Digest 30: Let’s *not* send a generation of Ukrainian women to the slaughter
At Cliveden Literary Festival a few weeks ago, an interviewer asked female panelist Olesya Khromeychuk – a Ukrainian-born academic, whose brother was killed in combat in Eastern Ukraine – if she was thinking about taking up arms and heading to the front line.
As the moderator asked this, you could feel the tenor of the room change. Despite the overwhelming support for Ukraine in the audience, it seemed like an absurd and inappropriate question. (Clearly Olesya is not militarily ready for the front-line. She’s a 39-year-old academic…) Olesya handled the question with extreme grace, replying ‘I am lucky not to have had to make that choice; that’s why it’s so important for me to amplify the voices of those people who are fighting on our behalf’.
But in a matter of weeks, the assertion of this question has actually become Ukrainian military policy. And elements of the West seem to be cheering it on.
The New York Times this week:
Listening to GoodFellows this week – a Hoover Institution podcast I’ve listened to almost every episode of, and derived immense insight from – guest General Ben Hodges, who is still ‘100% sticking to that prediction [of total Ukrainian victory]’ said, contrary to all available evidence:
‘Manpower is not going to be their [Ukraine’s] problem… I think the Russians actually have a bigger manpower challenge than the Ukrainians’.
[This is not a made-up quotation or taken out of context.]
General Hodges seems to have arrived at this calculation by factoring in all military-aged civilian women in Ukraine (who are presently untrained), seemingly on the pretence that they can be thrown onto the front line.
H.R. McMaster, who is a 3-star General, and was U.S. National Security Advisor in 2017, did not bat an eye to this, and went on to talk about ‘womanpower’.
It appears to me, we in the West are seriously countenancing throwing a generation of untrained military-age women to the slaughter. And that an attempt is now beginning to be made by some of the leading lights of Western military thinking to normalise this in military speak.
The NYT:
“I can be called up to the army so I decided that I should have some skills for the front line,” said Alina Budnyova, 24, who graduated from the medical university last year and is now required to register for the draft.
[The Ukrainian military] raised the age limit for female recruits, previously 40, to 60.
When you drill down to the core reasoning of why these Generals are still so ardent about continuing support for this conflict – when Putin is routinely asking for negotiations (which is never covered in Western press) – it boils down to: because ‘China is watching’, and we ‘have to deter Xi Jinping from invading Taiwan’.
How is sending a generation of civilian women into lethal trench warfare, without any air support, going to deter China in Taiwan? This has now become quite insane.
There are, of course, many historical examples of women being ferocious warriors, from Boudica to Joan of Arc. Women ran arms factories in WWII with prodigious output – more so than men had achieved before they were called to the front-line. (A very good American Experience documentary of these heroics here.)
But for prominent Generals to start basing ‘manpower’, and now ‘womanpower’, estimates on an untrained female civilian population – in the middle of a war – is quite something else.
Anybody seriously advocating for this, and thinking this the best way to strike a sense of sober caution into Beijing, has lost all objectivity and deserves never to be in a place of senior decision-making power again.
Sending a generation of Ukrainian women to the slaughter is not something we should ever champion in the name of ‘equality’. It is delusional. And the West’s idealism has reached destructive levels.
The West and NATO strengthening its own military, fixing its own procurement processes, and working to further its own innovation, would be a much more efficacious way to bolster its deterrence. Coming to a sensible diplomatic resolution about ~20% of Ukraine’s territory is not what will erode deterrent credibility in other theatres. But getting continually more depleted in our weaponry, into an increasingly losing conflict, and further alienating neutral countries (like India) surely will.
Elon Musk has, for over a year, been saying:
‘It’s going to get worse from here, not better. The flower of Ukrainian youth is dying in trenches. Why are these young men dying because of disagreements amongst old men? How many lives per mile?’
Rather than send a generation of Ukrainian women to the same fate, can we please acknowledge that Elon has been right all along, and adjust accordingly?
From the British Prime Minister on down, we need to stop deluding ourselves with fairytales of Ukrainian victory.
It has never made sense to argue ‘Ukraine is capable of defeating Russia’ and simultaneously ‘Russia is about to invade all the rest of Europe’.
Putin is strong enough to win in Ukraine (we should now see the reality of this), but he is not likely to attack NATO. This should have been recognised in March 2022 (if not prior to the invasion breaking out, in December 2021), and we should have reached a diplomatic resolution in Istanbul when it was available.
I personally think there is still a negotiated outcome to be had. I acknowledge this would be extremely dissatisfying to Ukraine. But it is unforgivable this diplomatic chronology has been blacked out almost entirely in Western media, and that so few people are even aware these peace talks were available as an off-ramp.
I sincerely hope Oleysa, who gave perhaps the best and most emotive appeal for support of Ukrainian territorial integrity I have heard in 20 months, and others like her, do not end up being plunged into Russian-laid minefields to prolong attempts of Zelensky and Biden’s political face-saving. (And on some very shaky thinking of ‘domino theory’.)
We cannot stand idly by and allow Western leaders to be this reckless.
We need to put a stop to this. We cannot allow a generation of Ukrainian women to be sent to the slaughter.
Zelensky = Chiang Kai-shek
This week I returned to some highlights of Foreign Affairs editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan’s book, The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-1947 – on the post-WWII Chinese Civil War. I reiterate them here, as the parallels to Ukraine are striking.
Marshall grasped the dynamic at work. Each side overplayed its hand when momentum seemed to be in its favor and then came back to negotiate when the momentum had shifted, at which point the other side was no longer interested.
Yet for Marshall, as ever, preliminary to the question of should was the question of could. If the answer to the latter was no, the former was academic.
…as he contemplated the consequences of failure, Marshall was troubled. The Nationalists could not destroy the Communists, he thought, nor could the Communists destroy the Nationalists. But between them, they could destroy China.
Acheson wrote Marshall to update him on the growing stateside contentiousness, with “extremists on one side calling for all-out support of Chiang and those on the other side advocating complete withdrawal of support.”
“While avoiding involvement in their civil strife we will persevere with our policy of helping the Chinese people to bring about peace and economic recovery in their country,” it proclaimed. In stressing an American commitment to a “united and democratic China,” Truman omitted the third word in the old mantra—strong. By now, that mantra—a strong, united, and democratic China—had taken on an ironic edge.
Even as Luce [Time magazine co-founder/Editor] and his allies called for all-out support of Chiang, other voices, equally strident, called for Washington to wash its hands of China altogether. “Chiang Kai-shek’s brand of democracy is not ours, any more than is Mao Tse-tung’s,” wrote the Harvard scholar John Fairbank.
MacArthur wrote in the letter that brought his downfall, “There is no substitute for victory.” It was the kind of rousing slogan Marshall considered alluring but treacherous, calls to win a single battle at any price undercutting the “cold-blooded calculation and wisdom and foresight” needed to win the bigger war.
Time [magazine] called for ending Marshall’s efforts and letting Chiang finish off the Communists once and for all. Nationalist victories, it brightly proclaimed, made negotiation unnecessary. (Undercutting its own assurance, the magazine also warned: “If the U.S. does not openly and quickly give full material and economic support to the Nationalist Government, China must pass into the Russian orbit.)”
History does indeed rhyme.
Could RFK Jr. be Trump’s running mate?
It’s notable how well Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing in recent polling.
Here: https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3881
RFK Jr. Receives 22% As Independent Candidate In 3-Way Race
When the hypothetical 2024 general election matchup broadens to include Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who is running as an independent candidate, Biden receives 39 percent support, Trump receives 36 percent support, and Kennedy receives 22 percent support.
Among independents, 36 percent support Kennedy, 31 percent support Trump, and 30 percent support Biden.
My question here is a theory first put forward by Seymour Hersh in July:
It was expressed to me by someone with excellent party credentials: that Trump could be the Republican nominee and will select Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his running mate.
Though I don’t in any way sense this was RFK Jr.’s motivation for doing it, him going out as an Independent would be a necessary step of transition to achieve this.
There’s no way Biden (nor a potential Newsom) will bring RFK Jr. into the tent.
But Trump arguably will want to consolidate this vote. (According to Richard Haass: RFK Jr. is pulling more votes from Trump than Biden, and this seems to be a concern some on Fox News have.)
I don’t see how any other potential running mate would come close to adding to Trump’s voter base as much as RFK Jr.
Trump, per the 22nd Amendment, can only serve one more term as President.
RFK Jr., a spritely (by recent U.S. Presidential candidates) 69 years old, pragmatically for a 2028 run, would surely be best-served by the prominence of being Vice President in the next administration.
There are other roles (such as chief-of-staff) in which the talents, energy and intellectual formidability of Vivek could be harnessed. But I don’t see how Vivek as running mate would, right now, help Trump win any voters he wouldn’t otherwise already have.
This might be a wacky theory, but Trump has done many more anti-convention things than this.
RFK Jr. has been one of very few people to help raise awareness of my diplomatic chronology on Ukraine. I sincerely thank RFK Jr. for his support in this. (In posting, he misstated ‘special advisor’ as ‘senior advisor’.)
I would quite like RFK Jr. to be in the White House. But, pragmatically, if ever he were to receive an invitation from Trump to be his running mate (and on present polling, be his ultimate Vice President), I think RFK should strongly consider it – and the good he could affect for the U.S., and the world, from this position.
[For anyone who thinks RFK Jr. is nuts, but has never actually listened to him, I encourage you to watch this with moderate/hugely intelligent Bill Ackman, talking about his support for him.]
‘Stalemate’
A number of people I’ve observed who have been most right about Ukraine over the past 20 months now think the use of ‘stalemate’ is a misnomer.
https://twitter.com/LeeBTConsulting/status/1721658975530225984
https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/1722351156892958914
https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1722742751182438781
Arguments that Ukraine will ‘emerge as one of the strongest militaries in Europe, and add to NATO’ have proven false.
If a diplomatic outcome is not negotiated now – with meaningful security guarantees from the West, in concession for some territory – I fear that Ukraine really is at risk of being overrun. A ‘stalemate’ could be a very temporary position.
Despite a motherlode of sanctions, Russia’s military threat has been meaningfully strengthened by this conflict. Continuing on will likely only make this yet worse.
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I have put all of my emphasis in today’s digest on Ukraine, as I consider Ukraine is considerably more straightforward to resolve than the Middle East, and (despite all horrific images from Israel and Gaza) has still had something like 20X the number of deaths. We should bring about a diplomatic resolution here, and then use that diplomatic ‘momentum’ to help calm the situation in Israel.
Jared Kushner in Breaking History:
Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] told me that early in his political career, he had learned that the most important thing was momentum. Whenever he was down, he would find any bit of good news and would make it the biggest thing. In politics, wins beget more wins.
This principle is surely true of international politics, too.
$1tn+ interest payment
This from ZeroHedge seems like a big deal:
China appears to be selling off its U.S. bonds in a big way. (Unclear if this is deliberate fiscal sabotage, or China having to do so because of its own economic woes.) But either way, the effect is bad.
‘Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett projects that U.S. government debt will rise by $5.2 billion every day.’
As a reminder, the vast majority of 5, 7, 10 and 30 year debt is still locked in at much lower interest rates, and as such, rates will continue to rise as all of the existing debt rolls into much higher rates over the coming years.
Looking ahead, the staggering surge in both yields and total long-term Treasuries in recent months confirms the government will continue to face an escalating interest bill. As a reminder, we were the first to point out that it took just one month after US federal debt first rose above $33 trillion for the first time, to spike by another $600 billion... bringing the total to $33.6 trillion, more than the combined GDPs of China, Japan, Germany, and India.’
And this is just debt. This doesn’t even factor in unfunded liabilities of entitlements programmes.
The power of remembering
I’ve read I think every Spectator leading article for the past eight years.
Their Remembrance Sunday piece from 2021 is one of their finest.
This might be provocative, but I tend to think ‘two minutes’ silence’ doesn’t achieve all that much in the minds of my generation – who largely haven’t studied much history. I know that when I was at school, no teacher had ever properly explained to us why we were doing it, or the true gravity of what it meant. It was, to us then-teenagers, an act of going through the motions. Hold your breathe and look down solemnly for a minute.
We would surely do better silently to read this three-minute article every year.
We have to face up to the reality that one day there will be no one left who knew the world at war; there will be no reunions, no one to attend solemn remembrances, no one left to pass on their experiences to relatives. This is the purpose of Remembrance Sunday: to ensure that war does not recede into a distant historical memory.
I was struck, re-reading it this morning – as I now do as a personal annual tradition – that from it we can see just how quickly the world has changed in the past two years since it was written. ‘Yet still the prospect of war remains distant.’
Rhetoric today on defeating Russia in Ukraine, Iran in the Middle East, and China preemptively in Taiwan, would do well to remember George Marshall’s warning post WWII:
‘The next great war, he warned, would bring only the “empty triumph of inheriting the responsibility for a shattered world”.’
We should not be so foolish as to attempt the West triumphing over China/Russia/Iran.
We need, instead, to focus our efforts on the avoidance of WW3 – for the good of humanity, and future generations.
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Thank you for reading.