NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admits what insightful people knew more than six months ago: NATO has no ability to provide Ukraine with the ammunition it needs to wage war; that capability has been outsourced. Thus, NATO’s promise to do so was a sham that has tricked Ukraine into sacrificing a few hundred thousand lives for nothing.
In the US, different factions are now fighting over how to proceed. The diehards still insist, but an influential group including their commander-in-chief and at least some RAND analysts believe that it is time for negotiations and perhaps even peace. Some steps have reportedly already been taken. But in Europe it is hard to find a similar realisation.
Perhaps it is impossible; so much prestige has been spent. And the need for an external enemy is so great. Not least, the moral chest-beating has been so deep – somehow Russia’s breaches of international law have been seen as so infinitely greater than those of various NATO countries in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya that it would be a moral meltdown to even talk to the perpetrator. One is – but let’s hope I’m wrong – rather prepared to enter the madness of nuclear war to find the culprit there.
In any case, it’s not impossible that the US will pull out; continued war could be a liability for Biden in the next election. And that Europe will be left holding the bag. If so, that would be the price of European governments’ casual acceptance of American neo-cons’ cold war rhetoric and American liberals’ moral positioning policies. Or, if you like, the price of European governments holding the US by the skirts for decades instead of looking after their own interests. Which hardly include a new iron curtain.
Or, at the most immediate, the price for the poor judgement of trying to expand the EU into Ukraine when they should have realised that this would create deadly conflict where none existed before.
Activists for Peace 