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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-25

teuchter said:
I didn't say anything about a "never-ending" war though did I. If you're going to engage in the tedious sniping you like to pretend you are never the instigator of, you could at least try and do it properly.
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Stalemate indefinitely, war never won - maybe you could detail just how precisely that differs from a never-ending war
 
teqniq said:
He was wanting Kurdish dissidents returned to Turkey to face trial and a subsequent long prison sentence in exchange for their membership. Hopefully this did not happen.
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That was his initial objection some months ago but it's not mentioned in any statement following the NATO agreement. Might be in the small print or might have been conveniently forgotten?
 
teuchter said:
I'm not really coming at it from that angle though; that is, to try and say that now is the time Ukraine should accept some sort of negotiated deal.
More, looking at what other countries should or could be doing, the "what other options are there" question that is coming up in conjunction with the cluster bombs discussion.
Specifically, that if the basic commitment is to provide military aid to Ukraine, then are there better ways of doing that than drip-feeding a supply of problematic weaponry.
And what are the reasons for not doing something more positive and direct: is it mainly about the fear of nuclear escalation, or is it actually to do with other stuff?

Also, a decision to do something more substantial - why should it have to wait until we see what the effectiveness of any counter-offensive is? A year is a long time to wait and see, a long enough time for massive amounts of further damage and suffering to take place.

In other words once you've decided that what needs to happen is for the Russian military to be pushed out of Ukraine by force - and if you reject the notion of any kind of negotiated compromise that's surely what you have decided needs to happen - then why not make it happen as quickly and as soon as possible.
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Those are fair questions, and given the clamour amongst the 'arm Ukraine now' crowd, it's important to recognise what the limitations are on weapon supply, system integration, ammunition manufacture etc.

A couple of good things I read recently that explore this fully, but I know people don't want to click through to twitter, so I'll attempt to summarise.

The first from Mark Hertling (retired US general).



Essentially, once administrations realised last year firstly that Ukraine should be helped to win, and secondly that they were capable of it, the question became one of how quickly it was possible not just to send hardware to Ukraine, or even to train people to operate the things, but also to set up and train the logistics, repair, maintenance teams that keep those systems running. Those things take far longer than simply sending tanks or artillery over in large quantities, so the calculation (Hertling argues) is about how quickly they can be done, and staggering the announcements in such a way that takes account of the speed those systems integrated into the Ukrainian army. This staggering of announcements and supply can also come across to some people as 'drip feeding Ukraine just enough to prolong the war'.

The second is the post from kebabking about ammunition supply: Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-23

Essentially, political decisions have been made that mean the ready supply of ammunition for Ukraine's offensive is not yet there in such a way that Ukraine won't experience shortfalls in ordnance supply without the extraordinary provision of things like cluster munitions, which are more effective against groupings of enemy soldiers, while needing less ammunition, and also providing the bonus of not wearing out artillery gun barrels as quickly as needing to fire the equivalent amount of normal munitions. It essentially extends the Ukrainian ability to maintain their offensive by an extra few months into the autumn/winter as necessary.

You ask in your post why more substantial direct action can't be taken to help Ukraine win now and quicken the end of the war. By this, I'm guessing you mean things like NATO or its own members individually sending in troops, or at the very least its own maintenance/logistics teams to look after the western systems, while Ukrainian soldiers get on with the business of fighting and dying. That may well end up happening eventually, and kebabking has covered those possible eventualities above. Those in charge have calculated that staying out of the war directly, and maintaining the staggered supply of weapons to Ukraine is the best way to ensure that Russia's red lines aren't crossed. Time and again though, we've found that things that were originally considered red lines garnered no response from Russia except bluster. Perhaps that will continue to be the case if Ukraine's allies decide to be even more bold in the assistance they decide to offer Ukraine over the next year.

From a moral standpoint, I personally don't see any problem with supporting victims of territorial wars of imperial conquest via means up to and including troops on the ground, in order to save civilian lives from brutal occupation, murder and genocide. I appreciate that the political realities of doing so dictate that this was never a realistic course of action either at the start of the war, or now. Doesn't mean it might not be the case in the future though, depending on whether Russia decides to escalate further, and to what extent Ukraine proves its ability to take back significant amounts of territory over the next five months.
 
teqniq said:
Well it looks to be EU membership now. I don't think or hope that Sweden would ever have agreed to his demands re: Kurds.
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Agree with the hope but nothing would surprise me tbh. If outlawing the PKK in Sweden and extraditing members to Turkey had been the sticking point over NATO then no doubt we would have had someone on here arguing for it as being essential.
 
strung out said:
Those are fair questions, and given the clamour amongst the 'arm Ukraine now' crowd, it's important to recognise what the limitations are on weapon supply, system integration, ammunition manufacture etc.

A couple of good things I read recently that explore this fully, but I know people don't want to click through to twitter, so I'll attempt to summarise.

The first from Mark Hertling (retired US general).



Essentially, once administrations realised last year firstly that Ukraine should be helped to win, and secondly that they were capable of it, the question became one of how quickly it was possible not just to send hardware to Ukraine, or even to train people to operate the things, but also to set up and train the logistics, repair, maintenance teams that keep those systems running. Those things take far longer than simply sending tanks or artillery over in large quantities, so the calculation (Hertling argues) is about how quickly they can be done, and staggering the announcements in such a way that takes account of the speed those systems integrated into the Ukrainian army. This staggering of announcements and supply can also come across to some people as 'drip feeding Ukraine just enough to prolong the war'.

The second is the post from kebabking about ammunition supply: Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-23

Essentially, political decisions have been made that mean the ready supply of ammunition for Ukraine's offensive is not yet there in such a way that Ukraine won't experience shortfalls in ordnance supply without the extraordinary provision of things like cluster munitions, which are more effective against groupings of enemy soldiers, while needing less ammunition, and also providing the bonus of not wearing out artillery gun barrels as quickly as needing to fire the equivalent amount of normal munitions. It essentially extends the Ukrainian ability to maintain their offensive by an extra few months into the autumn/winter as necessary.

You ask in your post why more substantial direct action can't be taken to help Ukraine win now and quicken the end of the war. By this, I'm guessing you mean things like NATO or its own members individually sending in troops, or at the very least its own maintenance/logistics teams to look after the western systems, while Ukrainian soldiers get on with the business of fighting and dying. That may well end up happening eventually, and kebabking has covered those possible eventualities above. Those in charge have calculated that staying out of the war directly, and maintaining the staggered supply of weapons to Ukraine is the best way to ensure that Russia's red lines aren't crossed. Time and again though, we've found that things that were originally considered red lines garnered no response from Russia except bluster. Perhaps that will continue to be the case if Ukraine's allies decide to be even more bold in the assistance they decide to offer Ukraine over the next year.

From a moral standpoint, I personally don't see any problem with supporting victims of territorial wars of imperial conquest via means up to and including troops on the ground, in order to save civilian lives from brutal occupation, murder and genocide. I appreciate that the political realities of doing so dictate that this was never a realistic course of action either at the start of the war, or now. Doesn't mean it might not be the case in the future though, depending on whether Russia decides to escalate further, and to what extent Ukraine proves its ability to take back significant amounts of territory over the next five months.
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Agree with this but think it would've been a more prescient post if it were made yesterday. News coming out of the NATO conference now seems to suggest that Ukraine can expect significantly greater support from what they're calling the Quad (UK, US, France and Germany), as part of a package that they're actually calling the Israel model, as if to deliberately wind-up Topcat and the comrades!
 
ska invita said:
I don't think anyone has answered so I'll have a go.

Though before I do, I think its important to say the hypothetical "yeah but what would you do" question is not a valid one.
This war is a crisis that is many decades in the making. It didnt start in 2022, or 2014, barely even 1989. Like so many of the horrors of the world, they are born of deep roots and long standing institutions. So to ask "what would you do" is ludicrous. Who am I? What power do I have? How many decisions am I in a position to make? Over what time period? Am I in charge of the British Army? President of the USA? NATO Japan office secretary?

Hypothetically temporarily jumping in the driving seat of the class domination juggernaut is not our role <none of these people are anything to do with us. All we can do is try and understand what it is they are doing and why they are doing it, and ideally use that understanding to stop them once and for all. Even to suggest "well lets see you do better" is to give unintentional validity to our leaders, that they're doing the best of a hard situation. No, fuck that, they are the situation.

There's a good reason why MI6 boss Richard Dearlove said Corbyn couldn't be allowed to become PM, or why a British general said the British army could stage a mutiny under Corbyn, or why troops started doing target practice at Corbyns picture. That's a real world example of a hypothetical 'what would you do' in danger of becoming a reality, and it is utterly inconceivable to the establishment......an establishment that creates this and all wars.

I think its a trap to play the What Would You Do game. All we can do is understand What They Do. Does that make sense? I hope so. But that seem like a get out right?

So with that above proviso out the way, and to play along with the hypothetical question, what would you do, first thing is none us here have all the facts available to make any judgement. All we can do is glean truths from amongst the propaganda. For months now it has looked to me like Russia has successfully won the coast from Ukraine, and will cleave off the south. What are the chances of winning that back? We're not privy to all the many variables you would need to know to make that kind of calculation. But from where I'm sat it looks done to me, short of a major escalation, the implications of which are hard to conceive of.

Teuchter's post today sums up how it looks to me, based on my limited access to the full picture. That's how its looked for months now I think despite the best efforts of the media to suggest otherwise. The latest debacle with cluster bombs also suggests munitions are running out in general, adding to the picture of exhaustion. If stalemate is where its at, then there are many ways to go through the mechanics of negotiating that territory, creating a new heavily militarised border. East/West Germany is an example, but I expect there are better ones. Its going to be a new cold war situation.

A state losing territory through war and a border changing is still quite common in world events. One thing I would expect is that from a long view of history if that new Ukrainian border becomes a reality its not a border that's going to last that long (relatively speaking at least). I'd like to think the Russian empire will fragment eventually.
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Right, I'll have a go at sticking some thoughts down about this, thanks ska invita for taking the time to write the above. A couple of things first though; I think some of the tension around this topic comes from misunderstandings and misreadings of what others write on here, for a bunch of reasons - our own histories and backgrounds, the fact it is a really emotional topic, and also that obviously the written word is sometimes just easy to misinterpret. So, if I do that with anything you wrote I apologise in advance. I also am just working this stuff out, reading and thinking on what people have posted here has shifted what I think, and even though it might come across that I have a very clear line that's not quite the case.

OK. I'm really surprised you think the "What would you do?" is not a valid question. People asking that question about any area of politics to us and people like us deserve a pretty fucking good answer, that surely is a huge and fundamental chunk of politics (of which this war is a part of); explaining what the problems are and why they're there and navigating ways out of them? It doesn't mean I'm suggesting you imagine you're PM or a General or part of the ruling class for a day, but rather what other options do you have now, either as theoretical ones, or as practical ideas. Because plenty of left wing/working class projects and people are doing stuff to support the fight against the Russian State invasion and occupation.

If you take the war out of the question and put in anything else (climate change, fascism, housing crisis, work based struggles, etc.) would you also say that the only question is 'how we understand this'? How we understand this is of course fundamental in guiding what we would then do or want, but would you also have said that's all we can do about '30s Spain, '40s France, or more recently in all the messy struggles in Syria, etc.?

To me that also smacks a bit of giving up on any semblance of international solidarity as well. Not to mention out own agency about what we can do, either individually or collectively. Would you be happy speaking to a bunch of Ukrainian lefties who were fighting and organising and saying all we can do is try to understand it?

You say it's been a long time in the making, but so's everything that's shit! Going on about chances to have avoided it might be interesting and might illuminate long terms ways of it re-occuring, but it's pretty much fuck all use to people in Ukraine now which is largely what we're talking about. We can and do plot the development of capitalism and patriarchy and it's very interesting and useful, but of little pragamatic value here and now in more immediate struggles.

To also just wash your hands of this topic with a blanket excuse of not being able to have the full picture and so we can't make any judgements is just nonsense and not something we say with any other issue either is it? TBH it's hard not see that your ideology comes before anything here, and you're coming to a position and then justifying it retrospectively. I mean it's also lazy and predictable (but also true) that you being able to have that position from living in the UK (assuming you do, or not in Ukraine at least...) is a position of detached privilege.

I largely agree we don't know how this will end, but that shouldn't stop us doing things in the present with the idea that (like most of life) we have ideal goals in mind, but we muddle through towards them, but often end up with something we didn't imagine at the start, but ideally a better option that what we would have had if we'd done nothing.

Just to add; I don't think it's contradictory to be against the war, to support Ukrainian workers in their struggles against the Ukrainian State imposing working restrictions on them, to support the Russian anti-war resistance, to support the Ukrainian armed forces fighting Russia, to be in favour of NATO supplied weapons to the Ukrainian forces, and to think that it's a total tragedy that thousands of (mostly poor) Russian soldiers are being killed, yet be on some level be also somewhat happy that they are.

Will try and add a bit more later.
 
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RainbowTown said:
Could say thank you more??

"You know, we're not Amazon."

What a petulant and distasteful attitude to take towards a country that is still in the depths of carnage and bloodshed - and a country which, by the way, has always acknowledged and thanked those who've been helping them.
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I have always thought that Ben Wallace was a bit of a knobhead.
If that quote is accurate, I can safely assume my opinion was, and still is, correct.
I agree with the BiB wholeheartedly !
 
There is a slightly more complete quote of what he actually said here.

"There is a slight word of caution here, which is that whether we like it or not people want to see gratitude,
"My counsel to the Ukrainians is sometimes you're persuading countries to give up their own stocks [of weapons] and yes the war is a noble war and yes we see it as you doing a war for - not just yourself - but our freedoms.
"But sometimes you've got to persuade lawmakers on the Hill in America, you've got to persuade doubting politicians in other countries that you know that it's worth it and it's worthwhile and that they're getting something for it.
"And whether you like that or not, that is just the reality of it."
 
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