The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people

by Scott Ritter via Consortium News

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in a hastily scheduled, 90-minute summit in Geneva yesterday, after which both sides lauded the meeting as worthwhile because it kept the door open for a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. What “keeping the door open” entails, however, represents two completely different realities.

For Blinken, the important thing appears to be process, continuing a dialogue which, by its very essence, creates the impression of progress, with progress being measured in increments of time, as opposed to results.

A results-oriented outcome was not in the books for Blinken and his entourage; the U.S. was supposed to submit a written response to Russia’s demands for security guarantees as spelled out in a pair of draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO in December. Instead, Blinken told Lavrov the written submission would be provided next week.

In the meantime, Blinken primed the pump of expected outcomes by highlighting the possibility of future negotiations that addressed Russian concerns (on a reciprocal basis) regarding intermediate-range missiles and NATO military exercises.

But under no circumstances, Blinken said, would the U.S. be responding to Russian demands against NATO expanding to Ukraine and Georgia, and for the redeployment of NATO forces inside the territory of NATO as it existed in 1997.

Blinken also spent a considerable amount of time harping on the danger of a imminent military invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces said to be massing along the Ukraine-Russian border. He pointed out that any military incursion by Russia, not matter what size, that violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, would be viewed as a continuation of the Russian “aggression” of 2014 and, as such, trigger “massive consequences” which would be damaging to Russia.

Blinken’s restatement of a position he has pontificated on incessantly for more than a month now was not done for the benefit of Lavrov and the Russian government, but rather for an American and European audience which had been left scratching their collective heads over comments made the day before by President Joe Biden which suggested that the U.S. had a range of options it would consider depending on the size of a Russian incursion.

“My guess is he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] will move in, he has to do something,” Biden said during a press briefing on Wednesday. While presenting a Russian invasion as inevitable, Biden went on to note that Putin “will be held accountable” and has “never have seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed” if Russia were, in fact, to move against Ukraine. Biden spoke of deploying additional U.S. military forces to eastern Europe, as well as unspecified economic sanctions.

Biden then, however, hedged his remarks, noting that the scope and scale of any U.S. response would depend on what Russia did. “It’s one thing,” Biden said, “if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.”

Almost immediately the Washington establishment went into overdrive to correct what everyone said was a “misstatement” by Biden, with Biden himself making a new statement the next day, declaring that he had been “absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding, any, any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion,” and that there should be “no doubt at all that if Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price.”

And just in case the President was not clear enough, Blinken reiterated that point following his Friday meeting with Lavrov.

Immutable

The U.S. narrative about Russia and Ukraine was immutable; Russia was hell bent on invading, and there would be massive consequences if Russia acted out on its intent. This was no idle threat, Blinken said, but rather represented the unified position of the United States and its allies and partners.

Or was it? In a telling admission, CNN’s White House correspondent, John Harwood, stated that the “minor incursions” statement by Biden was harmless, because (Harwood said) Putin already knew through sources that this was, in fact, the U.S. position. As for Europe and Ukraine, their collective confusion and outrage was merely an act, a posture they had to take for public consumption, since the optics of Biden’s statement “sounds bad.”

In short, the lack of an agreed-upon strategy on how to deal with a Russian incursion/invasion of Ukraine was an open secret for everyone except the U.S. and European publics, who being fed a line of horse manure to assuage domestic political concerns over being seen as surrendering to Russian demands.

Biden and his administration are old hands at lying to the American public when it comes to matters of national security. One only need look to Biden’s July 23, 2021, phone call with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani for a clear precedent into this inability to speak openly and honestly about reality on the ground. “I need not tell you,” Biden told Ghani, “the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there is a need,” Biden added, “whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the posture taken by the Biden administration on Ukraine. Blinken has indicated that the U.S. has a toolbox filled with options that will deliver “massive consequences” to Russia should Russia invade Ukraine. These “tools” include military options, such as the reinforcement of NATO’s eastern flank with additional U.S. troops, and economic options, such as shutting down the NordStream 2 pipeline and cutting Russia off from the SWIFT banking system. All these options, Blinken notes, have the undivided support of U.S. European allies and partners.

The toolbox is everywhere, it seems—Biden has referred to it, as has White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. Blinken has alluded to it on numerous occasions.

There’s only one problem—the toolbox, it turns out, is empty.

While the Pentagon is reportedly working on a series of military options to reinforce the existing U.S. military presence in eastern Europe, the actual implementation of these options would neither be timely nor even possible. One option is to move forces already in Europe; the U.S. Army maintains one heavy armored brigade in Europe on a rotational basis and has a light armored vehicle brigade and an artillery brigade stationed in Germany. Along with some helicopter and logistics support, that’s it.

Flooding these units into Poland would be for display purposes only—they represent an unsustainable combat force that would be destroyed within hours, if not days, in any large-scale ground combat against a Russian threat.

The U.S. can deploy a second heavy armored brigade to Poland which would fall in on prepositioned equipment already warehoused on Polish soil. This brigade would suffer a similar fate if matched up against the Russian army. The U.S. can also deploy an airborne brigade. They, too, would die.

There are no other options available to deploy additional U.S. heavy forces to Europe on a scale and in a timeframe that would be meaningful. The problem isn’t just the deployment of forces from their bases in the U.S. (something that would takes months to prepare for), but the sustainability of these forces once they arrived on the ground in Europe. Food, ammunition, water, fuel—the logistics of war is complicated, and not resolved overnight.

In short, there is no viable military option, and Biden knows this.

Empty Sanctions Too

The U.S. has no sanctions plan that can survive initial contact with the enemy, which in this case is the collective weakness of the post-pandemic economies of both Europe and the U.S.; the over-reliance of Europe on Russian-sourced energy, and the vulnerability of democratically elected leaders to the whim of a consumer-based constituency. Russia can survive the impact of any sanctions regime the U.S. is able to scrape together—even those targeting the Russian banking system—far longer than Europe can survive without access to Russian energy.

This is a reality that Europe lives with, and while U.S. policy makers might think hard-hitting sanctions look good on paper, the reality is that whatever passes for U.S.-European unity today would collapse in rapid order when the Russian pipelines were shut down. The pain would not just be limited to Europe, either—the U.S. economy would suffer as well, with sky-high fuel prices and a stock market collapse that would put the U.S. into an economic recession, if not outright depression.

The political cost that would be incurred by Biden and, by extension, the Democrats, would be fatal to any hope that might remain for holding onto either house of Congress in 2022, or the White House in 2024. It would be one thing if Biden and his national security team were honest and forthright about the real consequences of declaring the equivalent of economic war on Russia. It is another thing altogether to speak only of the pain sanctions would cause Russia, with little thought, if any, to the real consequences that will be paid on the home front.

Americans should never forget that Russia has been laboring under severe U.S. sanctions since 2014, with zero effect. Russia knows what could be coming and has prepared. The American people wallow in their ignorance, believing at face value what they are told by the Biden administration, and echoed by a compliant mainstream media.

Propaganda About ‘Propaganda’

One of the great ironies of the current crisis is that, on the eve of the Blinken-Lavrov meeting in Geneva, the U.S. State Department published a report on Russian propaganda, decrying the role played by state-funded outlets such as RT and Sputnik in shaping public opinion in the United States and the West (in the interest of full disclosure, RT is one of the outlets that I write for.)

The fact that the State Department would publish such a report on the eve of a meeting which is all about propagating the big lie—that the U.S. has a plan for deterring “irresponsible Russian aggression”—while ignoring the hard truth: this is a crisis derived solely from the irresponsible policies of the U.S. and NATO over the past 30 years.

While a compliant mainstream American media unthinkingly repeated every warning and threat issued by Biden and Blinken to Russia over the course of the past few days, the Russian position has been largely ignored. Here’s a reminder of where Russia stands on its demands for security guarantees: “We are talking about the withdrawal of foreign forces, equipment, and weapons, as well as taking other steps to return to the set-up we had in 1997 in non-NATO countries,” the Russian Foreign Ministry declared in a bulletin published after the Lavrov-Blinken meeting. “This includes Bulgaria and Romania.”

Blinken has already said the U.S. will reject this.

The toolbox is empty. Russia knows this. Biden knows this. Blinken knows this. CNN knows this. The only ones who aren’t aware of this are the American people.

The consequences of a U.S. rejection of Russia’s demands will more than likely be war.

If you think the American people are ready to bear the burden of a war with Russia, think again.

By Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, and Scott Boston, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corp. via ForeignPolicy

U.S. military equipment wouldn’t realistically help Ukrainians—or intimidate Putin.

With Russian forces massed on Ukraine’s borders, the policy discussion in Washington increasingly has focused on what the United States can do to help its Ukrainian partners defend their country. Just this week, the Biden administration has approved deliveries of U.S.-made Stinger shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to Kyiv, in addition to upping provision of other military equipment. Allies, including the United Kingdom, are providing their own assistance, too.

The justification for the aid has varied. Some have made the case that U.S. military assistance to Ukraine can change Russia’s calculus now, possibly deterring Moscow from launching an attack. Others claim that aid to the Ukrainian military can have a real impact on a possible fight with the Russians, making it meaningfully more challenging for the Kremlin to achieve victory and ruling out certain military options Russia might be considering. And there are also voices who call for additional capabilities merely to raise costs for Moscow—that is, to kill more Russian soldiers—so as to create political problems for President Vladimir Putin at home, although without much expectation that Ukraine would prevail.

None of these arguments is convincing. That does not mean security cooperation with Kyiv should cease. It does mean that military assistance is not an effective lever for resolving this crisis.

Since 2014, the United States has provided over $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine, following the Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbass. U.S. assistance to Ukraine has included the provision of trainers, selected defensive systems (such as counter-mortar radars), and, more recently, Javelin anti-tank missiles. This assistance has principally aimed to improve Ukrainian effectiveness in the relatively static conflict against Russian-backed separatist forces in the Donbass, who are mainly armed with small arms and light weapons, along with some artillery and Soviet-era armor.

Crucially, however, Ukraine has mainly not been fighting Russia’s armed forces in the Donbass. Yes, Russia has armed, trained, and led the separatist forces. But even by Kyiv’s own estimates, the vast majority of rebel forces consist of locals—not soldiers of the regular Russian military. Indeed, the Russian armed forces engaged directly in the fighting only twice—in August-September 2014 and January-February 2015—and with limited capabilities, although both episodes ended in crushing Ukrainian defeats.

Moscow has sought to retain some veil of deniability about its involvement in the conflict, which meant the Russian military never used more than a tiny fraction of its capabilities against the Ukrainians. It applied just enough force to get the job done while avoiding protracted, overt interventions. A wide variety of signature Russian capabilities—including its air force and ballistic and cruise missiles—have not been involved in the fighting at all, even as they have been repeatedly demonstrated in combat operations in Syria.

The nature of the reported Russian buildup suggests the expanded war, if it happens, will differ fundamentally from the past seven years of simmering stalemate. Russia has the ability to carry out a large-scale joint offensive operation involving tens of thousands of personnel, thousands of armored vehicles, and hundreds of combat aircraft. It would likely begin with devastating air and missile strikes from land, air, and naval forces, striking deep into Ukraine to attack headquarters, airfields, and logistics points. Ukrainian forces would begin the conflict nearly surrounded from the very start, with Russian forces arrayed along the eastern border, naval and amphibious forces threatening from the Black Sea in the south, and the potential (increasingly real) for additional Russian forces to deploy into Belarus and threaten from the north, where the border is less than 65 miles from Kyiv itself.

In short, this war will look nothing like the status quo ante of conflict in Ukraine, and that undermines the first justification for U.S. aid: deterring Russia. The Ukrainian military has been shaped to fight the conflict in the Donbass and thus poses little deterrent threat to Russia; provision of U.S. weapons can do nothing to change that. If Moscow is willing to launch a major war, invading the second-largest country in Europe with a population of over 40 million, all while absorbing tremendous economic punishment from the West, then it is unlikely to be deterred by whatever U.S. military assistance can be delivered in the coming weeks. The only weapons systems that could plausibly impose costs that could change Russia’s calculus, such as surface-to-air missiles and combat aircraft, are ones that the United States would be highly unlikely to provide the Ukrainians. And, regardless, they could not be procured, delivered, and be made operational—to say nothing of getting the Ukrainian operators trained up to use them—in time to have an impact on this crisis. Large, modern systems require extensive training and material support.

Once deterrence fails and a war begins, the Ukrainian armed forces will find themselves in desperate circumstances almost immediately. Ukraine does not have anywhere near enough forces to credibly defend against all the potential avenues of attack, which means it would have to choose between defending a select set of fixed strong points—ceding control of other areas—or maneuvering to engage Russian forces that outnumber them. The line of conflict in the Donbass will be but one of many fronts. The Ukrainian fortifications there may well look like a modern-day Maginot Line: prepared for a frontal attack that may never come and bypassed by the mobile forces of an adversary with more advanced aircraft and more mobile land forces.

Ukraine’s great size means that the land forces operating there will be required to move to cover large areas of rural terrain. Mobile engagements would benefit Russian forces, which are far better trained and equipped to conduct coordinated air and land maneuver warfare than their Ukrainian opponents. The Russian military has repeatedly practiced the use of long-range strike and tactical fires cued by drones as well as other means of reconnaissance, both in training and in combat operations in Syria. Russia’s combat aircraft and strategic air defenses give Moscow many more options to control the air and to strike Ukrainian forces, and most Russian pilots have recent real-world experience in Syria. The Ukrainian military also largely operates legacy Soviet weapons; Russian forces have a deep familiarity with the limitations of these systems and know what tactics to employ to further reduce their effectiveness.

In short, the military balance between Russia and Ukraine is so lopsided in Moscow’s favor that any assistance Washington might provide in coming weeks would be largely irrelevant in determining the outcome of a conflict should it begin. Russia’s advantages in capacity, capability, and geography combine to pose insurmountable challenges for Ukrainian forces tasked with defending their country. The second argument for aid—changing the course of the war—thus does not hold water.

The third argument for aid is to provide assistance to enable a Ukrainian insurgency to impose costs on a Russian occupying force. Many have in mind the historical analogy here of U.S. aid to the mujahideen in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion in 1979. Indeed, some are even recommending providing the same Stinger shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles that plagued the Soviet air force at the time.

If Russia attempts a long-term occupation of areas with lots of hostile Ukrainians, these forms of support could, on the margins, complicate matters for Moscow. But U.S. support to a Ukrainian insurgency should be a matter of last resort during an extended conflict, not a centerpiece of policy before it has even started. The prospect of a marginally more costly occupation is unlikely to make a difference to Moscow if it gets to that stage; it will have already absorbed far more significant costs. Russian planners are aware that a lot can go wrong in a large-scale operation, especially an occupation. If Putin takes the decision to occupy large parts of Ukraine, it will not be because he believes it will be easy or inexpensive to Russia.

We should also keep in mind that the costs of a war that lasts to the point of an insurgency campaign in Ukraine will be disproportionately borne by Ukrainians. At that stage of conflict, thousands—or, more likely, tens of thousands—of Ukrainians will have died. For any successes they achieve against the Russian occupiers, Ukrainian insurgents will be made to pay dearly; the experience of the Syrian opposition or the Chechen insurgents is not one Americans should wish on a close partner like Ukraine.

In normal times, there are many good reasons for the United States to provide military support to Ukraine. But these are not normal times. Military assistance now will at best be marginal in affecting the outcome of the crisis. It might be morally justified to help a U.S. partner at risk of aggression. But given the scale of the potential threat to Ukraine and its forces, the most effective way Washington can help is to work on finding a diplomatic solution.