And in one sense or another likely will.
Remember this is a nationalistic conflict between two groups going back centuries. It’s not about Putin or Zelensky, it’s not about what happened at any particular date. Those are just some of the latest triggering mechanisms. Russians and Ukrainians both deeply resent each other and view this as their home soil. Nothing is fixing that except the kind of defeatist apathy and cultural decline that set in across Western Europe. Unlike the British or the French, both sides are willing to go on fighting to the death over what they consider their national birthright.
The short version of that is that even if this ends in some truce or temporary agreement, it will pick up again.
A lot of people are expecting Putin to use nukes. It makes no particular sense for Russia, which can pick up and come back 5 years from now, to do that, but there’s no way Putin survives in power after a defeat. If he were to come back with nothing, he’d likely end up committing suicide by falling backward out of a window. But there’s no reason for Russia to give up.
Western analysts repeatedly underestimated Russia’s willingness and ability to keep going.
The only potential nuclear scenario, a small battlefield nuke (which would have nothing to do with us and despite what people on social media would tell you, wouldn’t lead to WWIII) would damage territory that Russia wants with little strategic gain.
The alternative is to just keep going.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that Russia is willing and able to absorb insane costs while losing a war. Until the enemy runs out of steam. Russia doesn’t have the population growth it once did, but that’s even better because it can just keep throwing Muslim men from the ‘republics’ into the meatgrinder which Moscow would find a win-win scenario anyway.
From the Western point of view, Russia’s position looks pretty bad. But Russia isn’t a western country and what looks bad can, from Putin’s point of view, actually have a positive flip side.
Military losses mean an opportunity to clean house, push out non-performing generals and revamp doctrine. Economic pain and domestic protests will drive further political and economic centralization.
As long as Putin keeps the war going, he won’t be perceived as having led Russia to defeat and he can wait until the appetite of western countries for the self-inflicted economic pain runs out. And there’s every reason to think that point has already passed. Russia is a lot more likely to wait Europe out than the other way around. But whatever happens, the centuries-old conflict will just continue in one form or another.
The war helps me better understand the “Great Game” period of Russia’s history. Also the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
I do not expect russia to give up on their war either, however neither will Ukraine. I predict that russia will ultimately defeat themselves in this horror show to defeat putin’s delusions.
Russia dropping “a small battlefield nuke” would have nothing to do with us? That’s the position of the extreme right in this country?
It’s no mystery why an article like this, on a site like this, would aim to minimize Russia’s atrocities and outrageous disregard for international conventions. You all subscribe to S. Bannon’s theory that Russia is the only country left that can save the white race, right?
Still, breezingly dismissing a potential nuclear attack by a desperate dictator with (soon enough) everything to lose is so jaw-droopingly myopic I would hope for at least some pushback from the alt-righters who regularly comment on FPM.
White race? Who said a word about race, except you?
So obsessed with race! So racist.
Why is it leftists cannot comprehend irony, metaphor, sarcasm, humor, comparisons. They seem completely deaf to tone.
Is it brain damage?
What happened to Hillary’s little Red Russian Reset Button?
Barry whispering to Medvedev: “I’ll have more flexibility after the election.”
Now Joe Biden has unleashed “armageddon” on us.
Too bad you whiners didn’t support Trump who kept Putin in check
You Democrat/marxist control freaks have just what you deserve.
Ukraine is not the only place Russia can deploy their Chechen terror jihadis. Just the mention of their deployment is enough to strike the kind terror into hearts of the civilian population that Covid engenders in the West.
Putin’s KGB pro-Christian nonsense has found a wide audience among the conservative pacifist(they don’t call themselves that) movement in the West. From Peter Hitchens to Paul Watson to many in America. The fact is that a conservative population in Russia is easier for Putin to control than a liberal one for legacy reasons.
In America a conservative population should be more difficult for Biden to control but all we have is a fat bunch Benjamin Franklins. People who do not particularly care one way or the other as long as they can go about their business.
Biden says that Putin isn’t kidding about nukes. Finally some common ground between the right and left.
Putin does not care one bit what religion he gets compliance from so long as they respect his power.
Be very interested to hear Biden’s appraisal of the nuclear threats posed by the Iranian mullahs. Somehow I don’t think that will be forthcoming for a little while.
There may have been a time bipartisan agreement signified something positive in America. What it signifies now is maybe better left to the imagination.
Greenfield says early in the article that it’s “a nationalistic conflict between two groups going back centuries..”
No, it’s an invasion, mass murder, and atrocities by one nation against another. As the article proceeds, he is clearer that it’s about what the invading nation decides to do as the war drags on.
Ninety years ago, when there was another mass slaughter of Ukrainians by Russians, I wonder if there were some conservatives, like Una Salus mentions, who supported everything the Kremlin said and did.
Ukraine has participated in atrocities itself if you want to go back that far. I’m for all for going back that far if it helps us understand where we are today with Zelensky. Zelensky is just another EU idiot as far as I’m concerned who does not examine how the EU(Germany in particular) has happily created this situation with Russia for him. Understanding that would at least be something.
Germany plotted this course when they relied on Putin for power. I argued this on here long ago with a fool who said it wasn’t in Russia’s interest to do what they are doing now.
Putin should really be invading Berlin. Then we’d see what Peter Hitchens has to say. Not much but something superficially different probably.
” It’s not about Putin or Zelensky, it’s not about what happened at any particular date. Those are just some of the latest triggering mechanisms. Russians and Ukrainians both deeply resent each other and view this as their home soil. ”
Ukraine is today considered by the Nations as a free, democratic (how imperfect is its democracy) and sovereign country. With Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian language, Ukrainian poetry, Ukrainian literature, Ukrainian specificities, Ukrainian history, Ukrainian traditions, Ukrainian customs. It is not the country of the Russians, nor of Putin, nor of all those who support him. But the country of the Ukrainians. If any Russians don’t agree with this, fuck them. I don’t see what’s difficult to understand there. Putin has absolutely nothing to do in Ukraine, so Putin must be fought, must lose this war and must be tried for war crimes, free and democratic elections must take place in Russia and the page of Sovietism must be completely turned, which Putin did not do.
Please, take a tour in Sudetenland. May be it will refresh your historical perspective.
The Cold War with the USSR/Warsaw Pact Ended along with communism … What the Hell Happened?
By late 1991, the military threat, hostility, and aggressiveness of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union had effectively ended. In fact, one could say that these enemies did not even physically exist.
So why did America and Europe pursue a hostile, aggressive, and provocative policy of NATO expansion up to the border of Russia? That surely was a triggering action at the center of the Ukrainian/Russia war.
America and its allies were not vindictive toward Germany and Japan after WWII.
Why not some forbearance for Russia after the Cold War?
The great American historian and diplomat, George F. Kennan, counselled that America and the West should work toward normalizing relations with Russia and avoid humiliating and provoking Russia by enlarging NATO to the borders of Russia.
“The dean of America’s Russia experts, George F. Kennan, had called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe ‘the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.’ Kennan, the architect of America’s post-World War II strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, believed, as did most other Russia experts in the United States, that expanding NATO would damage beyond repair U.S. efforts to transform Russia from enemy to partner.” Quoted from James Goldgeier, Brookings Institution, June 1, 1999.