St. Javelin of Ukraine
World War Three might be on the horizon but the memes are lit. And morale is great for the Ukrainians right now!
I understand the desire to avoid watching the news or paying attention to world events. It’s depressing, and who needs to be further depressed after two years of Covid lunacy?
However, I think it is important to realize that we are only one miscalculation away from WW3. The really scary part is that the miscalculation could be the use of nuclear weapons, or nuclear escalation could be the first action taken by Russia and the US after WW3 starts.
I really don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we are closer to nuclear war than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. On that note, one of the scarier parts of the situation right now is that there was an off-ramp for both major powers in the Cuban Missile Crisis. I am not sure there is a true off ramp for Putin in the current situation.
There are several reasons for this. First, Ukraine is fighting extremely well by all metrics. Second, the Russian forces are performing very poorly by all metrics. Third, Ukraine has asked, and it looks like they will be granted, EU membership. Fourth, the US and essentially every NATO country are already providing arms to the Ukrainians.
*Which has led to many NLAW and Javelin memes:
All this matters because Russia has threated severe consequences against any country aiding Ukraine, and he has raised the readiness of his nuclear forces. Now, almost no one is outwardly calling for a war with the Russian Federation. Instead, they say we should enforce a no-fly zone. A no-fly zone means that we would shoot down any Russian aircraft that enters the airspace. There are people calling for limited airstrikes against Russian forces. And we have gems like this one, where someone is soooo dumb that they think we could assassinate Putin and have it not start WW3.
Make no mistake. Shooting down Russian aircraft or striking that column sitting right outside Kyiv would be considered an act of war. We would be at war with Russia and the world would truly go to hell. North Korea would probably invade South Korea and China would either materially support Russia, or invade Taiwan, or both! I’m sure Iran would even try and get in the action somewhere, and Israel would take the opportunity to set Iran’s nuclear program back to the stone age.
Now, one of the strongest voices asking us to enforce a no-fly zone is Zelensky, which is not surprising. He is desperate, because at some level, they know that unless this conflict ends swiftly, Russia might stop holding back, and that would lead to a scorched earth campaign through his country. I don’t blame Zelensky or any Ukrainian for asking us to get involved. I would do the same in their shoes. But it is too late for us to stop this war; all we can do now is support Ukraine and pressure Russia. (A good place to start on that would be to re-establish our energy independence by developing our oil and natural gas fields. Which of course the administration won’t do.)
Now, could we have stopped this war? Probably. An infantry brigade with some Apaches stationed near Kyiv would’ve been deterrent enough. I’m not sure what the cost would’ve been though, because Russia would certainly have used every dirty trick at their disposal to make us pay—cyberattacks and things of that nature.
This conflict has also been educational. It reminds anyone with military experience how much morale and propaganda matter. Ukraine has won on that front, in large part due to Zelensky’s actions and bravery. Every report I’ve seen says that the Russians have low morale. It seems like the most experienced troops that they had stationed at the border were wasted on high-risk actions meant to end the war swiftly. Those failed because the Ukrainians fought back fiercely and were far better prepared for this than Russia expected. It looks like the wars of the future will belong to drone operators and well-trained infantry. And it’s a reminder that politics always makes war messy. The political demands of the situation have made the Russians play nice with the civilian population, but since the civilians are fighting back, everything is going to get worse and worse. This could lead to some seriously nasty escalation of Russian attacks on civilians.
It is inspiring to see how fiercely Ukrainians value their freedom from Russia. Unfortunately, like all conflicts, even if the sides are Good vs. Evil, there are always villains on both sides who take advantage of the fog of war to commit heinous crimes.
One thing is very clear. Putin miscalculated. His biggest mistake so far was not giving Zelensky and the Ukrainian people enough credit. He passed that belief onto the Russian soldiers and they expected to be greeted as liberators instead of being met with Molotov cocktails.
*I don’t ascribe to the conspiracy theories that surround Zelensky and the war. There are lots of open-source intelligence out there, and while some things don’t add up, there is no evidence that Zelensky is not in Kyiv still or that this is somehow a fake war being propagated by the WEF. It seems odd that the same people who looked at the data on Covid and pointed out the discrepancies are now ignoring the data on Ukraine and just taking contrarian positions to be contrarian.