The Russians and Putin will stay in Ukraine as long as necessary to achieve their stated aims. The U.S. will fool around on the periphery with no aim other than to make things difficult for Putin, at the expense, of course, of its Ukrainian satraps. Putin will win. From Peter Van Buren at theamericanconservative.com:
Anything can happen, but Putin “losing” in Ukraine seems among the most unlikely of scenarios.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council in Moscow on February 21, 2022. (Photo by Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)
In the opening days of Iraq War 2.0, a wiser not-yet-General David Petraeus famously asked, “Tell me how this ends.” Petraeus understood that how wars end is more important than why they started. So how does the current war in Ukraine end?
Now Petraeus, for his part, has said with a straight face about the Russians, “Everyone in the entire country [Ukraine] hates them and most of the adults are willing to take action against them, whether it’s to take up weapons or to be human shields.” While accurately describing the roots of his own failure in Iraq, Petraeus misses the point. America’s goal was to create a neocon version of democracy in the Middle East. Putin seeks something much simpler: a buffer territory between him and NATO. He does not care about hearts and minds. He only has to break things.
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