Ukraine Defeat Looms. Then What?

Don't Imagine There Wll Be An Outbreak of Peace

There is a growing sentiment in the west that the Ukraine war is drawing inexorably to a close, with Russia as the victor. Russian forces are advancing at an accelerating pace across the 1000 kilometer front and have captured most of Pokrovsk, key to Ukraine’s defenses in Donetsk. A nightly onslaught of drones and missiles in ever-increasing quantities are steadily tearing into Ukraine’s military-industrial infrastructure, let alone the homes and businesses of ordinary Ukrainians. Despite hopeful data-free analyses in the western press, Ukrainian casualties almost certainly far surpass (customarily exaggerated) Russian losses. Possible resupply of Ukraine’s air defenses, especially the much-hyped Patriot missiles, may take up a lot of headline space as denoting a Trump U-turn on support for Ukraine, but the reality is that the Pentagon is refusing to disburse any of its own dwindling stocks, and two batteries promised from Germany will not arrive before next spring. Optimistic forecasts that the Russian economy will buckle under the strain of the war effort and sanctions, repeated at regular intervals ever since early 2022, seem, as usual, to be wide of the mark. The Ukrainian economy is in ever-more serious decline, not just thanks to Russian missiles and drones, but also due to the EU dumping duty-free quotas for Ukrainian agricultural exports.

Assuming that the war ends with whoever is in charge in Kyiv agreeing to Putin’s demands for a militarily neutered Ukraine shorn of Nato protection, coupled with permanent control of the territory it has conquered, what happens then?

First: Pass the Buck.

The most immediate response will be a bout of feverish buck-passing as those who have striven to keep Ukraine fighting as peace initiatives (Minsk 2015, Istanbul 2022) came and went, maneuver to avoid responsibility and stick someone else with the blame. Donald Trump will undoubtedly be the object of angry recriminations, especially when it dawns on everyone that his recent much hailed “U turn” on arms for Ukraine amounted to little beyond empty promises and some disobliging words about Putin. But he won’t particularly care about that, given that he concluded long ago that Ukraine’s defeat was inevitable. He has given the military-industrial lobby a trillion dollars to feed on, which should keep it quiet, especially as much of the rapidly increasing European defense budgets will inevitably flow into the coffers of U.S. defense contractors; just to be sure he has bullied the EU into an explicit promise to spend billions of dollars on American weapons as part of. the recent and disastrous (for Europe) trade “deal.” An end to the war may in addition be a plus for Trump in that much of his MAGA base, currently attriting somewhat thanks to to the Epstein furore, will be cheered by a fulfilled promise to end the war.

Trump Can Broadcast Zelensky Regime’s Corruption Rap Sheet Anytime He wants.

If Trump needs a scapegoat, he has one ready to hand in the rampant corruption that has been a hallmark of the current regime (as well as its predecessors) in Kyiv. Trump, who has inherited the CIA’s extensive file on Kyiv corruption assembled under Biden, has no shortage of ammunition on that score. Zelensky’s attempt these last few days to emasculate Ukraine’s western-sponsored anti-corruption agencies serve to confirm the well-founded notion that there is something very rotten at the heart of the Kyiv regime.

Europe Disunited.

There will be fissures inside Europe. Although, as noted, major countries, especially Britain, Germany, and France, are resolved to utilize the spectre of Russian aggression in bolstering their flagging economies, tossing billions into the defense-industrial pot, not everyone is on board with an ongoing cold war. Hungary and Serbia have announced plans to build an oil pipeline to import crude directly from Russia that will bypass the EU and its sanctions. Slovenia recently opted to hold a referendum on withdrawal from Nato, although choleric reaction from the usual suspects prompted a hurried cancellation. Greek shipowners show every intention of continuing to move Russian oil, despite stiffened EU sanctions. Deviations from the Nato/EU commitment to confrontation with Russia face swift and ruthless reaction. Last November, Romanians voted to elect an otherwise eccentric candidate, Călin Georgescu, who pledged to break ranks with Nato and foster relations with Russia. This unwelcome outbreak of democracy was quickly crushed by the juduciary, which banned the irksome Georgescu from politics. Despite such disciplinary measure, popular resistance to support for Ukraine, especially among farmers threatened by Ukrainian imports, will doubtless continue. A defeated Kyiv would likely propel a further wave of refusgees westward, doubtless to face a less friendly reception than those who fled in 2022.

Covert War on the Frontier

The end of the war will not necessarily end turmoil in eastern Europe. Extensive portions of western Ukraine, after all, consist of Polish, Rumanian, and Slovak territories occupied by the Red Army at the end of World War II and absorbed into Ukraine by Joseph Stalin. It is not beyond the bounds of reason that the Ukrainian defeat will lead to the re-transfer of those lands to their original owners. It is also worth bearing in mind that, following the end of World War II, the CIA gave significant support to Ukrainian nationalists who had formerly fought enthusiastically with the Nazis to continue a years-long guerilla campaign against the Soviets, an effort that will likely be repeated following the end of this war.

No, Putin Will Not March On Paris.

A major theme of the European marketing campaign for the Ukraine war has been the claim that, should Ukraine lose, a victorious Putin would storm westward in a blitzkrieg that would stop only at the English Channel, if there. But there is scant evidence that the Russian leader nurtures any such plan. His decision to invade Ukraine in 2022 was almost certainly prompted by his need to shore up his threatened domestic nationalist base, as I have explained elsewhere. There is no indication that the nationalist sentiment on which his popularity depends favors expansion into areas historically unconnected to Russia and populated in part by Russian-speakers. (This would seem to apply to the Baltic republics, despite their Russian-speaking minorities and historic rule by Moscow.) It is also worth noting that the only explicit military threat to a Nato country has come from Trump vis-a-vis Greenland.

Europe Will Be Knee-Deep in Nukes

Most ominously, the presumptive defeat in Ukraine will accelerate the flow of nuclear weapons into an ever more militarized Europe, completing the rollback of George H.W. Bush’s withdrawal of most (but not all) of those weapons at the end of the last Cold War. For example, within the last week a special shipment of U.S. Air Force B-61-12 “dial-a-yield” nuclear bombs arrived at Lakenheath air base (which is shared by the USAF and RAF) in Suffolk. The ever-dutiful British Labour government recently announced it will buy twelve F-35A aircraft - a healthy boost to the Lockheed balance sheet at $80 million a pop - for the specific purpose of carrying nuclear weapons. Coupled with this, there is talk in European capitals, notably Berlin, of a non-US European nuclear capability, utilizing the French and British nuclear forces for this purpose. Such plans, if they really amount to such, are based on the notion that Washington will abandon Europe and leave it at the mercy of the Muscovite hordes. This appears far fetched. Trump may despise the Europe and its leaders as feeble pygmies but since his menacing demands for increased European defense spending are essentially aimed at amping sales of American weapons (viz, those F-35As) there seems little prospect of he or any other president leaving Europe to its own devices.

As has been copiously reported, the peace agreement initialed by Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul in April 2022 had a good chance of ending the war with most of Ukraine not destroyed or absorbed into Russia, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians not killed or maimed. But Washington and London nixed that, and ordered the Ukrainians to keep on dying, a stupid and cruel decision. Given the recent upsurge in nuclear threats, including Moscow’s declaration that it will no longer adhere to its unilateral observation of the “no first use” pledge.

Before you go: Please do click that ♡ button.