So both parties don't want Ukraine to win their war against Russia's invasion? Let's look a little more closely, shall we?
ISW reflects on two years of open warfare. Is there a consensus in America that dooms Ukraine?
The dominant narrative today holds that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are opposites on Ukraine. The president supports the Senate bill that includes about $60 billion for Kyiv, mostly in military aid. The former president attacks it, and his influence among House Republicans is why Speaker Mike Johnson is reluctant to bring it to the floor for a vote. ...
Remember how Mr. Biden’s support for Ukraine started: He was backed into it. A month before Russia’s 2022 invasion, Mr. Biden predicted Russia would “move in” to Ukraine, but the NATO response might be divided if it were only a “minor incursion.”...
Mr. Putin’s invasion also came six months after Mr. Biden’s botched retreat from Afghanistan. The Biden administration was in danger of losing two big countries in its first two years. There was a need to shore up America’s collapsing credibility. ...
So here we are. Mr. Biden says we mustn’t give Mr. Putin a victory without quite committing himself to a Ukrainian victory. Mr. Trump says it’s “stupid” to give Kyiv anything but loans. Between the two, the American people aren’t getting the crucial debate about what we want the outcome to be and why. [emphasis added]
That highlighted part is key. I've long suspected Biden expected Ukraine to lose and that a paltry few billion in light arms and an evacuation of Ukraine's leadership before capture would show Biden tried.
After his failure in Afghanistan, that's all he wanted. He thought an expected rapid Russian victory would lift the burden of sustaining that show of resolve:
I'll say again that I think Biden is accidentally supporting Ukraine. I think Biden was told Ukraine would lose fast. I think the early war shipments of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons were designed for a post-invasion Ukrainian insurgency. The arms would be a relatively cheap way for Biden to show resolve after needlessly losing Afghanistan.
But Ukraine and Russia didn't cooperate with that political strategy. Russia effed up and Ukraine fought. Oops. Biden got trapped into backing Ukraine. And I worry he's looking for an exit ramp.
Win-win. He'd say but for those darned Republicans, Ukraine would be free. His effort to blame Republicans would have merely started much earlier.
Indeed, I warned about the motive to show resolve after the Afghanistan defeat to restore credibility. While Biden should have showed resolve on Ukraine, I think he just wanted the show.
And the unconscionable holding Ukraine's fate hostage to Biden's bizarre determination to keep our southern border open to mass illegal immigration only makes some sort of twisted sense if you see this as a means of getting out of Biden's accidental commitment to Ukraine by blaming it on Republicans.
Which the media goes along with by framing this as Republicans tying the southern border to Ukraine aid. When Biden actually did tie the southern border issue to Ukraine--and to Israel and Taiwan. It seems to me that House Republicans will allow aid if Democrats actually defend the southern border. Which is a more basic duty than helping Ukraine. So far Biden is only pretending to do that--with odd Senate Republican cooperation.
Mind you, I've long supported Ukraine. The record on TDR is clear and I don't understand why some conservatives have lost their resolve to resist Moscow's expansionist policies.
And as for Trump? The media and establishment consensus is that Trump's claim he could end the war in a day would consist of surrendering to Putin. Why is that considered the correct explanation? I mean, compare and contrast Trump to his predecessor Obama. Who was in thrall to Putin, eh?
And the author of the WSJ piece even bolsters my view of what Trump might do. The author says he wants aid to be in loans only. That isn't evidence of refusal to help Ukraine fight. But fits very well with my more rational extrapolation of what Trump would do:
Trump seems transactional in nature. Perhaps aid to Ukraine will rely more on Europeans paying for American weapons sent to Ukraine.
Perhaps there will be something akin to the "destroyers-for-bases" deal with Britain in 1940. Although I imagine instead of bases he'd want stakes in Ukrainian strategic natural resources.
Or maybe military aid would be paid for with assets seized from Russia.
Indeed, Trump's drive to get Europeans to do more in their backyard for defense could encompass Europeans giving Ukraine's loans to pay for American military equipment and services. Or using seized Russian assets to pay loans if Putin refuses to retreat from at least his conquests since 2022.
Heck, a future president more interested in Ukraine might direct student loan repayment money to Ukraine's loans rather than giving wealthy supporters a taxpayer-provided gift.
Doesn't that path make more sense than believing that unlike during his four years as president that Trump will abandon Ukraine--and kill off NATO while he's in the neighborhood?
But at least this opinion piece isn't totally stuck in the bubble of TDS that so much of our media lives in with no curiosity about what happens outside the event horizon.
And let's get a consensus that Ukraine should win and not merely avoid defeat. Because Russia has certainly remained focused on victory despite the time and unexpected high costs:
Russia’s overarching strategic objective in Ukraine, as first manifested in the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the Donbas, has been and remains the destruction of Ukraine’s sovereignty and the re-establishment of a pro-Russian Ukrainian government subservient to Moscow’s direction. ...
The Kremlin continues information operations to persuade Western audiences and leaders that Russia has limited objectives in Ukraine in order to fuel calls for negotiations on terms that would destroy Ukraine’s independence and damage the West.
Because in my book, in a contest between a side that that is trying to win and a side that is trying not to lose, the former has all the advantages. Let's get American military aid restarted.
We started to take Vienna. Take Goddamn Vienna!
UPDATE (Tuesday): Russia is grinding forward. Can Ukraine deny Russia freedom to concentrate forces anywhere on the front for a major offensive?
Russian forces will have the ability to maneuver reserve concentrations and determine how and where to allocate resources while forcing Ukraine to respond defensively as long as Russia maintains the strategic initiative. Ukrainian forces could deny Russia these opportunities if Ukrainian forces have enough means to challenge the Russian initiative and pursue their own offensive operations in 2024.
After 1943, the USSR had the initiative and was able to thin out forces along large stretches of the front in order to concentrate for an offensive, confident that Germany couldn't exploit that situation.
Our intelligence and surveillance assets should at least be able to make sure Ukraine knows of any weaknesses in Russia's front lines.
UPDATE (Wednesday): The notion peddled that Ukraine should retreat from cities it is defending to avoid unnecessary casualties is clearly false:
Russian forces are attempting to exploit tactical opportunities offered by the Russian seizure of Avdiivka and appear to be maintaining a relatively high tempo of offensive operations aimed at pushing as far as possible in the Avdiivka area before Ukrainian forces establish more cohesive and harder-to-penetrate defensive lines in the area.
Russia didn't stop attacking after taking over the small city. Russia will just keep attacking through territory less suitable for Ukraine to defend.
Mind you, I was urging the withdrawal from Avdiivka for a while to avoid encirclement of Ukraine's defenders. But in general it is not wrong to stand on ground to inflict disproportionate casualties on the enemy.
I've drawn an analogy for policy from the battlefield reality that when you retreat you often get a lull in fighting intensity. But it is not a lull. It is regrouping. We see here the basis of my analogy.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Who knows? At some point perhaps the Ukrainians will basically allow the Russians to penetrate relatively deeply in order to strike the flanks of the advancing Russian troops and inflict a big battlefield victory while on the strategic defense.
Russians wouldn't have fortifications and minefields that Ukrainians would need to penetrate. Which played a large role in defeating Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive.
Think a smaller-scale version of the 1943 Third Battle of Kharkov.
UPDATE (Wednesday): Russia seeks to exploit the Ukrainian retreat:
Russian forces are likely attempting to create an operational maneuver force for the exploitation of recent Russian advances in the Avdiivka direction.
Who exploits this? Russia's reserves or Ukraine's theoretical counter-attack that rests on an anvil of Ukrainian forces that stop getting pushed back and hold their ground? Has Ukraine prepared a fortifications line west of where they are being pushed back now?
UPDATE (Thursday): That's the claim:
Ukrainian officials continue to report that Ukrainian forces have stabilized a defensive line immediately west of Avdiivka. Lykhoviy stated on February 28 that Ukrainian forces have decided to establish a defensive line along the Tonenke-Orlivka-Berdychi line where terrain and several reservoirs are favorable for defensive operations.
We'll see whether the Russians or Ukrainians can pay the price to determine the claim's validity.
NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.
NOTE: ISW updates continue here. Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.