Once when asked his final summation on the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger replied: “We should never have been there”. Subsequently, America entered three other wars on which the same verdict can be rendered—Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine.
The first two cost the United States dearly in blood, treasure, credibility, and worst of all, like Vietnam, they caused lasting divisions in American society which greatly contributed to the steadily growing polarization which has plagued our country for the last generation.
Now in Ukraine we are increasingly trapped in yet another undeclared and unexplained war, the cost and consequences of which very likely will dwarf the terrible damage done in those earlier conflicts.
Presently, we are engaged in a contest of escalation and counter-escalation with Russia. As the viability of Ukraine both economically and militarily is increasingly threatened by a relentless Russian bombing campaign aimed at the destruction of the country’s entire infrastructure in the midst of a harsh winter, the United States is introducing ever more lethal weaponry (e.g. Patriot missile systems).
And now, according to a Pentagon spokesman, the U.S. is seriously contemplating inserting a “handful” of American “advisors” to insure these sophisticated weapons systems are “used properly”. In response Russia is considering a ground assault in western Ukraine to interdict those weapons.
As we are clearly approaching a turning point, a growing number of dissenting voices are shredding key elements of the “victory narrative” that has been the justification for the entire war. In a recent article (11/29/22)—“Washington’s Carthaginian Peace Collides with Reality”— Douglas Macgregor states that the American sponsors of this “unwinnable” war “ignored Russia’s strategic advantages—geographic depth, almost limitless natural resources, high social cohesion, and the military-industrial capacity to scale up its military power”.
Elsewhere, military authority Daniel Davis reflects this view in writing (11/19/22) that Putin learned from his early failures in western Ukraine and now has shifted to an “economy of force operation” that allows Ukraine to waste its much more limited manpower in a series of pointless attacks on dug-in Russian positions in the East and South while steadily building up his resources and troop strength (estimated at up to 500,000) in preparation for a decisive winter campaign.
Meanwhile the magical halo enveloping Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is beginning to tarnish with the recent appearance of articles like that by Jonathan Tobin in Newsweek (12/12/22)—“Zelensky: Defender of Democracy? Take a Closer Look”—which describes Ukraine as a “deeply corrupt country with wealthy oligarchs playing the same role as they do in Putin’s Russia”.
Tobin flays Zelensky for having “banned his political opposition and shut down all media not controlled by his regime” and also for his order to “ban all Orthodox Churches that answer to the Russian Orthodox,” a tactic imitating China’s ban on all Catholic Churches in communion with the Pope.
Another pillar of the “victory narrative”—the unyielding solidarity of NATO support for the war—is also crumbling, owing to reportage such as Politico’s “Europe Accuses U.S. of profiting from War” (11/24/22) which describes the EU as “furious” that Americans are “making a fortune from the war while EU countries suffer” and detailing how the U.S. is “selling more gas at higher prices” and “selling more weapons”.
Adding to the outrage is the recently passed “Inflation Reduction Act” which provides lavish green subsidies to American companies that threaten to wreck European industry. As one senior EU official stated, “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries”.
Finally, compounding this allied economic disarray is the fact that sanctions which President Biden promised would “cripple the Russian economy” are instead crippling European economies while Russia’s ruble is at a seven-year high and its trade surplus is double what it was before the war.
Twice before, the world’s greatest military power went overconfidently to war in Russia— Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941—both supported by reluctant European allies, and instead of victory met their own destruction owing to their hubris, a paralyzing winter and the fathomless resilience of an always restive but ultimately deeply patriotic Russian people, then as now led by a ruthless autocrat.
How historically ironic it would be if this strange country—famously described by Churchill as a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”—should once again confound the world’s greatest military power—albeit (in this case) one already in decline owing to its own prolonged political, economic, and military fecklessness.
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Bill Moloney is a Senior Fellow in Conservative Thought at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute who studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.