Seriously, Russia, are you nuts?
Mutually agreed disarmament with a well thought out peace agreement in place is a wonderful idea. Throwing everything you have including the kitchen sink at a country that clearly isn’t going to give in is idiotic. You know this. It’s time to face facts: you already lost.
Nuclear weapons can’t help you. They are great deterrents and terrible battlefield weapons. I don’t mean terrible in terms of their destructive power, as true as that is, but terrible in terms of what kind of backlash they will bring. Violating the nuclear taboo makes Russia a very, very big target of a lot of very, very mad nations. This does not end well for Russia and you know it.
Not a single US fighter has entered Ukrainian air space. We don’t fight ground wars until we’ve pulverized everything from the air. This is not news to you, Russia. Regardless, you are losing to a smaller country that is being supplied mostly with your old junk and a few of our cool toys. You lost a warship to a couple of small anti-ship missiles and a stupid drone. It’s not Western support that is beating you; it’s mostly your own incompetence.
And the Ukrainian’s determination and creativity. All the MANPADS and HIMARS in the world wouldn’t help Ukraine if they weren’t a disciplined and effective fighting force. Tossing a few hundred thousand of your boys into the gristmill won’t change anything; you’re still going to lose. They are better than you are. Heck, they might be better than us to a degree. At the very least, there are some US PT boat* captains looking down approvingly at rocket launchers strapped to pickups.
Yes, yes, winter is coming. Obviously, you didn’t see the end of that series. Spoiler alert, winter wasn’t a big deal. See, Europe has this thing called money. I don’t mean just its cronies being paid off by those in power. I mean huge public coffers resulting from robust, if imperfect, markets. Money can’t buy you love but it can buy you a heck of a lot of infrastructure, overtime and energy. Even if it is a bad one, winter will only sting. It won’t hurt Europe anywhere near badly enough to break NATO.
You really have got to take a more realistic look at yourselves, Russia. Europe is freaking out primarily because Eastern Europe doesn’t want to be ruled by you ever again. The Europeans that know you best want nothing to do with you. Chechnya and Georgia are in that gray area that isn’t really European or Asian. Ukraine isn’t. It’s unquestionably European. That’s too close for comfort. As little as they want to chance Nazis showing up, Europeans want Russian invasions even less. That says something about you, Russia, and you need to take a long hard look at it.
It’s time to put on your big boy pants, Russia. You messed up big time. You have to own the mistake and make amends. It’s your only hope to get yourselves out of this mess intact. You cannot win militarily. You cannot win financially. You cannot win diplomatically. You cannot win morally. You simply cannot win.
At least not the war. There is one way, but it’s hard. Withdraw, take the loss, apologize and reform your government into something that can actually establish rule of law. Democratic republics are great at this, but you can use something else as long as it is governed by laws, not merely men. You can make it your own even if you are borrowing from someone else. Tell you a secret – that ability to pick out the best ideas and make them our own is a big part of what makes the US so powerful. Go ahead and steal our best governing ideas – we don’t mind at all. But whether ours or your own, you have got to have a better system. Because that’s how you win long term.
I know, your demographics are collapsing and you have bankrupted yourselves. This won’t be easy but dragging out a lost war only makes it worse. Those boys will eventually come home and there will be hell to pay as they tell their stories of what really happened in Ukraine and how much higher the standard of living was in a supposedly Nazified country. The more you send, the more come home. This is a bad plan and you know it, Russia.
BUT the sooner you get started cleaning up this mess, the sooner you get done. You have great agricultural land and unbelievable amounts of natural resources. If you don’t waste those boys on an unwinnable war, you also have some hard workers that can rebuild your industries. You have options, Russia, lots of them. Here’s the thing; had you not been so pigheaded in the 1990’s and just listened to us, you could have been China only much, much better.
It’s not too late. That party may be over, but there are more parties to come. You have to decide if you want to be on the dance floor or sulking in the shadows. No one really wants you to fail. We want your people to be all they can be, same thing we want for our own. But corruption and authoritarianism keep Russia from becoming the strong nation you say you want to be. Right now, you’re so scared that you’re cowering behind threats of nuclear war and clinging to a losing war. This isn’t what you wanted, is it?
Do the hard thing. Admit defeat. Face your problems. Accept some help. Become better.
Become the Russia you really want to be. A Russia admired for its strength of character and its competence. A losing war can’t get you there. Owning your mistakes and fixing them can.
Not easy at all. But the Russia you want to be certainly can do it.
The choice, Russia, is yours.
*In WW2, PT boats were infamous for overcoming their inferior armaments by scavenging any available weapon the crew could fit in or on the boat. The results were some incredible mismatched hodge podge of weaponry and some very effective actions throughout the war.
