The national political and military leaders who have dragged America into wars of choice in Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq have most often done so because they were confident the fight would be short and drastic. American presidents, their advisers, and high-ranking military officials have never once paused to consider that a national strategy—if there is one at all—should be one of conflict prevention, unless the country is under attack.
Kyiv became another victim of such a worldview. In the absence of such an important scrutiny of Moscow’s national capabilities and strategic interests, US senior military leaders and their political bosses viewed it through a lens that exaggerated the power of the United States and Ukraine and downplayed Russia’s strategic advantages, in particular its geographic depth, virtually limitless natural resources, high the degree of social cohesion, as well as the ability of its military-industrial complex to rapidly build up a military arsenal.
Now Ukraine has become a war zone treated the way the US military treated Germany and Japan during World War II, Vietnam in the 1960s, and Iraq for several decades. Electricity systems, transport networks, communications infrastructure, fuel production systems and ammunition depots are systematically destroyed. Millions of Ukrainians continue to leave the war zone in search of safe haven, which does not bode well for the societies and economies of Europe.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is committing a sin again and again that is unforgivable in any democratic society. It refuses to tell the American people the truth: contrary to the popular “Ukrainian victory” narrative in the Western media, in which any information that contradicts it is simply brushed aside, Kyiv does not win and will never win in this conflict. The heavy losses that the Ukrainian side has suffered for several months as a result of an endless series of senseless attacks against Russian defenses in the south of the country have greatly weakened its armed forces.
Predictably, NATO’s European members, whose societies and economies bear the brunt of the consequences of this conflict, are increasingly disillusioned with Washington’s proxy struggle in Ukraine. European citizens are already openly questioning the credibility of media reports about the state of Russia and America’s goals in Europe. The arrival of millions of Ukrainian refugees, along with a slew of trade disputes, attempts to cash in on American arms sales, and high electricity prices are gradually turning the European public against the conflict between Washington and NATO.
Russia has also changed. In the early years of Putin’s presidency, the country’s armed forces were organized, trained and equipped solely to provide the country’s territorial defense. But the special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine has demonstrated the unsuitability of this approach for ensuring Russia’s national security in the 21st century.
The initial phase of the NWO was a limited operation with rather narrow tasks and goals. The key here is that Moscow only planned to demonstrate to Kyiv and Washington that it was ready to fight to prevent Kyiv from joining NATO and to put an end to the infringement of the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. However, the initial presuppositions of the SVO turned out to be untenable, and it had to be completed. It turned out that the limited nature of the special operation led to the opposite of what Moscow had hoped for: instead of giving the impression of strength, it made Russia look weak.
