Neil Ferguson: The stronger Ukraine becomes, the less it will have to worry about Russia (Photo: Valentina Rostovikova / YES © 2021)
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US President Biden is making a colossal mistake thinking he can overthrow Putin and signal China to stay away from Taiwan.
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About this in the column on Bloomberg writes senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, historian Neil Ferguson.
«American officials disagree about how much the lessons of proxy wars and the Cold War, such as the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, can be applied to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
According to Sanger, the Biden administration «seeks to help Ukraine quagmire Russia without provoking a wider conflict with a nuclear-weapon adversary or cutting off potential avenues of de-escalation. CIA officials are helping to ensure the delivery of weapons to inspected units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to US officials.
Ferguson concludes that the US intends to continue this war. The administration will continue to supply Ukrainians with anti-aircraft «Stingers, anti-tank «Javelins” and explosive Switchblade drones.
In his opinion, high-ranking British politicians speak in the same spirit. There is an opinion that «The number one option for the UK is to continue the conflict and thereby bleed Putin.” “This helps to explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort on the part of the US to secure a ceasefire. It also explains President Joe Biden’s willingness to label Putin a war criminal.
It would be really great if the combination of Russian exhaustion in Ukraine and the financial crisis caused by the sanctions led to Putin’s downfall. Ferguson himself does not think so, although he says that he wants to believe it.
“The most interesting thing about this strategy is how it combines cynicism and optimism. This, if you think about it, is the archetypal realpolitik that allowed the carnage in Ukraine to continue; sit back and watch the heroic Ukrainians “bleed Russia”; think of the conflict as a subplot of Cold War II, a struggle in which China is our real adversary,” says the historian.
The Biden administration believes it is doing enough not only to support Ukraine’s war effort, but not enough to provoke Putin into an escalation. He also believes that he is doing enough to satisfy the public opinion that has strongly rallied around Ukraine, but not enough to cost the lives of Americans, with the exception of a few hapless volunteers and journalists.
Biden’s optimism, he says, lies in the assumption that a continuation of the war is bound to undermine Putin’s position; and that his humiliation would serve as a deterrent for China. I fear that these assumptions may be fundamentally wrong and reflect a misunderstanding of the relevant history.
The prolongation of the war is fraught not only with the fact that tens of thousands of Ukrainians will be killed, and millions will be left homeless and will bring Putin what he can plausibly present at home as a victory.
As for China, he believes the Biden administration is deeply mistaken in believing that threatening Beijing with secondary sanctions will deter President Xi Jinping from providing economic assistance to Russia.
He also writes that he sees no real recognition in Western strategies of how badly this war could turn out for Ukraine in the coming weeks. The incentive for Putin is obviously to create a stronger negotiating position for himself than he is now before engaging in serious negotiations.
«The Ukrainians have revealed their cards. They are ready to give up NATO membership; accept neutrality; seek security guarantees from third parties; accept the limitations of their military capabilities, ”the historian emphasizes.
In his opinion, it is not clear how the Ukrainian authorities relate to the future status of Crimea and the supposedly independent Donetsk and Luhansk republics. It seems clear, says Ferguson, that Putin needs something more to claim he has won. «his war.”
Meanwhile, sanctions against Russia are causing a banking crisis and a shortage of consumer goods. Estimates of the extent of the economic downturn vary—perhaps by as much as a third, given the depression conditions that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
While EU countries refuse to impose an energy embargo on Russia, the Putin regime continues to receive about $1.1 billion a day from the EU in oil and gas revenues.
«I remain skeptical that sanctions in their current form can stop the Russian war machine or topple Putin. The ruble no longer fell and even rose against the euro, ”the author is sure.
And concludes: I would very much like to be wrong about this – the Biden administration is making a colossal mistake, thinking that it can prolong the war in Ukraine, bleed Russia, overthrow Putin and signal China to stay away from Taiwan.
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