There are some simple facts that aren’t really controversial. There are two ways for a war to end: One way is for one side or the other to be basically destroyed. And the Russians are not going to be destroyed. So that means one way is for Ukraine to be destroyed.
I know that is the conventional wisdom ... I'm not sure it's right.
A year ago I said Putin is an adventurous opportunist or an opportunistic adventurer, take your pick, but, since he leads a nuclear armed superpower we have to put up with it.
OK, he's still nuclear armed but both he and Russia have been exposed as big, heavyweight, shambling failures.
I'm not sure that Putin, the man, can survive this. I will not be shocked if he's dead and buried before Christmas. At a guess he will be succeeded by a "team" of some sort who will want to make nice with the US-led West while they try to dig their economy our of the muck and mire into which it has
sunk been pushed.
Russia's real enemy is China. China wants its resources, China, unlike Russia,
IS a superpower.
America might have 'decided' - maybe that's not the best way to describe the Biden administration's approach to strategic decision making - that now is thew time to
dismember reinvent Russia. Remember PNAC, the
Project for a New American Century? That was,
in my opinion, the last time America had a coherent grand strategy. It was deeply flawed - almost
Wilsonian in its idealism (see Mead -
Special Providence) but it was
Hamiltonian and even slightly
Jacksonian in its execution. I have to believe that the very, very smart people who thought it up and sold it to President George W Bush knew that their idealism was fake and that they only wanted to cement America as THE global hegemony, but, at least, they knew what they wanted. It's been a long time since America knew its own mind.
China has also been adrift. Both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao committed themselves to advancing Deng Xiaoping's grand strategy of overturning Maoism and Marxism and making China into a prosperous, productive and powerful market economy. That all changed shortly after Xi Jinping took over a decade ago. He sees himself as a transformative leader and the transformation he wants to execute is one in which China exploits its economic power to become THE regional (East Asian) hegemon and a global superpower, too. That puts it, squarely, in the face of America which sees itself as the guarantor of global free
ish trade.
Europe is in turmoil.
Brexit had a greater political impact than many realize. Germany is much stronger and France is much weaker. There are deep and growing divisions in the EU between the so-called
New Hanseatic League (Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, etc) and the spendthrift, dishonest
Romantic League (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc) and the problematic newcomers (Hungary and so on). My guess is that Germany will, finally, succeed in establishing a real '
Mitteleuropa' which might look a lot like Greater
Germany.
IF Russia is dismembered then China will have a very real chance to become very nearly self sufficient. America can be almost totally self sufficient IF it has unfettered access to Canada's resources yes, especially water. Europe might become largely self sufficient IF it absorbs European Russia (becoming ATTU - the Atlantic to the Urals).