Two Videos: Mearsheimer and Ray McGovern

The halfway sensible voices in the United States are expressing complete and utter fear of escalation as a result of the Ukrainian war.  Both overstate Russian reaction vis a vis Ukraine but they are not overstating the danger that the whole world is in now, because of US/NATO escalation.  Russia has kept a cool head, and generally, they have not responded to the invitation from the US.  This provocation looks like this:  ‘Let’s you and him fight and that would be Russia and Europe.’  We’ve also not talked about the new Russian Foreign Policy Strategy.  Basically, Russia will work with nations friendly to them, but the major change here is that if there is a threat to Russia, they will use their full complement of defensive and offensive weapons technologies or platforms.    They did not state it explicitly, but implicitly.  That full complement includes nuclear action.  They have thus moved from no first strike doctrine to using their full complement, which of course includes nuclear.  The ‘first strike’ doctrine is then deprecated in terms of strategy.

The first video is one of John Mearsheimer, a very competent foreign policy analyst and lecturer.  His numbers in terms of Ukrainian KIA ratio are wrong, but I guess he has to back peddle.  It is a long video and at the end, they get into some to and fro in terms of philosophy.  If it gets boring at this point, there is nothing more to listen to, although I enjoyed it.

The second video is shortly after the Mearsheimer lecture and is Ray McGovern interviewed by Napolitano.  The two videos go hand in hand.

To make the long story short, there is no endpoint for the United States.  They either want to go for an Afghanistan mode, or for a frozen conflict mode similar to North and South Korea.  It is interesting to hear the styles of the halfway sensible voices.  They still talk about Putin as if he is the arbiter of everything like a US President.  There is little understanding that comes through of the consistency of the Russian position, which is throughout not only the governmental structures but the Russian population.  There is a lack of understanding that Russia is (besides some columns here and there) in complete and full integral agreement about this war.  What always strikes me in fairly good and reliable US commentary, is that they do not listen to the Russians.  They are still talking about a rump Ukraine, as if it is built into the future, whereas if they listened to the Russians that is not important.  What is important, is Russian security and that is built on the distance of striking power of weapons.  So, they make the ‘rump Ukraine’ a decided factor, whereas it is a security judgment based on hard weaponry abilities, that is the factor as to where Russia will stop.

Besides those comments, these are good US perspectives and it is just such a pity that these are in the minuscule minority.