America Has No Ukraine Plan B Except More War

All the above is demonstrably false and known to be false by the rapporteur in question. The notion that Russia is taking 25,000 to 30,000 casualties a month is ludicrous. Artillery accounts for about 70% of casualties on both sides and by every estimate Russia is firing five or ten times as many shells as Ukraine. Russia has carefully avoided frontal assaults to preserve manpower.

The most important fact about Putin's re-election is that 88% of Russians voted, a much higher turnout than in any Western democracy. Russians may not have had much choice of candidate but they had a choice of voting or not. The massive turnout is consistent with Putin's 85% approval rating according to the independent Levada poll.

Instead of collapsing, Russia has become the focal point for a reorganization of global supply chains and their financing, and its economy is growing, rather than shrinking by half, as President Biden promised in March 2022.

Ukraine is running out of soldiers and can't agree on a new conscription law. One prominent military historian expostulated,“Everywhere you go in Ukraine you see young men hanging around and not in uniform! Ukraine refuses to go all in.”

Russia produces anywhere between four and seven times more artillery shells than Ukraine. Ukraine's air defenses are exhausted as its old Soviet-era anti-aircraft missiles have been fired and NATO's stocks of Patriot missiles are dwindling.

Russia has an inexhaustible supply of Soviet-era large bombs fitted with cheap guidance systems, fired accurately at Ukrainian targets from Russian aircraft standing 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) off. With five times Ukraine's population, Russia is winning the war of attrition.

Another rapporteur at the weekend meeting denounced Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other European leaders for worrying too much about the“nuclear threshold” – the point of escalation after which Russia might use nuclear weapons. He demanded that Germany supply its long-range Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine, with a 1,000-kilometer range and a two-stage warhead suitable for destroying major infrastructure.

Senior German air force officers
last month discussed using 20 of the Taurus missiles to destroy the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland, in a conversation covertly recorded and published by Russian media. The conversation also revealed the presence of hundreds of British and other NATO personnel on the ground in Ukraine.

Taking the war to Russia's homeland and destroying major infrastructure is one way to transform the proxy war with Ukraine into a general European war. Another is to deploy NATO soldiers in Ukraine, something that French President Emmanuel Macron has broached (but almost certainly does not intend to do).

Remarkably, not a word was said about a possible negotiated solution to the conflict. Any negotiated outcome at this juncture would award Russia the Eastern Ukrainian oblasts that it has annexed and probably give Russia a buffer zone reaching to the east bank of the Dnieper River – followed by a normalization of economic relations with Western Europe.

Russia would emerge triumphant and American assets in Western Europe would be degraded. The impact on America's world standing would be devastating: As several attendees observed, Taiwan is watching carefully to see what happens to American proxies.

The rules of the meeting prevent me from saying much more but I am free to report what I told the gathering: Sanctions against Russia have failed miserably because Russia had access to unlimited amounts of Chinese (as well as Indian and other) imports, both directly and through a host of intermediaries including Turkey and the former Soviet republics.

Sign up for one of our free newsletters

• The Daily Report Start your day right with Asia Times' top stories
• AT Weekly Report A weekly roundup of Asia Times' most-read stories

But Russia's economic resilience in the face of supposedly devastating sanctions is only one reflection of a great transformation of world trade. China's exports to the Global South doubled during the past three years and China now exports more to the South than to developed markets. China's unprecedented exporting success, in turn, stems from the rapid automation of Chinese industry, which now installs more industrial robots per year than the rest of the world combined.

This is evident, I added, in China's newfound dominance in the world automotive market but it also has critical military implications. China claims that it has automated plants that can make 1,000 cruise missiles a day-not impossible given that it can manufacture 1,000 EVs a day, or thousands of 5G base stations.

The implication is that China can produce the equivalent of America's inventory of 4,000 cruise missiles in a week while American defense contractors take years to assemble them by hand.

No one disputed the data I presented. And no one believed that Russia is taking 25,000 casualties a month. Facts weren't the issue: The assembled dignitaries, a representative sampling of the foreign policy establishment's intellectual and executive leadership, simply couldn't imagine a world in which America no longer gave the orders.

They are accustomed to running things and they will gamble the world away to keep their position.

Follow David P Goldman on X, formerly Twitter, at @davidpgoldman

Already have an account? Sign i Sign up here to comment on Asia Times stories OR

Thank you for registering!

An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link.