Posted on 08/22/2022 5:29:01 AM PDT by 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.
Regular people returned, and mostly of formerly pro-Western lean. Take for example the woman who staged the anti-war protest at the Channel 1 newsroom. She went to Germany and was employed in German media, until Ukrainians protested and she was terminated “because Russian”.
Your idea of Russian media is not based on reality, nor your take on Western media. Ukrainian war coverage in Western media is for many formerly pro-Western Russians a reason why they now support the war.
Heightened repression in Eastern Europe and Central Asia Reporters killed and injured in the field, a level of censorship not seen since the Soviet period, massive disinformation… In Eastern Europe, beyond the human tragedies, the war waged by Russia (155th [lowest rated for media freedom]) against Ukraine is creating devastating consequences for press freedom in the region. As many as five journalists and media workers have died as a result of gunfire during the first month of the Russian offensive, which began on 24 February 2022. The Russian military has deliberately targeted news sources in territories it occupies and has tried to coerce the local media's cooperation. In Russia itself, the government has taken complete control of news and information by establishing extensive wartime censorship, blocking the media, and pursuing non-compliant journalists, forcing many of them into exile. This began in 2021, after the toughening of the law on media as “foreign agents” and after prosecutions linked to the coverage of now-imprisoned dissident Alexei Navalny’s fate.
This control of information does not stop at Russia's borders. The Kremlin is imposing its vision of the war on some of its neighbours, especially in Belarus (153th), where independent journalists continue to be persecuted for their work since the controversial presidential election of 9 August 2020, and where more than 20 media workers are languishing in prison. Alexander Lukashenko did not hesitate to divert a plane, on 23 May 2021, to arrest an opposition journalist who had gone into exile. A growing number of media outlets are being labeled “extremist”, and reading and sharing their content on social networks is subject to criminal prosecution.
Yes East Nashville wokesters versus Mount Juliet
My money is on MJ
Sylvan Park Versus Brentwood
They could hold it at steeplechase for spectators
LOL. What is the Russia vision of war? Like questioning the missile strikes on Zagreb and Kramatorsk, which were obvious Ukrainian false flags?
What is your evaluation of the coverage of Zaporozhiye nuclear power plant?
Is it used by the Russians as an artillery base and wherefore a legit target? Or is it Ukrainian-operated and shelled by the Russians as part of a nuclear blackmail? Or is some Russian colonel mined it and threatens to blow up if the Ukrainians are trying to recapture it? Some outlets are managing to pronounce two of the above versions in less than 24 hours.
I am confident that US and NATO intel agencies have a pretty good idea of what is going on at the nuke plant. Since Russia has a poor record of nuclear plant management in that area, there is good reason for concern — and especially so with the unhinged Putin in charge of Russia.
I’d say that Russia has the top expertise in the commercial nuclear generation nowadays, especially compared to Westinghouse, but it is pretty much irrelevant, because the station is operated by the same staff it had before the conflict. What poor record you are talking about I have no idea.
NATO intel is fully aware that Ukraine is shelling the plant, using the situation for nuclear blackmail in an attempt to prevent the popular vote for secession of the region it is located at.
What Russian nuclear reactor expertise are you referring to? For the sake of cheapness, most Russian nuclear reactors were built without containment shells and other safety measures long considered essential in the West. And the crisis at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is due not just to Russian occupation of it but to the stationing of military units and assets close to the facility in order to deter strikes on them.
Nope, the Russian reactors work, and those of Westinghouse are getting built with cost overruns not on schedule and don’t work. Their attempt to get into the market of service of old Soviet reactors is near disastrous, see the faulty fuel assembly almost resulted in Temelin meltdown in Czechia. There was a faulty design contribution to Fukushima as well.
The risk to ZNPP is exactly due to its shelling by the Ukrainian side. The excuses like units stationed close to facilities are preposterous excuses to nuclear blackmail. Using infrastructure to shield military activity is Ukraine’s speciality, there is no evidence whatsoever supporting the lie that Russia is shelling them from the station, which is just one of many conflicting narratives.
Russian built nuclear power plants tend to have deviations from design, a major safety risk. Open source commercial satellite images show Russian military units sheltering at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. And one cannot logically both deny that Russian units are sheltering there while also attributing the risk to the plant as being due to Ukraine shelling those Russian units.
The safety risk is Westinghouse, which lost competency in building civilian reactors.
A garrison of light infantry defending the plant from acts of sabotage which took place several times aren’t “forces sheltering at the station and using it to mount attacks”. It is normal to have it at a site like that in warzone.
Not to mention that your take contradicts the latest statement of the Ukrainian representative in the UN, who says that shelling is a Russian fantasy.
Even though the situation on the ground proves otherwise and crater analysis shows the direction of fire.
Show me the photos and the crater analysis.
You post the photos of “sheltering” troops first. Ukraine previously tacitly confirmed that it shelled the plant. The first news were that the station is the legit target for the false reasons you described above.
Like I thought. When your bluff is called, you have nothing to show.
Nope, it is your intellectual dishonesty.
You claim sheltering Russian troops at the station using it as firing position and hence the legit target for the Ukrainian shelling which you admitted as taking place. I asked you for evidence of sheltering troops which I know do not exist in any available sources, and you expectedly failed to produce it.
You want me to produce evidence that is freely available online that the shelling you admit took place. Why do you need proof for something you already admit as fact?
Then you claim I have nothing to say and my bluff is allegedly called then in reality the opposite is true.
How queer is it?
If the evidence for your claim is “readily available” then why not post a link to it?
. . . the very real risks of Russia’s militarization of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, which may include mining the plant and almost certainly includes the unsafe storage of military armaments near nuclear reactors and nuclear waste storage facilities. Bellingcat geolocated a drone video of the Zaporizhia NPP that was shared by Russian opposition outlet The Insider on August 5. The video depicts Russian military vehicles moving in and around the plant, including military trucks and armored vehicles moving around and into the building containing the first of the plant’s six nuclear reactors. Russian forces have also dug trenches in and around the plant and may have established firing positions. Russian officials claim that Ukraine has repeatedly attacked the plant, while Ukrainian officials claim that Russian forces are attacking Ukrainian positions from within the plant, preventing Ukrainian return fire and essentially using the plant as a nuclear shield. Russian forces have repeatedly shelled the nearby Ukrainian-controlled town of Nikopol, likely from positions in or around the NPP, since July.
ISW continues to assess that Russian forces are likely leveraging the threat of nuclear disaster to degrade Western will to provide military support to a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The military vehicles are trucks and BTR, hardly usable to mount any shelling of the Ukrainian forces from the facility. “Almost certainly”, “may have established firing positions” is a big joke from wording itself.
ISW itself is a joke backed by Victoria Nuland who is not impartial.
The Institute for the Study of War does not have Nuland on their board or as an adviser or staff person. The ISW is a substantial and serious minded effort at open source military analysis.
Yep, that is why a tiny garrison performing guard duty are “sheltering troops ALMOST CERTAINLY mounting attacks”.
The wording of their “analysis” I mentioned betrays it as propaganda.
Would they say that the normal security detail present at every site like this “storing ammunition endangering the station”?
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