No Matter Who Wins Ukraine, America Has Already Lost

The National Interest ^ | August 21, 2022 | Ramon Marks

[Cathi]

There are multiple tough strategic realities for the United States to absorb.

Regardless of who wins the Ukrainian war, the United States will be the strategic loser. Russia will build closer relations with China and other countries on the Eurasian continent, including India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states. It will turn irrevocably away from European democracies and Washington. Just as President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger played the “China card” to isolate the Soviet Union during the Cold War, presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will play their cards in a bid to contain U.S. global leadership.

Knowing that it can no longer keep Europe as its top energy customer, Moscow has logically moved to grow its fossil fuels sales with Asia, notably China and India. Since the Ukraine invasion, Russia has become China’s top oil provider, replacing Saudi Arabia. It is true that in the short to medium term, transfer capacity will limit how much more fossil fuels Russia can sell to China. Russia currently has just one overland oil route to China, the ESPO pipeline. The only gas pipeline currently in operation is Power of Siberia. Pipeline sales of both oil and gas are supplemented by seaborne routes to mainland China. In the years ahead, China and Russia will doubtlessly make substantial investments to expand oil and gas transmission between the two countries, better enabling Russia to be the primary supplier of fossil fuels to China. The Chinese will likely be able to reduce their dependence on fossil fuel shipments from the Middle East which must pass through vulnerable naval choke points such as the Malacca Straits.

Closer energy relations between China and Russia will help to draw them closer as strategic allies with “no limits” on the Eurasian continent. By having a committed Russian energy supplier in its backyard, China will inevitably obtain more strategic flexibility for dealing with the United States and its Indo-Pacific regional allies, all to the detriment of Western democracies.

Russia has also greatly increased its energy business with India since the Ukraine invasion. According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, “India has been the main buyer of the cargoes out of the Atlantic that Europe doesn’t want anymore.” Before invading Ukraine, India bought almost no oil from Russia. Now it is importing over 760,000 barrels a day. Increases in Russian fossil fuel sales to India will be detrimental to efforts by the United States, Australia, and Japan to continue to draw Delhi into a closer orbit with democratic countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

In fact, India—the world’s largest democracy—has taken a neutral stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the United Nations, India abstained from votes that condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has refused to blame Russia for the attack. Besides a new and growing energy supply relationship, Russia has also been the long-time, primary supplier of weapons for the Indian armed forces. Importantly, Delhi remains appreciative, as well, of Russia’s longtime support on Kashmir. The Indian response to the Russo-Ukrainian War underscores the reality that India will likely not fully integrate into a Western Pacific alliance such as the Quad. If China is smart enough to avoid more border fights with India, momentum for India to become more involved with the Quad could well decline.

In more bad news for the West, India was not alone in abstaining from the UN General Assembly resolution that censured Russia for invading Ukraine. Thirty-four other countries declined to take the West’s side. Two-thirds of the global population live in countries that have refrained from denouncing Russia. Even neighboring Mexico refused to condemn Russia or join economic sanctions.

These are tough strategic realities for the United States to absorb. After the Russian invasion, the Western democracies swiftly coalesced, passing a broad array of sanctions against Moscow, including deadlines for ending fossil fuel purchases from Russia. The West’s energy sanctions have to an extent backfired, causing inflationary and supply disruptions so severe that Brussels now is struggling to cope with the economic consequences. The EU has even quietly announced steps to ease Russian energy sanctions to help stabilize energy markets. While the West complains that Russia weaponized its oil and gas exports, the reality is that it was Brussels and Washington that first raised the energy sword when they announced their intent to cut back Russian fossil fuel purchases immediately after the Ukraine invasion.

One positive byproduct of the Russo-Ukrainian War has been the rejuvenation of NATO, which has rallied to support Ukraine. The alliance will become even stronger when Finland and Sweden join. On the negative side, the United States is carrying more than its pro rata share of the burden to support Ukraine compared to other alliance partners except for Baltic states and Poland. Through May 20, 2022, the United States supplied or committed $54 billion in military aid to Kyiv. The United Kingdom was a distant second at $2.50 billion, followed by Poland at $1.62 billion and Germany at $1.49 billion. As of May 20, the United States had committed more than three times as much aid to Kyiv as all other European Union countries combined. The United States is the largest supplier of military aid notwithstanding that Russia’s invasion is far more of an immediate threat for European allies than for the United States, which is 5,700 miles away from the war, across the Atlantic Ocean. Ukraine shows again how dangerously dependent Western Europe is on American leadership and its military. That will not change until the U.S. foreign policy establishment can shake off the conviction, firmly cemented over seven decades, that only the United States can lead NATO, providing the military backbone for the alliance.

The United States must adapt, particularly as an even more jarring, ugly reality is the fact that NATO’s Article V defense commitments are limited by treaty to the Atlantic region. Were Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, or Guam attacked by China, North Korea or Russia, NATO’s collective defense commitments would not apply. Nonetheless, even though there is no chance that the NATO treaty will ever be amended to help the United States in the Pacific, Washington should not and cannot abandon NATO. Instead, the U.S. foreign policy establishment must work harder to enable European allies to pick up more, even if not the lion’s share, of the burden on their side of the Eurasian continent. If the United States continues to keep its head buried in the historical assumptions that prompted the creation of NATO in 1949, things are going to get steadily worse for over-stretched United States military resources and capabilities. The United States is no longer the world’s sole dominant power. More burden sharing in the U.S. alliance system will have to happen sooner or later to deal with the reality of an increasingly multipolar world.

Ramon Marks is a retired, New York international lawyer.

[Paal Gulli]

There is no version of America's "better tomorrow" that includes US boots on the ground in the Ukraine and/or Russia.

[Cronos]

“Russia will build closer relations with China and other countries on the Eurasian continent, including India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf state”

Russia already had close relations with China, India, Iran.

[agere_contra]

Your post 18 is an excellent, and necessarily bleak analysis.

But I will just add: U.S foreign policy is short-sighted, toxic and moronic = but only because short-sighted, toxic, moronic people have been given power by a stolen election.

This can and must change. U.S foreign policy, and indeed the world changed course vastly for the better under Reagan and Trump, and will do so again once the current administation is swept away.

I hope you get to see it.

[Robert DeLong]

True dat, however, I was speaking with regards to those cheerleaders who are from the U.S. 🙂

[Pollard]

Here's your NATO

Damon Wilson current president/CEO of NED who does what the CIA used to do, regime change. His whole career has been Eastern Europe and NATO related.

---

For over twenty years, Wilson has helped shape U.S. strategy and national security policy in regards to NATO and US-European relations to advance freedom and security around the world. He is an advocate for strengthening democratic alliances to address security challenges, believing “US interests are best served when Washington and its allies act in unison.”[21]

From January 2004 to November 2006, as Director for Central, Eastern and Northern European Affairs at the National Security Council, Wilson coordinated U.S. interagency policy on Ukraine during the Orange Revolution,

From July 2001 to January 2004, Wilson served as Deputy Director of the Office of the NATO Secretary General, assisting Lord Robertson to transform the Alliance by enlarging NATO membership, implementing the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and adapting Allied capabilities to face modern threats.[24] In this role, Wilson also supported NATO efforts to broker the Ohrid Agreement to avert civil war in Macedonia.[25][26]

In June 2021, Wilson was named as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Endowment for Democracy, succeeding Carl Gershman.[46] During his first few months, he managed the safe passage of 923 Afghan grantees, staff and their family members during the 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. troops.[47][48]

[Isn't that special? Wilson got a select few out of Afghanistan. Those 13 young soldiers? Not so lucky.]

Wilson lives with his husband in Washington, D.C. and part-time in Charleston, SC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Wilson

…the strategy [of consolidating control over Eastern Europe] is not meant to create new dividing lines in Europe. The aim is to anchor a vulnerable, insecure zone in the certainty of a stable and prosperous and free Europe, and over the long time [sic] this vision includes a democratic Russia. But the pathway to reform in Moscow might just begin with choices that are made in Kiev, Chișinău, Yerevan, and Tbilisi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=424&v=kI4QDm5G-pE

"" The aim is to anchor a vulnerable, insecure zone in the certainty of a stable and prosperous and free Europe ""

Must make it unstable to make it stable. Sounds a lot like Build Back Better. The stuff of the New/Liberal World Order. Those forming BRICS with Turkey and Mexico hoping to join might not be so keen on this NWO thing.

• UN Agenda 2030
• WEF 2030 Initiative
• NATO 2030
• WEF Young Global Leaders
• NATO Young Leaders

See a little pattern above?

UN/WHO/WEF/NATO = New/Liberal World Order. Go ahead and keep cheering for the demise of the US and the rise of a global government being implemented by people like Wilson, Graham, McCain when he was alive.

IRI - International Republican Institute - https://www.iri.org/who-we-are/ - Current Board members include Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton(disappointing)

John Mccain stepped down as chairman and Dan Sullivan replaced him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Republican_Institute

International Republican Institute gets much of it's funding from the NED who Wilson runs. The NDI is the IRI's sister NGO who also gets funding from the NED(who are mostly democrats) NED is funded by congress.

NDI - National Democratic Institute for International Affairs - https://www.ndi.org/board-directors

Current NDI board members include Stacey Abrams and Donna Brazille.

Congress funds NED who funds IRI/NDI who also get some funding directly from congress. Kinda makes you wonder, are these members of congress who are on the boards of these NGOs paid by the NGOs who they fund via congress? Pretty good gig if so.

[pierrem15]

NATO + Japan = 60% of the world’s GDP. Even under screwed up leadership, that’s a formidable block.

[pierrem15]

No one ever proposed using Ukraine as a launching pad for weapons against Russia.

[Chunga85]

It is irrefutable that that is what happened. They clearly and repeatedly delineated that as a red line.

That line was crossed and now they will fight. They are not afraid of us.

“If the West wants to beat Russia on the battlefield, let them try”.

[pierrem15]

They are not afraid of us.

Considering the Russians' poor performance against a poorly trained and equipped adversary, they should be.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*MAGA First/Anti-War/Anti-Globalist Ping*

If you want on or off this list, please let me know.

[Rockingham]

Really? Name calling?

[WMarshal]

"Really? Name calling?"

Are you claiming that being a neocon is a bad thing? I think that it is a bad thing and if you do too then maybe we have some common ground.

[Rockingham]

"Neocon" is a dated term that originally referred to often Jewish academic liberals who moved Right in the 1970s and 80s due to the Left's domestic policy failures and out of alarm at rising Soviet strength. The original neocons supported Reagan over Jimmy Carter and contributed significantly to policy successes of Reagan's administration.

Nowadays, "neocon" is usually tossed at someone seen as deviating from conservative orthodoxy. And that is just silly.

My views as to Russia are the same as Ronald Reagan: we win, they lose. Read the declassified Reagan administration national security memoranda for an understanding of how we won the Cold War. Today, the objective remains the same: we win, they lose. Really, if that makes me a neocon, then I am comfortable to be one and in the august company of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

[WMarshal]

Neocons are just sad mongering leftists who migrated to the GOP because of its platform of strong national defense. They were and are still leftists and evil.

[Rockingham]

Really? Neoconservatives Leo Strauss and Jeane Kirkpatrick were evil? How so?

[Vaden]

Utter horsepucky. Even as that load of crap was being published, China is entering its terminal decline. China’s combo of demographic collapse, insane corruption, graft, and fraudulent figures have stopped its ascent forever.

[NorseViking]

Delusions. Five more years and nobody in Russia would think about the West in positive terms. This is already happening. Disparaging lies and gaslighting regarding this war turns away even the most pro-Western people.

[Rockingham]

You have a point, but perhaps not in the way that you think.

Russia's attack on Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions have led to the emigration of many educated and skilled young Russians to Turkey and whatever Western country will admit them. In leaving, they take an important part of Russia's human capital -- and no doubt many of the emigres also find Western Europe and North America far more appealing than most Russians do.

As to those who remain, Russia's controlled media dominates their thinking. Only the fall of the current regime will enable a return to a free press, free minds, and free elections in Russia.

[NorseViking]

People who went to Turkey have already returned and there are widespread reports of discrimination of Russian workers in Western countries prompting a lot of them to return, including people who lived for decades.

Based on your posting history, media controlled thinking is less a problem in Russia, compared to the West.

Russians have been there and know what it is, relying on connecting the dots to make conclusions. Not to mention that the Russian media knows it and doesn’t lie as much as yours.

You have admitted of “Reaganesque take” towards Russians, like you win, they lose.

They know it, hence your expectation of the “fall of regime” is stupid.

[Rockingham]

Some Russians have recently returned home -- but they tend to be associated with the Putin regime and its corrupt network of supporters who obtained residence in Western countries. And yes, they were "discriminated against," often with sanctions and property seizures.

Russia's news media is tightly controlled by the regime and its allies. The means of such control range from ownership restrictions to censorship to the killing of journalists by state agents. As bad as the US and Western news media so often are, they are competitive and enjoy strong legal protections.