putin’s plan was indeed to make enough noise so that the two sides would figure out something about the Eastern provinces”, then it would seem that he badly miscalculated.
Prior to the war it was routine for Ukrainian parents to send their children off to attend University in Russia, it was as normal as it is for a 19 year old in Scotland to study at an English university.
The cultural unification between Scotland & England and Ukraine & Russia are broadly similar.
Prior to the war 60% of Ukrainians could speak Russian.
I guess the jury is still out!
It seems that missiles have become a great leveler in wars. We are now on a rapid path in anti-missile protection; but we are not there yet with mobile systems – permament installations like the iron dome seem less vunerable.
To Jim. Lot of valuable thoughts in your post ; thanks. In particular let’s emphasize again that Ukraine failure in its “great offensive” would not, repeat not, never ever have been avoided by some F16 or more missiles. Putin’s army is entrenched between a multi-layered defense zone. This type of defense is hugely difficult to crack, unless the attacker has at least a 3:1 advantage in manpower and (not or) can act in total surprise and has airpower superiority. None of these cumulative conditions is available to the Ukrainian, not to speak about other strategic or tactical errors.
The Russian Army got entrenched behind its defensive zone because Ukraine wasn’t given enough weapons to rout them during their initial counter-offensive.
I wonder what motivated the author to write this article
The unfocused nature of the content raises some suggestions.
Excellent criticism. Saves me a lot of writing. The US failures over the past two decades hardly need to be pointed out as they’re glaringly obvious for all to see. The reasons are more debatable. What the author has failed to say is that the same globalist optimism that gave us a hollowed out manufacturing sector, an empowered China, rising wealth inequality, and domestic political strife also gave us a failed foreign policy. We can see it in that quote from Rice and the assumption that the US could bring Democracy to Iraq. We see it in the assumption that opening China to global trade would open their society. We see it in the assumption that democracy in the middle east would be better than tinpot dictators. The failures are plain. The source has a name, and we’re remiss if we don’t name it.
Globalism, that optimism in the human condition, that notion that we can all get along if we just trade with each other and let economics rule, that rejection of human history, that enshrinement of hope as a strategy, that is the driver of our discontent. That is the seed that spawned the poisoned tree. There is no utopia at the end of the rainbow. No, we cannot all just get along. Universalism has failed. Multiculturalism has failed. I don’t know whether the globalist oligarchs who defended these things will fall to revisionist foreign powers like China/Russia/Iran or to homegrown populism or even revolution, but I know they will eventually be replaced. As Machiavelli once observed, the Prince who fails to do what is necessary to hold power will eventually be usurped by someone who will. The ruling class is weak. The blood is in the water and the sharks are circling. Trump, Sanders, RFK Jr. from within, Xi, Putin, and Khameini from without. They are besieged. They may hold for a while, but not forever, because they’re weak and unwilling to do what it takes to defeat their enemies, and everyone can see it.
Good post Steve, you fail to mention USA’s bullying foreign policy and the fact that it illegally has bases in other peoples country, how would you Americans like China putting a base in say Colorado?
The Middle East wants America gone, I can see their point.
If you think like loser, if you speak like loser, if you behave like loser, you are the loser
You live in a dreamworld Jim, US foreign policy is a debacle, whichever side of politics you take, they have f#cked up the world, thanks America!
The simplest rebuttal to this ill-informed anti-American screed is just to ask, “why hasn’t Europe stepped up to guarantee the fates of Ukraine and Israel?” US contributions in both cases dwarf European.
Scant US trade transits the Gulf of Aden (ours is trans-pacific, trans-atlantic and trans-Panamanian), while Europe is utterly dependent on the Red Sea channel; yet whose navy is there protecting your merchant shipping and whose navies aren’t? The UK has a grand total of 11 usable surface warships in its entire navy, a pathetic embarrassment to its traditions. BTW, one of the merchant ships recently struck by a Houti missile in the Red Sea was the Marlin Luanda, of the UK registered firm Oceonix Services, and was carrying Russian oil. So much for sanctions solidarity.
Europe has been meddling in Israel’s conflict with its neighbors for years and always working against Israel’s interests. Europe has repeatedly shown no desire to support Israel. In the current conflict, the moral dimension and fear of total conflagration created a notable exception to the rule. However, as you point out with regards to the amount of clout Britain could muster to ensure that the Red Sea passage remains open, the ability of either Britain or Germany to provide substantial support is rather limited as they themselves rely on the US for their own defense. In the meantime, the US, after its decisive initial support, has scared itself of its capability to us its vast resources and military power to support an ally in need, and is now intent on seeing how it can sell us out as quickly as possible to our enemies in order to create quiet for Joe Biden in his election year. Fortunately Hamas are holding out for even more scandalous conditions of Israeli surrender which even Benjamin Netanyahu can’t give them, although opposition leader Yair Lapid has promised to prop up his coalition should he cave in.
How ungrateful can you get?
If General Allenby and the British Army hadn’t ejected “Johnny Turk” in 1917-1918 you lot would presumably still be ‘wandering’ as you had done for centuries?
Israel is indeed eternally indebted to Earl Balfour and General Allenby, but much has changed since then. Just like that the US was far more ambivalent to Israel in its early years, whereas the USSR was initially friendly to the new socialist state. Things change with shifting interests. As an aside on the subject of the USSR, there were ideological and emotional debates in fledgling Israel that tore at the fabric of society whether Zionism was part of the proletarian revolution and whether or not Josef Stalin was the “sun of the nations”. Fortunately reason won.
Historically, the British are blamed here by both sides of the conflict as bearing a lot of responsibility for the mess that transpired of the British Mandate of Palestine – though for opposing reasons.
I was referring in my comment to the EU, which has meddled incessantly against Israel’s interests through funding of so called “peace” and “human rights” political NGOs related to Palestinian military organizations.
Perhaps SOME members of the EU have a ‘guilty conscience’? I can think of a couple!
The problem for your position is that the US’s ‘vast resources’ are not currently configured in such a way as to produce the necessary munitions to support the campaigns it keeps embarking on. This won’t change in at least the next decade. They’ve not now got the industrial or educational base to support it, even if they had the political system capable of addressing these many deficits..
Europe’s problem was not recognising this and to not take steps to disentangle ourselves from them sooner. We are all in for a bumpy ride now.
Europe has been meddling in Israel’s conflict with its neighbors for years and always working against Israel’s interests.
I really don’t think so. I cannot understand why the conflict gets so much coverage in the UK, but then you look who is writing the articles
Foreign policies derive from many influences and often do not stand the scrutiny of time and perspective. When the history of the fallen American “empire” is written, it will likely be concluded that the US surrounded itself with too many impotent and resent-ridden “allies” that had no capacity to defend themselves let alone contribute meaningfully to anyone else’s defense.
That missile strike was after the US & UK had bombed Yemen – after that all bets were off. Prior to that the Yemenis had restricted their attacks to Israel bound or Israel owned vessels. The French, Spanish and others recognised this so chose not to participate in the laughably titled ‘Prosperity Guardian’.
Bombings came only after dozens of Houti missile attacks on ships of a variety of nations (including US) and warnings to desist, so I don’t get your point. That the Houtis are justified?
Not only has Europe gotten itself into a predicament by depending upon the US for its defense; it is also deeply handicapped by an inability to accept responsibility for its fecklessness; instead, Europeans too often default to just blaming the US for all perceived ills.
I think that the whole world is in a bit of predicament about the USA.at this time. Perhaps even the Democrats what Pres. Trump to win the 2024 election.
Ukraine is fair enough seeing as it’s a European nation. However the continent has no obligations towards Israel
If you consider the modern world less an American geographic empire and more a borderless empire of money then many of these apparent strategic blunders aren’t blunders. Yes, these decisions have damaged the American geopolitical empire, but they’re helping advance the borderless global empire of money.
Let’s start with Russia. The country’s financial sector proved impossible to “integrate” with global finance. The oligarchs could be tempted to London, but not their property rights. Foreign investments more often than not resulted in disputed ownership and large losses. Western sanctions have now severely punished Russia’s banking class but left its ability to finance its wars undimmed, and meanwhile damaged the real economies of the supposed European bulwark to Russian expansionism but hugely benefited global energy financial investment. Is the war really about Crimea and the Donbas when we’re not taking all steps to defend them, or is it about securing global financial interests in Ukraine and punishing Russia’s past infringements of foreign investments inside Russia?
Turning to Iran. The prize at the end of the JCPOA road was to be the lifting of financial sanctions barring US investment (and coupled to this, Western investment) in Iran. A huge prize given the vast opportunity to financialise its economy. Even as Iran’s recalcitrant behaviour has become ever more dangerous to the USA’s geopolitical interests, there has been an inexplicable reluctance to deviate from the Iran Deal. Does opening Iran to financialisation trump any concerns about geopolitics, does it matter to financial interests if the Mullahs control more of the Middle East so long as global financialisation can operate with less impediment? Perhaps it isn’t Iran’s continued sponsoring of terrorism that’s causing friction with global interests, but Iran’s proxies’ disrupting global financial flows through the Red Sea?
Lastly, China. China opened itself up and Western finance offshored Western industrial assets lock, stock and barrel. In terms of financialisation, it has been a huge success. Less so for geostrategic interests of Western nation states who are now industrially hobbled and facing an economic behemoth. Does it matter if Western nation states are weaker so long as global financialisation can operate with less impediment? Perhaps the bigger problem presented by President Xi is not any threat to Taiwan (after all, China lacks the means to mount an amphibious assault across nearly 200km of open sea) but his revanchism that threatens to disrupt global financialisation inside China.
It can’t be denied that it is a dream of financiers everywhere to divorce their business from the messy, irrational realities of geography, history, and peoples. What if we’re living in the moment where that’s exactly the world that’s being created? A global East India Company?
Great comment.
The East India Company overreached itself and nearly went bankrupt in 1772, and had to be ‘rescued’ by the crown. Hence the Regulating Act of 1773 and the India Act of 1784.
Thus were these ‘merchants’ chastised, and no doubt we shall have to do so again.
The West has printed trillions of dollars to bail out its financiers without much reform or any change of governance. At the centre of every single Western net zero energy investment is complex financial engineering that disguises the huge appropriation of public money for little to no risk (or energy). The die is cast: nation states now serve the financial elite, there isn’t a nation state left that will allow itself to be used to regulate the financial system for the benefit of the public. The interests of finance trump every other interest and will do so from here to the end of our civilisation.
I couldn’t agree more! In fact it is rather bad for my blood pressure
However I live in hope, as even the Ancien régime eventually imploded with very interesting results.
Have a sit down Charles, with a G & T perhaps?
Two preferably!
… and this will never change while the financiers retain monopoly control of the media.
“At the centre of every single Western net zero energy investment is complex financial engineering that disguises the huge appropriation of public money for little to no risk (or energy).”
Summarised one sentence!
Even simpler: income is personal, and losses are at the expense of society.
Agreed it is all about commerce. I thought really rich people were nice and caring?
Ah, what about the Permanent Settlement of 1793 and those collaborationist Bengali zamindars to whom EIC leased out rent collection at the highest rates?!
Of course given Wall Street’s enthusiastic response to Xi in SF, think I know who the equivalents to my ancestors are….
So do I!
It’s much easier to understand US policy once you accept that it is formulated in Wall Street, not Washington, and has little or nothing to do with the interests of ordinary Americans.
Is Kosher Nostra strong on Wall St by any chance?
-3 Would indicate YES.
.
And the finance is led by…? US of course.
Yes , even Hitler had a problem with the English channel, he does not seem to have been so circumspect with Russia (re WW2)
This article focuses too much on talk and too little on action. If you are not careful, it is easy to start thinking that strategy is key. That abstract reasoning will give you a solution to a complex problem that you can then implement. Voila, problem solved.
Real life does not work that way. Strategy and reasoning are helpful, certainly, but only in that they give you ideas about what to try. The only way to solve a complex problem is trial and error. You have to take some steps and see what works.
That is where Joe Biden fails. He’s not doing anything. For one thing, he does not know what to do. As former defense secretary Robert Gates said, Joe Biden has been wrong on every major foreign policy issue for four decades. For another, he’s too old.
Joe Biden does have people in his administration who do things, but they are not the president so they cannot do the right things. Meanwhile, the president dozes away his days in the White House, his assisted living center.
I remember when we had a president who was not afraid to take action, who was willing to take a risk to see what the enemy would do. Once when Iranian proxies were sending missiles against the United States embassy in Baghad the president himself sent out a simple tweet:
Iran did think it over, and Iran backed down. We need a president who will do things again. A president who will be talking to Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. To Benjamin Netanyahu and Shi Jinping. A president who will focus not on positions and strategies and speeches, but who will focus on getting things done.
And we need him now.
I remember when we had a president who was not afraid to take action.
Yes, I remember when Ronald Reagan was President too.
Ronald Reagan was not bad, but his talent was being a great communicator, not a master of the art of the deal.
You mean Nixon
I think Nixon was the second most unhinged President ever. Still, only Nixon could go to China….
No serious military analyst thinks either side on Ukraine is going on a massive Spring offensive to seize huge chunks of territory. Do you see what the Russians are doing in Avdiivka? How they’ve given up trying to encircle the city and are just directly advancing into it like lemmings? That is the largest kind of offensive the Russian army is now capable of. As for the rest… the take on Syria is correct. The rest is more dreams of the pipe.
The answer appears to be – a phrase I can scarcely believe I am writing -Vote Trump! His clear sightedness -again, am I really writing that? – stands in such contrast to the muddled analysis of his predecessors/successor.
Thank you Mr. Samuels for this important contribution to public discussion of Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Hamas.
Respectfully, the author makes a better case than some commenters give him credit for doing. The key point is the recurrent theme that America will arm its allies, but will place ill-conceived limitations on their capacities, limitations that make the struggle ultimately more bloody and more difficult for their allies (and in a nasty way, ultimately messier for the enemies attacking their allies). His criticism of the Obama policy of rewarding enemies and punishing allies seems to me right on target. Indeed, it seems undeniable. His breakdown of the Obama Administration’s catastrophic mismanagement of the Syrian crisis also strikes me as accurate and quite damning.
I am puzzled by the harsh tone of some of the comments.
I agree with you – we might raise issues about minor details, but Bush’s fantasy about Afghanistan and Iraq’s ability to govern by a non-tribal government that protects woke “rights” was a desastre , and Obama/Bidens desire to release funds to Iran and let them create a nuclear capacity after 10 years (from 2015) – not to mention Biden’s cowardice – borders on treasonous negligence. The bit about China as I read it was what will happen the result of Bush/Obama/Biden. None of this happened under Trump, just sayin’.
The comparison between the wars in Ukraine and Gaza is far fetched, but the similarities are that Putin and Netanyahu are human rights abusers, notwithstanding unspeakable provocations, and both seem to be coming out on top. The US seems to be inconsistent in picking the right side.
Another day, another neoconservatively-revisionist essay at Unherd. I could cut and paste any one of a number of responses I’ve made to them here in the last few weeks but I’ll just bullet point some issues here:
It’s par for the course for Unherd writers to accept Samuels assertion that “In other words, both Ukraine and Israel are conflicts in which America’s interest in supporting its allies is crystal-clear.” Why? They’re both thousands of miles away. What’s it got to do with them?
Samuels rather blandly says “while the goal of wiping Israel off the map will seem plausible again to a new generation of poverty-stricken young Arabs in shattered countries like Syria, Iraq, Libya and Egypt.” but only mentions the US role in the shattering of one of them – and then only that it was ‘blundering’. Samuels thinks that adding Iran to that list of shattered countries will make things all better – what makes him so certain of this?
Samuels is right to criticise Obama, but for all the wrong reasons. Obama didn’t activate his ‘red-line’ for the alleged Ghouta Syrian sarin attack because he was told the intelligence did not support the assertions that the Syrian forces had conducted it (see Seymour Hersh’s ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’. Subsequent ballistics and open-source investigations proved that it was almost certainly the ‘rebels’.
Far from supporting Iran in Syria Obama’s CIA instigated Operation Timber Sycamore – funnelling billions of dollars to support Sunny extremists who were active opponents of Iran.
What ‘balancing act’ was there in Obama’s destruction of Libya? Or for his support of the violent Maidan coup in Ukraine – sending Victoria Nuland to hand out biscuits to the demonstrators and later picking the post-coup government? Such blatant interference nullified the Budapest Memorandum – where was the balance in that?
And he ends with this: “t this moment, the only way out of America’s current cul-de-sac is for Israel or Ukraine, and preferably both, to defy American advice and strategic aims — and actually win the wars they are fighting.” Which asks to the rather obvious question of ‘How’s that going then?’ Neither can with or without US support. Both are losing – it’s time for the West to cut their losses and pull out.
Exactly sir, well said!
In short this is “here we go again”. Perhaps people should recall how the Crusader Kingdom* ended up?
(*1099-circa 1303.)
Or is it time for Israel to develop New Friends.
Wow. He sees it all, has all of the information to hand, has watched it all intently for many years and yet, almost implausibly, comes to absolutely the wrong conclusions.
Listen up, cupcake, both Putin and Hamas have been very seriously smacked – to a level way beyond their worst nightmares. Putin looks like a fool and a loser. Hamas has lost the north of Gaza which is in the process of being raised to the ground, a la Carthage – the correct approach. Both have been profoundly humiliated. Nobody in their right mind (ok, that’s a big ask) is going to view this from afar and think “what a great idea”. Far from being the wrong approach, the West has got this finely balanced approach pretty close to as right as they could under the circumstances.
Now,it may be true that we will now lose our collective marbles and fail to follow through when we should. There are some signs of this happening. However, to suggest that the West has got this wrong up to this point is to adopt a childishly simplistic analysis to a very complex problem. No credit is given where credit is clearly due. Could more have been done? Yes, that’s almost always true. However, for once, we’ve got more right than wrong.
Go straight to the back of the class.
You are the one who doesn’t understand. Look at Hamas’ history of declaring glorious victories and you will understand that their definition of a victory and yours are totally different. If Yihye Sinwar and Mohammed Def come out of this alive then they have won, and everyone in the Middle East will see it. The number of deaths or destroyed buildings does not play a role. If they survive to continue the jihad, then they have won.
In their minds, they have already achieved a partial victory by getting so much publicity for the Palestinian cause.
They have already won by striking fear into Israel with the 7th October attacks. Israel now needs to annul that victory by making sure they will not be alive to brag about it.
It’s not so much that this is wrong, but the conviction with which the wrongness is defended.
Does anyone know how to unsubscribe from UnHerd.
I don’t do apps and there’s no other way to contact them.
And my bank says it can’t stop the payments.
[email protected]. Email.
LOL can’t believe someone down voted you for that! Should be in settings, no doubt a lot of people will be unsubscribing soon…
Looking at you’re resume of who publishes you, leftist tags, you’ve promoted this. Why? “ orange man bad” ?
When the author equated Hamas and Putin, he lost me. That is such nonsense. There is nothing he Russians have done in Ukraine that comes even remotely close to what Hamas did on Oct 7. It seems to me, when writing about such topics, it is best to try and remain completely objective rather than insert personal biased views.
No, it’s very similar and has deep roots. You are unfamiliar with what happened and is happening in Russian torture cellars in Ukraine and are not very aware of the behavior of the Red Army in East Prussia.
The veneer of civilization in the behavior of Russians is easily eliminated and should not be misleading
Give me a break. And equating the Red Army with the Russian army is also over the top.
Not at all.
All the classic features of the Red Army are present in the Russian Army. Total incompetence of commanders, blind obedience to orders, complete indifference to their own losses, widespread looting in the occupied territories, terror against the occupied population – the whole set.
It’s not for nothing that in Ukrainian villages neighbors ask locals, “Did you have Germans?” Is it over the top?
“ In response, she asked me if I thought that people in Muslim countries were inherently different from Europeans.”
It’s unbelievable. Where are the armies of Arabists, Middle East experts and even the simple knowledge of basic facts?
It’s hard not to see Obama as a wannabe post Great War Wilson for the Middle East. The result of his too-clever-by-half maneuvering promises to have the same effect as Wilson’s 14 points, contributing to instability that will almost inevitably lead to even wider conflict – which we’re now seeing.
It seems unlikely that America will make it to this November without being forced into a very public reckoning with a decade of disastrous foreign policy failures. — I hope the rest of the article is a step up from this ridiculous opening line. No one here is interested in a reckoning of any sort for any topic, least of all foreign policy. Are you serious?
We can’t muster an honest investigation of what went wrong during Covid, of why millions of illegals have been allowed to pour in, why crime is rampant, why policies ostensibly meant to curb homelessness have the opposite effect, and so forth. The idea that everything is going to stop for a bit of introspection and navel-gazing over foreign policy is laughable.
One side is petrified that Donald Trump might win another term. The other side is petrified that the current husk of a president will be re-elected. In the middle are millions of powerless, politically homeless Americans who are slowly understanding that the “team” approach has failed them.
Well said! I love the expression “politically homeless”. Many days I feel like a destitute wanderer in a land that no longer wants me, a place where raw confusion swirls cold around me. I come to political homeless shelters, like this one, in hopes of a friendly voice and maybe a bit of palatable food for thought. Thank you Alex Lekas!
It’s way past time for the US to cease its’ military misadventure business. It has proven time and again that it is incapable of success and that the only party which benefits from its’ actions is the MIC. NATO needs to be abolished–if Europe is afraid it needs to remember how to take care of itself. Perhaps the cost of doing so might smack its woke Left back into reality.
Anyone here in the US up for isolationism again? Seems we are damned when we do and damned when we don’t. If we have a record of “failed overseas adventures” as one commentator put it then I guess even the blood and treasure we spent helping Europe and Asia defeat fascism doesn’t count. So let’s take our weapons and head home. From the tone of these comments, the world would be better off without us. Let’s focus on our poor, our drug addicts, and our border. It’s about time we did.
You only joined both wars when the Allies were already winning, and you became very rich and powerful for doing so
Oh, winning as in Vichy France and Dunkirk for the Brits? I guess all those convoys of thousands of ships crossing the North Atlantic were filled with cruise vacationers instead of the supplies that kept our erstwhile “friends” alive.
In World War II the Allies were certainly not winning against Japan when it attacked the United States and brought it into the war.
Way off the mark re WW II.
We had been kicked out of mainland Greece and Crete by German and Italian forces in April 41.
The carrier Ark Royal had just been sunk in the Med weeks before Pearl Harbor after an overly enthusiastic abandon ship order not far from Gibraltar.
The Desert War did not swing our way until 10 months after Pearl Habor.
The Nazi panzers were on the outskirts of Moscow.
Britain was about the loose Singapore two months after Pearl Harbor which led to a loss of credibility.
We had kicked Vichy French forces out of Syria and Lebanon mid summer 41 which was one piece of good news but overall a negative picture.
Does this system automatically bin all posts with the German N**i word?
I wrote an long post to illustrate to Billy Bob just how inaccurate his claim was in view of the British military situation December 1941 but the system just gobbled my long post, no pending review amber warning or evidence in my comments log.
I could not agree more. Time to defund our “policeman of the world” department.
Because without its empire the US dollar wouldn’t be a reserve currency and the US would be unable to fund its debt?
When the $ was backed by gold (terminated in 1971) and then by being the only currency in which to buy oil (the Petrodollar) the situation was different…not so now…
Ha ha really? USA does it for itself not for anyone else, so the playground bully is a philanthropist?
I was for GW Bush and the effort to depose Saddam Hussein then establish something like the United States, a democratic republic with freedom and power to the people. They found 300,000 civilians buried in the sand killed by Saddam Hussein. Men like him were evil. It was good against evil and the American way was the best. America had self-confidence and a belief in its philosophical superiority.
Communists believed and may still that American freedom allowed moral decay and corruption. Communists believed and may still that people should be reined in under a secular philosophy and controlled to an extent so they wouldn’t be contaminated by the excess freedom allows. So Communists believed and may still that the United States represents the evil of excess and the spread of American style freedom is very bad.
Islam feels the same way. The Great Satan with its competing Judaeo/Christian religion is wrong and evil. They believe the freedoms America champions fly in the face of Sharia and America is a very bad place also.
In walks Barak Hussein Obama who was raised on the knee of Frank Davis who no doubt spoke of the evil of American capitalism and the excesses which were said to be very bad. Frank Davis was one of many who were called in front of Congress because he wrote of benefits and moral superiority of Communism in a Hawaiian newspaper. The saying goes if you can get them before the age of 5…
Then there was Barak Hussein Obama who converted to, lived as, practiced Islam in his youth being taught the tenets of Mohammad and submission to Islam. Then again there was the Reverend Wright and G-d damn America for twenty something years.
So let’s say Obama hated America from his youth. He was taught that the American way was bad so why wouldn’t he want to destroy it? Michelle said his election was the first time she ever liked America even after being coddled at Princeton University.
He came to power, fired much of the military leaders and appointed his own. Axelrod’s parents were communists. Valery Jerrod’s family is Iranian and who knows how many people of similar sentiments they imbedded in powerful positions? Biden is titular.
So the ruling powers in the United States may think the United States is the evil one and deserves a radical transformation. We typically want to transform something we hate – something we think is evil. So The United States doesn’t win because its leaders hate it and the governments with which it has much in common are to be hated too rather than allied because the shared values are in need of radical transformation. They’re evil. They’re bad. That’s why the United States doesn’t want to win and allows communists and Islam to assert their power, influence and philosophy. American leaders hate America.
I don’t agree with everything said here but one thing is indisbutably true, the desire to manage wars to avoid casualties etc. has the effect of literally eliminating the advantage that stronger militaries have. And the openly telegraphed inistence on avoiding “escalation” at all costs has the effect of destroying deterrence.
Well said. I am always puzzled that in the western culture the singular example of just war is the overwhelming defeat and destruction of Germany and Japan by the Allied forces, recreated and celebrated with unalloyed righteousness countless times in movies, television and books to this day. In all the decades of blatantly xenophobic aggression against Israel and the West, there has never been anything near the equivalent of Dresden or Hiroshima as a response, and never a categorical holding responsible the culture that endlessly produces it. The historical and cultural consensus about WW II remains that German civilians all bore responsibility for what the Nazis wrought. Today we just blame the victims.
Biden has been wrong on every foreign policy question for 50 years, but this is not the Biden administration. It is Obama’s 3rd term. Obama uses Biden as a sock puppet. Biden’s cabinet all take their orders from Obama rather than the nominal president. In addition, it appears that America is not capable of executing the duties of a world power. It should retreat behind the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and leave world politics to other nations. American allies should all develop nuclear weapons and not depend on the fickle ways of America’s rulers.
“A second Trump presidency, meanwhile, will plunge America into even greater internal chaos”
If that happens we will know who to blame
The only strategy to pursue regarding the Middle East is to ‘stand down’ and withdraw all armed forces from the Middle East as part of a grand strategy of retrenchment in this new unipolar world. Whatever happens in the Middle East from any perspective is no threat to American Security. False notions of geopolitics will tell you differently. Defense of the Continental United States should be the core of the US Grand Strategy accompanied by a strong global naval presence. No more interventions or interference in the global political realm.
Oh dear, the author should be advised to do more thinking and less typing. He might also try thinking before typing.
The readership at Unherd is far more astute than his prior readers at Harper’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic
Obama’s enabling of Iran, has backfired, just like Netanyahu’s enabling of Hamas,
Iran and Hamas have no problem destroying American & Israeli lives and interests.
The world waits in fear.
We don’t know what we truly want.
We ignore what we truly need.
And we pursue, always, ‘what the little boy shot at’.
Western foreign policy is just a minimally different version of Western domestic policy: we want to play nice (we want the world to play nice)…we want to get shiny awards from glamorous talking heads, to place on highly-polished bookshelves (open floor plan / industrial chic) …we’re waiting for the knowing applause for sitting, always, at the cool kids table while we watch the market go UP. Nation-building? Sure, sounds like fun and definitely a super-cool thing to do…until it isn’t. Until we’re bored. Until it’s kinda painful, you know — that blood & treasure thing.
We want to save the Planet. We want Greta Thunberg to like us. We want the best seats at Davos…and just maybe get an invitation to speak knowingly at TED about, you know, being Woke, being Diverse, being Inclusive, and having the most Transgendered Cabinet Heads and Gender Fluid Generals in the whole damned place! How great is that?!
We’ve legalized pretty much everything anyone wants & normalized the rest. I mean appetites exist to be fed, don’t they? And who are we to judge the “angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating..” crap. That, too, is pretty cool, just ask Gavin (but be careful where you step, should grab that updated Human Fecal Matter Map!).
As for Bad Guys? Heck, we know the real truth: we’ve been watching it for decades on Big Screen TV’s, streamed constantly on 4K Ultra HD Virtual Reality Goggles. The real Bad Guys are us. Or Them anyway. The Systemically Racist Establishment; the Misogynistic Man; the Corporate Sexist Greedmeisters who don’t care about snail darters or herds of methane producers or chickens who — heaven forbid — are NOT free range. They’re the ones we hate! The Real Bad Guys are the ones who tear tampon machines off the wall of Men’s Restrooms (provided special for New Men Who Need Them). They’re the ones who looked at the ravaged dead of October 7th and said of Hamas, ‘Kill ’em all…burn their cities to the ground and sow salt in the ruins.’ (oh how gross! how culturally insensitive!)
Those same ‘Bad Guys’ who look now at the Houthis and their drones and the constant harassment of Red Sea shipping and wonder when, in God’s name, will we end them?
What an outre perspective! How so totally uncool is that? Who do we think we are? (after all we probably deserve it!)
Cause the Woke know: understanding and empathy….chilling out….a little weed, some Vicodin….listen to some tunes, chant some mea culpas and go on global apology tours….and c’mon now what’s really more important? Carbon Sequestering Conversations, the elimination of gas stoves, Covid 12 Vaccinations, Cholesterol Control, and the ability to kill our children when they’re inconvenient….or the destruction of those who would destroy us?
Can’t we all just get along? Isn’t the answer obvious? Do we really need to mandate more sensitivity training? more diversity seminars? Do you need yet another copy of Kendi’s book? Can i get another reparations check?
Is anyone really surprised that the West’s foreign policy is a Beatles lyric? “Turn off your minds, relax, and float downstream….lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void…listen to the color of your dreams” It’s not that we can’t act decisively; it’s that we just don’t wanna, not really.
There are two possible Americas. One under Trump, and one under any of the dozen neocons who could take the helm in November. My bet is on Michelle Obama.
According to the neocons, it is America’s birthright to rule the world via a handful of billionaires who make decisions in their own best interest. The naive orange man thinks that America can return manufacturing to its shores, working men can make a good living, and the world can be relatively at peace — simply by not doing monumentally dumb things.
Trump is one man and the powers aligned against him are vast. The US could be entering a new dark age.