A General Overview of the Ukraine Situation

As always, we have to separate the informational war (what we are being led to believe is happening) from the facts on the ground (what is actually happening). ?Let us get the two contrasting narratives out of the way so we can try and find some semblance of truth:-

The Western Narrative – Putin has failed (although at objectives it would seem Putin never had in the first place). Putin is responsible for the economic devastation and humanitarian crisis affecting Ukraine (conveniently forgetting the role of both NATO and the Ukrainian regime in triggering the crisis). The Ukrainian military is mounting a magnificent resistance and not merely holding back the Russians but beginning to defeat them (which may be true on a localised basis but the latter is not actually evidenced yet). The world is united against Russian aggression (not strictly true but true as far as the ‘West’ is concerned). Economic sanctions are working and will eventually force Russia to defeat or internal regime change (highly speculative but good for the folks back home).

There is a very good account of the Western narrative at its most closely linked to reality at https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/biden-heads-europe-russian-offensive-stalled-besieged-mariupol-burns-2022-03-23 (well worth reading).?However, the Russian complaint about Ukrainian negotiating tactics sounds plausible – it ‘pays’ Zelensky to see if NATO will come up with something decisive to counter Russia before accepting any Russian terms (although it looks as if the rest of Europe is restraining Poland and other ‘hawks’). He will be aware that, for all the talk of ‘stalling’, the Russians are moving towards Odessa (economically vital) which, if they take, they may never want to leave and which has a substantial pro-Russian community.

The Russian Narrative – Everything is going to plan (which is clearly not entirely true) and a negotiated settlement is only being thwarted by Western influence on Zelensky (probably partly true insofar as Ukrainian nationalists and Western ‘hawks’ see this war as an opportunity to defeat Russia and trigger regime change in Moscow as well as get access to Western military hardware). The West is engaged in lies and half-truths (almost certainly true but then probably so is Russia). Russia is strong and has sufficient 'de facto' economic partners in the Gulf, India and China to survive and eventually prosper (probably partly true but only after a period of painful adjustment and if the West does not succeed in ‘turning’ those allies).

The truth is somewhere in between as always. ?The war is turning into a war of attrition in which the Ukrainian military is now heavily dependent on Western arms supplies. More worryingly at a human level, Ukrainian propaganda is well served by civilian horrors which drive sympathy for Kiev and so flows of financial and military support. The suspicion must be that turning Mariupol (for example) into a heroic bloody siege and a last bid defence is more useful despite its terrible strategic situation than surrender to save civilian lives. Civilians are now informational pawns in a brutal game – the Russians are going to have to decide whether to go all-out Soviet-brutal to win when this, in turn, could trigger intense hawk calls for direct NATO intervention. This makes psy-ops a very dirty game with civilian lives at stake.

The material value of military support is also hard to assess. It is undoubtedly helping the Ukrainian military, led in part by nationalist ‘warlords’, to resist and mount serious small-scale counter-offensives and (through anti-missile systems) seems able to assist in denying Russia full command of the air leading to significant losses for a strategically static northern and eastern Russian force. However, Russia has barely used its hypersonics: their few uses have carefully targeted on fuel and weapons supply and NATO personnel have been killed, with probable deliberation in one case.

A Russian argument that NATO is involved in this war despite the lack of technical legal justification for its presence is probably correct yet it need not become a direct conflict and will probably remain a localised draining war of attrition if there is no peace settlement. However, the risks grow of the conflict crossing one or other border, especially if the Poles ‘snap’ and start putting their troops and MiGs into the fray if the Russians start edging towards their borders and, of course, the ‘liberation’ of Trans-Nistria creates an entirely new strategic problem and complication. ?The real threat is the degree to which both sides now consider defeat or victory to be an existential issue.

The Four Other Wars and Contradictory Processes

The Russians are clearly finding the situation very difficult but Western assessments that its military are crumbling are almost certainly propaganda designed to undermine Russian and buttress Western morale (although there is no sign as yet that this is working within Russia). As we have noted, Russia has barely used its hypersonic and air capability and it seems to be reserving some power in the (admittedly unlikely) event of a direct conflict with NATO (Russia has made clear that it will only use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a direct assault on Russian soil that is existentially threatening). It is also clear that Western psy-ops is tending to under-estimate for media purposes the amount of territory the Russians actually control if not by very much.

Western propaganda naturally concentrates on what it presents (not unreasonably) as a repeat of the Syrian War but the presentation is as flawed in the current case as it was in the Syrian case. The real crisis lies in the Russians not so much killing people (although they are doing so through the ‘normal’ process of war where civilian deaths are inevitable) but in creating a fear of death and destruction (compounded by Western narratives, of course) which have driven around a quarter of the population into East-Central Europe. This huge population movement is now beginning to seep westwards with no resources of its own and causing serious difficulties to the East-Central economies. A lot of these people are not going to want to go back.

There are two contradictory processes now going on. It is difficult to say which of these will become dominant. The first are the political negotiations which are definitely under way, are very difficult but where, despite the aggressive rhetoric from Kiev, Kiev is making concessions on key Russian war aims of consequence and then couching them with such caveats and conditions (designed perhaps to ensure that Zelensky does not find himself with a nationalist coup on his hands) that the Russians find them unacceptable. Zelensky simultaneously appears to be accepting his defeat and seeking to make it not look like a defeat as the Russians steadily seize more of the Black Sea Coast of the Ukraine. He is also buying time for advantage assuming further Western material support if he does so.

The other process is in fact complementary. That is, the extremely aggressive ramping up of the four wars that the West is mounting against Russia – informational, economic, diplomatic and military support. These are all reaching a crescendo in a desperate attempt to make the Russians believe that they must concede ground in the political negotiations or else face isolation, economic collapse and de facto defeat through attrition of their capability. The problem the West (meaning Washington-London in effect) face is that, as the wars, proceed, voices are increasing in the West who doubt this strategy of aggression and who question the moral superiority of the Ukrainian regime. There is as much a race against time here for the West as for the Russians as inflation mounts.

Doubts, Economic Risks, Diplomacy

As the informational war increases, its intensity shows it up for what it is – propaganda. The public is not always as stupid as psy-ops people like to think: the chemical weapons claims of Biden have put many people on their guard after the experience of Iraq and some Russian propaganda is getting through and is, honestly, truthful about the darker side of Ukraine and the ‘West’. Second, there is a growing awareness of the threat of double digit inflation affecting not just politically impotent low income households but the lower middle classes who vote and who wonder exactly who was responsible for the situation in the first place. In other words, the ‘West’ is in a race against time before people start thinking for themselves, hence the severe crackdowns on Russian sources of information.

Third, Europe (including the UK) is disproportionately affected by the crisis. What drives East-Central Europeans into paroxysms of rage at the Russians is also undermining their economies. ‘Hawk’ Americans are pushing for ever more intense sanctions and even direct intervention (as are the Poles). Both hawks and the Administration are driven by a theory of economic war that is definitely unproven in its effects although the Administration, mindful of European realities, is acting as restraint on the hawks even as London fuels their passions. The problem is that the economic war is becoming half-hearted because it has reached that limit where to go further would require Western voters to accept significant sacrifices and Westerners are not Russians in this respect.

The practice rather than theory of economic sanctions now seriously threatens German industrial capacity and global food security as well as the financial stability of East-Central Europe. The Russians are now not only pushing massive numbers of refugees westwards in a way that could be interpreted as a deliberate response to economic warfare but they can match any oil embargo with restrictions on gas supply. Europe simply could not cope with the inflation and production consequences this year. So far, there has been little sign of Russia using the gas weapon and Gazprom is meeting all contractual commitments although ‘repairs’ have apparently limited supply on one pipeline which may be genuine or the sending of a ‘signal’.

The potential blow-back on Europe perhaps explains that, while Biden is in Europe to assert his leadership over NATO, the actual sanctions being proposed (as of today) are surprisingly minimal – targeting members of the Duma, which strikes us as fairly futile, likely to stiffen spines in the Duma and merely symbolic, perhaps a diversionary tactic to buy time - https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-heads-europe-with-more-sanctions-russia-2022-03-23 ?- and threatening non-aligned countries with secondary sanctions if they fail to back the West and assist the Russians. The Europeans have effectively deferred further direct sanctions (for a short while at least), perhaps hoping that the peace negotiations will bear fruit.

Diplomacy in the Context of a ‘World Historical Moment’

The diplomatic war has also been intensifying with Washington effectively bullying anyone within reach of its capital markets to comply with its demands for maximal tightened sanctions. This could go either way. Either it is pragmatically true that the dollar structures are so hegemonic that the Gulf, South Africa, India and China must kow-tow to Washington and live to fight another day and perhaps that the ‘oligarchical’ structures in all these zones come into political play and persuade their rulers to change policy or face ruination. Otherwise, the US becomes an Emperor without clothes, the targets of this campaign become resentful and restive at being threatened and the process hastens the emergence of alternative systems to the ‘West’. We simply do not know which at this stage.

Nevertheless, in this ‘world-historical moment’, the age of nuclear threat has ended (almost certainly) to be replaced by a war of economic hegemony in which (it could be argued) the US is throwing all its cards down on the table in a massive gamble that its huge residual economic power can effectively demonstrate that it is still hegemon and that any nation that challenges it existentially will die not by the sword but by the stroke of a keyboard. Poor Europe is trapped in this struggle, bound politically to the ‘West’ but in the front line, probably able to cope with events so far but possibly unable to cope with events to come. Biden’s visit to Europe this week is an assertion of authority over ‘allies’ but also an exchange of views on the limits of US power.

The point here is that ‘hawks’ think the Atlantic alliance has sufficient economic and military power that non-Anglo-Saxon allies simply have to go with Washington’s flow and clean up the mess afterwards. American ‘doves’ know that an aggressive America First or Russian regime change policy (not at all necessarily the same thing by any means) could cause its natural political allies within Europe serious electoral difficulties and undermine the European wing of the ‘West’. ?The US really wants out of Europe in principle (to concentrate on the Pacific) and it needs a strong and united and not a divided and weakened Europe to hold the line in the ‘East’ (the East of the West, that is).?

While Russia has a rather simple strategic aim - survival of a particular ideology of Russian-ness in a particular geographical zone, the West is engaged in something entirely different, an all-or-nothing existential exercise in seeking to maintain its global hegemony and, if that fails, to define itself as, in itself, a coherent ideological unity within the global system. On another occasion which should debate exactly what this thing called 'the West' is - one for the Object Oriented Ontologists perhaps - but what we can say is that an ideological system that originally defined itself against fascism and communism has become diffuse since the defeat of the latter and that many of its apparently unique aspects have been incorporated into what are emerging as alternative systems, many of which consciously creating themselves in opposition to historic Western imperialism. In addition, this construction of the West is being challenged from within, not only by the dying last and probably futile vestiges of the old Marxist Left, by the rising national populisms who exhibit their own confusions and contradictions and by the indifference of populations with economic concerns that the liberal hegemony has not adequately dealt with since the 2008 Crisis and which are about to get a whole lot worse. But no more ... otherwise we will go down the rabbit holes of ideology and ontology when the only real question is how to stop the war, end the killing and get people back into rebuilt homes and businesses.