The War in the East and the Politics of the War in the West

Let us get the war in the East out of the way. There is very little movement on the front-lines. The Russians are operating a withdrawing defence in the Kharkov region and a line of defence in Kherson (there is no serious possibility of a move against Odessa or towards Trans-Nistria until the Donbas campaign is completed). They are making incremental gains exploiting Ukrainian weaknesses day by day on the Donbas front. The technique is a ‘meatgrinder’ one – the Ukrainian lines are bombarded by artillery and then the Russians move two or three kilometres to take a village or a town. This saves Russian lives at the expense of Ukrainian lives but means very slow progress.

Progress may also have been slow because the Spring thaw does not allow easy movement of heavy equipment in the field. The Ukrainians have also been dug in along the main Donbas front for some eight years. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are beginning to receive some of the significant amounts of Western military aid promised in recent weeks including consignments of anti-tank weapons. Since the Russians have still not formally declared war (and so the conscript reserves still lie on the Russian side of the border), the general expectation is of a continued Russian ‘meatgrinder’ offensive until the Ukrainians are in a position to mount counter-offensives next month or perhaps in July. In essence, we are going to see weeks of mutual slaughter.

The Ukrainians appear to have high morale although just how long the conscripts can last out, without the imposition of methods that raise questions about just how ‘liberal democratic’ a regime the West is supporting, is a question for the future. We note that myths like the ‘Ghost of Kiev’ (the equivalent of the First World War’s ‘Angel of Mons’) are being carefully unravelled now that they have served their purpose. One central issue is not the supply of armament but whether the logistics to supply the armament with ammunition and the training to use it effectively can be organised in good time. We suspect some observers are underestimating Ukrainian resourcefulness and overestimating Russian intelligence capability outside its sphere of operations and that more 'stuff' will reach the Donbas lines than the missile attacks imply might be destroyed.

Strategies

The Russian response to all this is unclear but it appears to be one of not allowing themselves to be diverted from the task in hand (Donbas), continuing to disrupt Ukrainian lines of communication and transportation. After three strikes, the Odessa bridge permitting supply from Romania is fully out of action, for example. The propaganda on both sides can be squared to give a fairly accurate picture of what is happening but we should discount claims that are designed to boost Ukrainian morale. The Russians can still ‘declare all-out war’ and bring reserves over the border (though this may be precisely what the West wants since it would weaken Russia strategically) while few honestly believe that, even with Western support, Ukraine is strong enough to push Russia out of Crimea, Lugansk and Donetsk.

The lines in the Donbas are ‘first world war’-type trenches and emplacements on both sides (hence the Russian strategy of slow strangulation by encirclement, exploiting weaknesses and cutting supply lines). Similar lines are likely to emerge along the Kherson and other fronts with periodic offensive and counter-offensives until one side is exhausted. In fact, Ukraine on its own would be quickly exhausted except for the commitment of the West. This simply means that the West will be throwing its funds into the money pit of war just when it needs those funds for other purposes – energy diversification, green transition (not the same thing), strategic defence (including against China), COVID recovery, infrastructure and social programmes - just as inflation takes a serious hold on voters’ livelihoods.

American officials are expressing relief that China is not offering more economic and any military support for its ‘ally’ but it is probable that Russia has not asked for any (after all it has not invoked even the Belarussian or Kazakh alliances). China’s position is deliberately ambiguous in public but we should be in no doubt that its first loyalty is to Moscow and that it is using its time wisely to become stronger if confrontation with the West becomes inevitable. If the West believes it is degrading Russia, China might equally believe that the West is degrading itself in the process. The ‘West’ is probably somewhat deluded in its belief that its warnings have deterred China. China simply sees no immediate need to intervene and Russo-Chinese trade is increasing regardless.

Of course, one side or the other could break through at any time – theoretically the Ukrainians could take boots on to Russian soil (which would give the Russian Government the leverage to turn the war into a war of national defence and mobilise its full resources) and, equally theoretically, the Russians could crush the Ukrainian Donbas Army (although this would likely take months) and then move troops to seize the Dniepr line or the Kharkov line or the Kherson line and so on to Odessa and Trans-Nistria. After all, the end of the thaw would give Russian heavy armament some advantage if the supply of Western equipment is inadequate. Both breakouts seem unlikely in view of the sheer weight in place of the other.

Peace and Information Warfare

Peace negotiations are almost certainly out of the question in the near future. The Ukrainians really think that Western support can turn the tide. The Russians really think that they can hold the line and capture the Donbass. It is also becoming clearer that, despite the propaganda, the Russians actually do have local support in much of the area that they are concentrating on. Similarly, Ukrainians are returning home to Kiev and to areas formerly at risk of Russian occupation or destruction because of widespread acceptance that the line is where the line is and will stay there. A certain vicious stability is emerging with Ukrainian conscripts and Russian professionals degrading each other day by day.

Outside the meat-grinding war, the information war continues and it can largely be disregarded. There is a growing anti-war sentiment emerging in the social media underground and in private life in the West. If you talk honestly with most people in the UK for example, they are a) horrified by the suffering and highkly supportive of the Ukrainian people (not to be confused with the State), b) indifferent to the conflict other than a) and c) cynical about the Government and disbelieving of the media. Most probably would want intervention for peace rather than see their taxes be spent on lethal force and there is little sign of 'war fever' rescuing the Tories in the local elections in a few days. This is all suppressed by a unified pro-Ukrainian mainstream media stance where the humanitarian story is constantly confused with the security and war story.

The more negative sentiment is divided into a minority pro-Russian (because anti-elite) sentiment and a position against both Russian and Western ‘war mongers’. However, political and media elites are broadly unified around a pro-Ukrainian position ... or rather those with doubts (except influential individuals like Mearsheimer or Hitchens) tend to be silent, sulking in their tents like Achilles. ?The ‘mainstream media’ probably now expresses or shapes the belief systems of only half the population at one time and people choose the social media that accords with their beliefs.

Media and psy-ops strategy in the West tends to concentrate on emotional responses to humanitarian disaster and encourage that intrinsic confusion between the emotional and 'moral' responses to that disaster and rational assessments of the causes of war and consequences of political action. The BBC, in particular, might be called shameful for its inability to make the necessary distinction. The humanitarian disaster is real enough but never fully contextualised with, for example, a refusal to admit that the Ukrainians have been shelling Russian civilians in separatist zones for eight years. There are also more successful attempts to personalise the war as a war by 'Poootin' rather than a genuine clash of cultures to which both populations (though not all Russian-Ukrainians) are committed. Analytical complexity is bad for morale even if it is the truth. A recent Associated Press article broke ranks to detail the illiberal measures of the Ukrainian regime (although perhaps justified by the war situation). The internal contradictions thus have internal contradictions.

The Instability of Western Morale

In fact, the West’s morale position is much more unstable than the Russian position. Russians and Ukrainians are both united in their respective stances (which is why this war looks as if it will be so bloody and ruthless in the months to come). Western responses are imposed from above on populations given unstable narratives and falling into camps that can shift rapidly on new information. Providing 'new information' to maintain outrage is the job of Western psychological operations and it is getting exhausted, preaching to the converted, especially as some psy-ops has been exposed as such and created growing distrust of media claims. When Chomsky praises Trump (who he loathes) for being the only senior politician who understands the need for political intervention and negotiation rather than simply supplying meat grinders, then the world has truly gone topsy-turvy. Leftists and right-wing isolationists converge reluctantly on the ground while their leaders squabble.

The point is that this war is doing something peculiar to Western ideology. It is confirming division but also confirming, albeit in slow motion, the populist resentment that we saw in 2016 at the imposition of values on populations by networked elites. This is then read across to a sympathy for foreign cultures who are having the same values imposed on them - or rather cynicism about the necessity for us to see these cultures as 'enemies'. There is an associated resentment emerging at the central control of media narratives and media refusal to engage with the holes in revailing narratives. Popular feeling is breaking down into an emotional commitment to the plucky Ukrainians, indifference to the conflict but growing rage at issues like the cost of living and populist resentment of imposed narratives about not only this conflict but many other issues.

Having said all this, the reality of power in the liberal democracies is that the networked political and policy classes (and those in the media) are in control of the agenda because they are in control of States. They can enforce their position through sanctions (at great cost to domestic economic interests), deployment of budgets and ultimately force as well as control narratives, albeit uncertainly, through political warfare/psychological operations. This means that the struggle simply becomes one of hawks and doves in relation to the degree to which Ukraine should be supported and sanctions implemented rather than a struggle over whether Ukraine should be supported in the first place. The latter debate is simply closed.

The central point of nervousness for war hawks is whether the populations of the west will be minded to see economic sacrifice as a justifiable price to pay for the liberation of Ukraine – the same issue arises for Russians in relation to the Russian populations inside ‘official’ Ukraine. It seems that the latter are prepared to think more in existential terms than the former. Ukraine is their fight to Russians (as it is to Ukrainians and to some extent to Poles and Balts) but move westwards and the existential need to spread democracy and freedom along neo-conservative and liberal internationalist lines starts to diminish in force until it becomes negligible in Arizona or Iowa.

‘Hawk’ Strategy

The ‘hawk’ element (neo-liberal, neo-conservative and Atlanticist) sees this war as an opportunity to recover ground lost since 2016 – strengthening NATO (especially with the inclusion of new nations), strengthening the EU at the expense of nation states, increasing strategic defence expenditure (which pleases certain business interests) and re-building the idea of the ‘West’ as a dominant narrative with half an eye to the confrontation with China. The ‘doves’ worry about the economic costs (especially to Europe), perhaps fear where the confrontational stance will lead ultimately and perhaps fear both loss of sovereign controls and the political reaction of populations who have to pay for all this. The ‘doves’ have largely collapsed because they do not have the language for resistance.

The problem for the ‘hawks’ is that they are seizing high ground on an emotional wave based on a single and largely poorly analysed ‘moral wrong’ (invasion) that appeals to the simple experiences of journalists and less educated voters. If they have won the elite, they have not won the masses to any depth. A short war and a peace deal might hold the high ground for the ‘hawks’ but we are about to move into a war of attrition in which it will be hard to hold people to the simplest issue of principle without a formal declaration of war (which the Russians can do more easily than the West can). Populations are faced with a risky money pit for an increasingly flawed nationalist ‘hero’ State while the economy declines and the politicians responsible cannot get electoral traction.

In short, the ‘hawks’ need to get certain decisions (such as maximum sanctions and accessions to NATO as well as commitments to weapons supply) in place as quickly as possible before anyone has any second thoughts and under conditions where any decision is made irreversible because the ‘doves’ have agreed to it regardless. Thus, politically, the ‘doves’ become isolated and politics (or at least this is the hope of the ‘hawks’) becomes a matter of a hegemonic neo-liberal ‘Western’ order holding all the commanding heights of culture and of politics and so able to beat off any subsequent waves of populist resistance.?Game over! ?Or is it … economic problems in the West may yet unravel the political base for the ‘hawks’ in the long run.