Ordinary people in the West can still remember when media commentators and politicians cheered on Ukrainian civilians throwing Molotov cocktails at their occupiers. They see statistics on social media that Israel had killed more Palestinians in one month than Russia had killed Ukrainians in 592 days of war. They haven’t forgotten that it was the very same establishment figures like Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) who claimed Russia bombs hospitals “daily,” now crying “I stand with Israel” every five minutes despite four times morecivilians having been killed in Gaza’s hospitals in two months than in Ukraine’s hospitals in two years.
Analysis
Shelia Fitzpatrick: Bertie Wooster in Murmansk
A review of Anna Reid’s A Nasty Little War: The West’s Fight to Reverse the Russian Revolution.
Geoffrey Roberts: Ignorance is not Bliss: Ten Egregious Historical Mis-Analogies of the Russo-Ukrainian War
Completely reliant on foreign aid, battered Ukraine is half-way to becoming a Western protectorate not a Russian one.
Jeffrey Sachs: Why Joe Biden Is a Foreign Policy Failure
When it comes to foreign policy, the president of the United States has two essential roles. The first is to rein in the military-industrial complex, or MIC, which is always pushing for war. The second is to rein in U.S. allies that expect the U.S. to go to war on their behalf. A few savvy presidents succeed, but most fail. Joe Biden is certainly a failure.
Hall Gardner: The new Crimean war and global geopolitical unrest
Speaking to the American Congress, President Joe Biden warned, “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there… Putin will attack a NATO ally, and then “we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops…”
Biden’s scenario is not implausible, but it is not the most probable. It appears dubious that Russia’s President Putin will be able to “take” all of Ukraine and then purposely attack NATO members, although Moscow has intensified its attacks on Ukraine.
Dave DeCamp: Slovak Prime Minister Says Ukraine Must Give Up Territory to End War
Slovak PM Robert Fico will meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on Wednesday and said he will tell him that Slovakia will block any attempts to bring Ukraine into NATO. “I will tell him that I am against the membership of Ukraine in NATO and that I will veto it,” Fico said. “It would merely be a basis for World War III, nothing else.”
Col. Douglas Macgregor: 2024: The Year Foreign Policy Delusions Die Hard
Ted Snider: According to Ukrainian Officials, There Could Have Been Peace
Reuters: NATO to hold biggest drills since Cold War with 90,000 troops
ACURA’s Nicolai N. Petro and Ted Snider: To End the War in Ukraine, Expose Its Core Lie
The essential argument used to avoid negotiation and continue support for the war in Ukraine is based on a falsehood. That falsehood, repeated by President Joe Biden, is that when Vladimir Putin decided to invade, he intended to conquer all of Ukraine and “annihilate” it.
Its falsity has been exposed multiple times by military experts, who have pointed out, both before and after the invasion, that Russia could not have intended to conquer all of Ukraine because it did not invade with sufficient forces to do so. Indeed, this was a key reason why senior Ukrainian officials, and even President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, argued just days before the invasion that it would not occur.
Richard Sakwa: The lost peace and the missing piece
Was a positive peace possible after the end of the Cold War in 1989? The Cold War had been characterized by a negative peace in Europe, the management of conflict rather than its resolution, whereas a positive peace is based on the cooperative resolution of common problems, including those facing humanity as a whole.
This is the question that has intrigued and puzzled observers in recent years, and with added force after the return to interstate war in Europe and the reimposition of an Iron Curtain across the continent. Why did all the promises of friendship, ‘strategic partnership’ and the like in the euphoria of those days between 1989 and 1991 end not just in failure but in a catastrophic reversion to a cold war, which in certain respects is far deeper and more intractable than the original version?
Bartholomew H. Sparrow: Ukraine War: What Would Brent Scowcroft Do?
Scowcroft practiced and believed in what he called “enlightened realism.” In other words, the United States is best served by promoting a stable international system and protecting Americans’ own blood and treasure. He accepted foreign governments as they were, thereby facilitating a predictable international system, and worked with other nations to create a safer, more prosperous world. So there was good reason why President George H.W. Bush and Scowcroft—Bush’s most trusted adviser—did not want to “dance on the Wall” after the collapse of East Germany in 1898. Disrespecting and humiliating Moscow could have incited disastrous consequences in central Europe and among the (former) Soviet republics.
Seymour Hersh: The Political Costs of Biden’s Wars
As another showdown with Trump looms, Biden’s record abroad is his biggest liability.
ACURA’s James W. Carden: Anthony Blinken Has Failed The Test
Nowhere has Blinken’s lack of interest in diplomacy been more evident than with regard to Russia and Ukraine. In the months leading up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Blinken pursued toward Russia twin policies of provocation and intransigence that virtually guaranteed a Russian military response.
Ted Galen Carpenter: The Foreign Policy Blob’s Desperate Attempt To Preserve NATO
There are multiple indications that members of the foreign policy establishment are increasingly worried that the American people are growing weary of Washington’s strategic overextension and the excessive costs in treasure and blood that role imposes. Elites show their nervousness through desperate attempts to preserve the policy status quo. One recent example was the effort in Congress to limit the president’s powers and options regarding NATO.
Gordon Hahn: Crisis of the Regime: Pre-Coup, Pre-Revolutionary Conditions in Ukraine
Kiev is now gripped by crisis politics.
Owen Matthews: Why accepting the partition of Ukraine may be necessary
Even if a reconquest of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donbas and Crimea were militarily possible, would their re-incorporation into Ukraine make the country safer and more stable — or the contrary?
AP: The US failed to track more than $1 billion in military gear given Ukraine
Shortfalls in required monitoring by American officials mean the U.S. cannot track more than $1 billion in weapons and military equipment provided to Ukraine to fight invading Russian forces, according to a Pentagon audit released Thursday.
The findings mean that 59% of $1.7 billion in defense gear that the U.S. has provided Ukraine and was directed to guard against misuse or theft remained “delinquent,” the report by the Defense Department’s office of the inspector-general, the watchdog body for the Pentagon, said.
Julia Gledhill: How Biden can bypass Congress on Ukraine aid
US weapons makers are teaming up with Kyiv to produce military gear in the war-torn country, likely, in part, at the taxpayer’s expense
VIDEO: John Mearsheimer: Who Is the US Enemy: Russia or China?
In a recent interview with Judge Napolitano, Professor Mearsheimer discusses US policy toward Russia and China.