Toretsk: Putin's Summer Dream
With ruscist operations degenerating into competing campaigns, Putin's strategy in Ukraine is simple: delay and pray while pretending that his forces will push through to Sloviansk.
Introduction
With ammunition stocks increasing, modern jets set to arrive, and NATO agreeing to commit at least $40 billion annually to Ukraine’s defense, it is now possible for Kyiv to begin actively preparing counteroffensive operations. Though Moscow’s troops continue to batter themselves against Ukrainian defenses, Ukraine’s forces are already upping the pressure where they can.
Something that observers of the conflict have to keep in mind is that classical NATO and Soviet military doctrine has been shredded during the Ukraine War. Most of the scientific knowledge presently in use at all levels of the defense establishments in every country is now dangerously flawed.
Working out how to repackage all the essential ingredients of a successful military operation is a challenge both Ukraine and Putin’s empire are literally bleeding to learn. It isn’t that the basic laws of military science are suddenly invalid, but that the systemic effects they seek to generate are not possible at the same scale as was true in 1991 or 1945. The frontages and force densities that made sense then simply don’t now.
Defense professionals across the world are having to reassess core assumptions - or had better, before it’s too late. As organizations go through the difficult process of shedding old ideas and adopting new ones, mistakes will be made. Especially when the people cling to concepts that happened to be in fashion early in their career. It’s much better to make errors before the consequences are fatal.
The Ukraine War resembles the First World War in many ways, but few more than in how technology has altered the scale at which successful military actions can take place. The trenches on the Western Front didn’t stretch from Switzerland to the Channel because every kilometer was filled shoulder to shoulder with infantry. That happened when one side tried to push the other out of their positions. Machine guns and artillery coupled with field fortifications and land mines made the dense attacks required to swiftly defeat an enemy army impossible to achieve. It took a combination of new technology and tactics to create the conditions for operational breakthroughs.
A lot like infantry companies went from rushing forward after intensive artillery preparation in 1915 to much more dispersed and fluid movements in 1918 - a trend that culminated in the early Second World War, so will successful offensive operations in the future demand a combination of dispersal at the tactical level with firepower concentration at the operational. They won’t look like the breakout from Normandy or Operation Bagration on the Eastern Front. The relentless Allied offensive in 1918 that exhausted Germany’s combat power in France is a better model.
At the front edge of the operational bulldozer will be small, highly mobile combined arms teams with a high degree of autonomy and heavy firepower on call. Enemy fronts will be bled in an endless series of raids and ambushes that extend the gray zone separating each side’s areas of firm control until Moscow can’t stanch the flow on one or more fronts.
I had meant to write more on this in this week’s post, but a local power outage probably related to the heat wave visiting the North American West ate up most of my morning. 105F/40C is rather unpleasant if you don’t have air conditioning in the Northwest, but that’s why we’ve got three air conditioning units set to 68F running in the house right now. Take that, decrepit grid! What do Ukraine, russia, and big chunks of the USA have in common? Spotty access to electricity, weather depending. And they call this a superpower…
These heat domes only stick around for a few days if you’re west of the Cascades, at least. Inland California, where I grew up, is like this all summer long. The West Coast has all the biomes, from desert to coastal rainforest and glaciers up in the volcanic mountains. For now.
Anyway, to do what I’m calling the scout’s way of war justice I’ll put that off for a week and instead write a simpler piece that, in addition to this intro, looks at developments on the fronts and the election situation internationally. There’s also a bit about my science fiction writing at the end, for those into that sort of thing.
Dueling Summer Campaigns: The First Week of July
The limits of Putin’s power are on display even when his forces mount reasonably successful attacks. What so much of the media seems content to describe as grinding progress looks more like the orcs crawling over broken glass towards a dead end.
Putin’s war has degenerated into a series of campaigns fought in parallel. While the orcs aim to spread Ukraine’s defenses thin, they’re doing more damage to their own ability to conduct effective operations. Reserves are reportedly being shuffled from front to front to sustain efforts even as they run into a wall. This is a classic mistake.
And though Moscow pretends that human costs don’t count, losing as many personnel as it trains every month is a recipe for future collapse. This will happen much sooner and end the war a lot faster if Ukraine’s allies will lift all restrictions on use of donated weapons and send many more of them.
Another eight thousand or so orcs were killed or wounded to finally gain control over the Kanal district of Chasiv Yar, seize two salients in the grey zone between the Toretsk area and occupied Horlivka, and get a bit closer to the Vovcha west of Avdiivka. Moscow is on track to throw away upwards of four hundred thousand lives this year, three thousand tanks and twice as many troop carriers, and fire off a million or so shells for, at best, a couple ruined towns in Donbas.
If you zoom out, this trend leads to disaster. I would go so far as to assert that we’re more than halfway through the total phase of this war. By the end of 2026 a combination of military, economic, and demographic exhaustion should cause the regime in Moscow to collapse if something major doesn’t change.
Small wonder that Putin’s proxies and allies abroad are all selling a lie about wanting peace. It’s fascinating watching conservatives in the US, the very people who spent the better part of the past fifty years insisting that America ran the world and could take on anyone as long as a Republican was leading it, shake in their boots at the first mention of Putin’s nukes. It’s notable that the same voices in America urging Israel to carpet bomb Gaza and Lebanon are also insisting that Ukraine should trade land for peace.
In any case, Ukraine is doing what it can to hurry the process of russia’s disintegration along. Of late it has definitely been making a concerted effort to hit industrial sites beyond Moscow’s oil industry, blasting targets from Rostov-on-Don halfway to Siberia. With Ukrainian long range drones apparently being mass produced this could get interesting by winter.
Moscow’s own efforts at strategic bombardment, when they aren’t trying to destroy Ukraine’s power system or hospitals, are presently in Viper hunt mode. While F-16s probably haven’t arrived, with maintainers apparently only recently arriving in the country to prepare the necessary logistics, the orcs aren’t taking chances. Airfields keep coming under drone and missile attack, and in one incident Moscow claimed to have knocked out most of a squadron of Ukrainian Su-27 Flankers at an airfield just 150km from the border.
Of course, when ruscists release a drone feed showing an attack it’s rarely what it seems. I’m not sure who in Moscow thinks they’re being clever with the selective editing, but it’s pretty blatant. Sometimes they release credible footage, but in this case it’s another instance of a drone showing military equipment before a cutaway to a missile explosion in the distance gives way to another cutaway showing scorched wreckage.
The biggest tell that Moscow probably hit mostly decoys is that these big, highly visible jets were parked out in the open with zero effort to protect them from view and little support gear around. Ukraine has wisely scattered shells of aircraft inherited from Soviet times around their airfields to get Moscow to waste missiles. This appears to be another case of mission accomplished, for the most part. Ukraine did confirm a couple working jets lost, though, and a couple more were definitely hit at other bases.
At least one vocal Ukrainian politician accused the Ukrainian Air Force of failing to construct hardened shelters, but that’s misguided. If Moscow wants to blow up a hangar with an Iskander, it can generally get a missile through to do the job. And a hangar strong enough to survive is also straightforward to spot. Safety for Ukraine’s jets depends on a quick turnaround after landing unless they’re in the west of the country. It is most likely that Ukrainian pilots land, refuel and rearm, swap pilots, then get their jets airborne again. Aircraft that come due for more intensive maintenance can shuttle west to the Lviv area, which Moscow has a harder time hitting. It’ll be probably be the same with F-16s.
Having aircraft park in the open near the runway amid decoys might be the best - if less than ideal - option. The bigger issue here is that Moscow is able to get recon drones 100-150km behind Ukrainian lines to spot targets in real time. Even F-16s will need forward bases to divert onto when they suffer damage or run low on fuel after an unplanned engagement. I just hope that personnel routinely get enough warning time to get to shelter. AWACS capabilities cannot come fast enough.
Ukraine will have to be very careful with it F-16s. It can cluster them under the umbrella of Patriot systems in Kyiv to guard against ballistic missile strikes, but that means they have to fly farther to reach the front lines in Donbas. Closer basing is preferable overall, but will require highly distributed operations that the F-16 might be too fragile to handle. Another reason the Gripen is an ideal aircraft for Ukraine in the long run. A mix of approaches will probably be used, F-16s landing at least 200km from the front except in emergencies and taking off again as soon as possible, even if based near a Patriot system.
Ukraine is finally receiving more Patriot systems, expecting to go from four to eight by September, so distributed basing could work out. Regardless, all sources suggest that Ukraine’s deployment of F-16s will go very slow. As much as I’d love to see ambushes take down ruscist glide bombers by midsummer, it is probably wiser to wait until September to use F-16s in force. Twenty or so pilots should be ready then, allowing for round-the clock patrols in pairs.
On the ground, Moscow’s attacks have mainly focused on the broader Toretsk front, which has three active sectors: Chasiv Yar, Pokrovsk, and Toretsk-Niu York. It’s tempting to write the last as New York, but as enjoyable as I find it to write the orcs are attacking New York that just feels a bit War of the Worlds. And the echoes of 1938 are too strong as it is these days.
It looks as if Putin has been forced to abandon his initial plans for the Summer 2024 Campaign. Originally, ruscist moves were made with an eye towards a broad encirclement of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk urban zone. But the envelopments failed - Kupiansk held, the march towards Lyman couldn’t be resumed, and the Kharkiv incursion was a total disaster. Efforts to distract and disperse Ukrainian forces by attacking the Krynky bridgehead and Nestryha Island, the Robotyne-Verbove bulge, and the Velyka Novosilka-Vuhledar-Kurakhove triangle also failed despite Ukraine’s forces being somewhat thin on the ground in all.
Putin isn’t backing off, of course; instead his forces are transitioning to a permanent grind anywhere they see a chance to make progress in hopes of spoiling Ukraine’s upcoming counteroffensive.
Toretsk is the epicenter of the push: orc operations to the north and south are now being joined by direct frontal assaults by infantry on the fortified area. The strategy is an expanded version of what mainly worked in Avdiivka because Ukraine didn’t have howitzer ammunition thanks to US partisan nonsense.
For the time being, Ukraine’s best approach is to draw the orcs in and destroy them while slowly giving way. This is working, and Ukrainian forces are getting better at the rhythm all the time. It’s sad to see neighborhoods get wiped off the face of the Earth, but it beats people getting killed holding places Moscow will just bomb to rubble. Thankfully, Putin only has enough gun barrels and jets to do this in a few locations at once.
There have been some recriminations in the Ukrainian media space over Moscow’s latest successful lunges, and it appears that the situation east of Toretsk was worsened by another instance of the orcs taking advantage of a brigade rotation to strike. Could be a sign of leadership issues, but no matter what you do handing over positions entails some inefficiency and mistakes, so both sides like to attack when they know one is underway or happened recently. There are reports of ruscist troops once again using underground pipes to infiltrate through the grey zone, forcing the light infantry that Ukraine often uses as a screen to retreat.
As ruscist forces advance towards Toretsk from the east, they are likely to encounter some pretty defense defenses in the outlying towns, so the approaches probably weren’t worth hanging onto. It’s usually better to let a Red Army style attack peter out a bit before savaging the thing from head to tail. There are also a number of tall mining heaps that Ukraine can use to observe and even fire on orcs advancing below. We’ll see how everything goes, but it feels like Moscow is pushing troops into a nasty trap.
In Chasiv Yar, Ukraine’s success in clearing the Kanal district was followed by a renewed ruscist push that appears to have seized full control of the district. Or rather, what remains of it: weeks of nonstop bombing has annihilated the place. Frankly, any ruscist troops occupying it will likely have a very tough time with Ukrainian forces firing at them from slopes across the canal and most effective defense positions crushed by glide bombs and thermobaric shells from TOS-1 launchers.
So far ruscist efforts to breach the canal to the north of Chasiv Yar have been a bust. With the orcs advancing along the northern edge of Toretsk, it is beginning to look like Moscow hopes to advance south of Chasiv Yar and push Ukrainian forces off a ridge line that connects it to Toretsk. Ukraine seems to be prepared for this, but as ever, it remains to be seen how the fighting actually goes.
Southwest of Toretsk, ruscist troops are in the process of seizing the last villages on the east bank of the Vovcha. Novoselivka Persha is the center of Ukraine’s efforts to hold onto the ridges east of the river, and 68th Jager is fighting hard for it, with 47th Mechanized to their north fighting for Yevhenivka and 25th Airborne just south holding on to Yasnobrodivka. The 47th seems to have pulled way back, and it’s only a matter of time before the others do as well, using the reservoirs in the area to reduce the frontage they have to cover.
As always, there are likely other attached battalions from National Guard, Territorial Guard, Offensive Guard units. These brigades just release the majority of footage under their logo. In truth, at the open source level of resolution it isn’t possible to tell if battalions and even companies are constantly being swapped between brigades. Most of the brigades fighting in this sector have been there a while, though, and have to be high on the list for rotation to someplace quieter.
I still expect that the ruscist plan on the Pokrovsk wing of the attack is to secure the east bank of the Vovcha to hedge against Ukrainian counterattacks, then push north. The initiation of direct attacks on Niu-York and Toretsk along with efforts to reach the Kostiantynivka-Chasiv Yar highway beyond Ocheretyne suggest that Moscow is attempting to bypass some fairly strong Ukrainian defenses north of Avdiivka, but as Ukraine checks these Moscow will almost certainly try to break through closer to Niu-York as well.
Scattered ruscist attacks are occurring elsewhere, but over the past few weeks there has been a notable shift in concentration away from ancillary fronts and towards Donbas. Moscow is likely to initiate actions in other areas to force Ukraine into shuffling troops around. But overall it seems that orc efforts are starting to narrow much as they did in 2022 when the effort to encircle Ukraine’s forces in Donbas degenerated into the frontal assault on Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.
On either side of Toretsk front Putin’s troops are launching supporting efforts, mainly between Lyman and Kupiansk, to the north. Southward, where the front bends towards the Dnipro north of Mariupol, the orcs continue attacking but with less intensity than in the past. How hard they will be able to press Ukraine in either sector is an open question, especially after Ukraine punched back in the Kreminna area a couple weeks ago. But they’ll keep trying.
In Kharkiv, despite some reports of Moscow shipping in reinforcements, Reporting From Ukraine has been suggesting for a couple weeks that Ukraine is preparing a substantial counterattack. A push to surround ruscist forces fighting to hold onto the northern edge of Vovchansk could be viable. Fighting continues in the city itself, with several dozen ruscist soldiers trapped with only a narrow corridor keeping them resupplied.
Further west, in Lyptsi, Ukrainian forces have been battling for control of Hlyboke, where it seems that Ukraine hope to throw the enemy back across the border. Clearing this area isn’t of immediate operational importance, as Ukraine blocked the ruscist effort to bring Kharkiv into artillery range as well as the attempt to come down on the Kupiansk sector from the north. But going on the attack might be worth the risk.
Now that Ukraine can fire 155mm shells and Himars rockets over the border, the Belgorod region can be transformed into another sink for Putin’s combat power. There is still a risk of Moscow trying a similar border incursion aimed at Sumy or Kharkiv from Grayvoron, and it would be nice for Ukraine to be able to threaten a thrust by Free Russia fighters to secure a chunk of their home soil.
Ukraine is gathering strength and intends to go on the attack as soon as it can. Had it been given the right level of support two years ago, Ukraine would already have won. Time is its own resource, and though Moscow’s future is bleak, every day the war continues Ukraine loses more people. Ukraine’s allies can help solve the problem.
Geopolitical Brief - Elections Impact
Ukraine’s need for substantial ongoing support is the main reason that America’s ongoing political crisis is of importance. While money does matter, the US still has the deepest reserves of gear that Ukraine’s brigades need to fight and win.
The fourteen brigades already waiting on equipment is enough for Ukraine to mount a major counteroffensive. If all they need is weapons, then my standing forecast that Ukraine will start pushing Moscow back in a big way come September looks entirely plausible. Assuming that the next big military support packages turn from focusing on air defenses to armored vehicles.
I’m not suggesting that the former move down on the priority list, but assuming that there is a limited number of supply shipments that Ukraine can absorb in a given month, it probably makes sense to bolster ammunition first then shift some capacity to tanks and troop carriers. Still, at two and half years in, the throughput ought to be growing all the time.
When and how intensively Ukraine can punch back depends on a lot of steel flowing soon. And with all the uncertainty surrounding the United States in particular, as much as possible needs to be in Ukraine before the end of the year.
This past week longstanding theories of mine about Joe Biden and the Democratic Party were entirely validated. Journalists and partisan pundits have blatantly failed to address the obvious signs of Biden not being as competent or capable as his handlers and boosters pretend. Republicans jumped on this argument early on for obvious reasons, but since 2021 Independents who Biden must win over to secure re-election have largely seen the Biden that showed up in the debate.
Just because the other team asserts something does not make the claim untrue. Propaganda is best when it builds fanciful scenarios off of a seed of truth the target assiduously denies. Putin’s backers have long insisted that NATO will fight to the last Ukrainian because the behavior of people like Joe Biden hand them the necessary ammunition. The situation only gets worse when attempts are made to deny the validity of the argument that don’t directly dispel its claims - like telling Biden critics that they need to “grow a spine or a pair,” as that alcoholic senator from Pennsylvania, Fetterman, would have it.
Unfortunately for Democrats and those who buy their claim to be defenders of democracy, self-congratulating narratives are difficult to construct given the hard facts. Ukraine is told time and again that a certain kind of support is impossible only to later receive exactly that - but rarely in sufficient quantity. Ukraine’s leaders say that fourteen brigades lack equipment already promised by Ukraine’s allies while Biden insists that he’s running the whole world and is the reason NATO holds together.
The evidence is clear: Biden and his team are managing Ukraine’s fight the same way the Johnson administration managed Vietnam. They make excuses for not moving with the speed and determination the situation calls for that confirm Putin’s own propaganda about NATO being both a threat to russia but also terrified of nuclear escalation.
America’s media is being exactly as honest about the real situation in Ukraine as it has been about Joe Biden’s mental state. In his case, rumors about Parkinson’s are now going around based on a pattern of prior visits by one of the USA’s leading specialists in the condition. Just a bad night means something much different than a cold when it comes to chronic conditions like Parkinson’s.
Journalists played this game with FDR, they did it with Iraq’s terrifying arsenal of mostly nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, and they’re doing it now to Ukraine. A dangerous conventional wisdom has taken hold of the American scholarly and journalist communities which subordinates Ukraine’s natural rights to American elite fears of global disorder. But that’s already here - now is the time to take a stand on principle and make good on promises.
That’s how you form an alliance or community. And if you want to defend democracy on moral grounds, you’ve got to be above reproach. America’s partisan zombie idiots aren’t - they’re corporate brands with no interest beyond their own skins.
That is why Ukraine nearly fell in 2022, and why Ukrainians continue to die fighting an entirely winnable war. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Whoever wins the election in 2024, the US federal government will likely remain effectively paralyzed. That means that the fundamental focus of Ukraine’s diplomatic relationship with the USA has to be maintaining ties to US industry and the military that can keep equipment and ammunition flowing even if funds come from elsewhere.
Paralysis is the best default expectation at this point because even if the Democrats were to retake the House, hold the Senate, and keep the Presidency, the Senate filibuster will allow Republicans to halt all partisan legislation. Even in the best case, Ukraine will still have to maintain a close relationship with a portion of the Republican party to advance its interests.
More likely is a split result, with the Senate very likely to go Republican, the Presidency now quite likely to, and the House very close. Under these circumstances, Ukraine cannot trust that a Democratic administration will prioritize Ukraine aid over some other issue during the inevitable legislative horse trading. Trump will absolutely hold Ukraine aid hostage for petty gain, as he will support for any country except Israel, but he will also fear being seen as the guy who lost Ukraine. Putin’s near-certain inability to abide by any ceasefire agreement means that any effort to bring both sides to the bargaining table will almost certainly fail, so Trump at the very least is unlikely to stop Ukraine from purchasing US-made equipment.
Either way, if Putin is betting that US elections will lead to the end of Ukraine receiving weapons it needs to fight, he’s a damned fool. As much as America’s Puritan Democrats insist on playing Putin’s game by pretending that he’s magically able to manipulate US elections is in cahoots with Trump, Moscow’s power just doesn’t run that deep. They lose winnable elections because they suck, it’s as simple as that.
Even if the USA were to catastrophically self-destruct, that would do Putin more harm than good. Ukraine has been on a leash from day one because of the USA’s unjustified terror of nuclear escalation. Like I always say, the US West Coast alone has an economy more than twice the size of Putin’s. The military assets stationed along the Pacific Rim are more than sufficient to destroy his empire several times over.
For us, the russian federation is a dangerous neighbor. Muscovite colonists even laid claim to lands from Alaska to northern California at one point, and place names like “Russian River” are still found near where I grew up. Oceans only do so much to protect a country. During the Cold War it was common for nuclear-armed Soviet submarines to patrol near San Francisco and Seattle.
Putin can hurt us; it’s silly to pretend otherwise. But what matters is that we can hurt him back tenfold, whether you’re speaking of the USA or just the West Coast. That’s why Putin doesn’t do stuff like put troops on an uninhabited Aleutian island and call this reclaiming sovereign russian territory. Does he fear Biden or Trump? Not a bit. What he does fear is provoking a public reaction that might force their hand.
If and when Putin goes kinetic with NATO, he’ll pick a recent and smaller member on his border that many US politicians, left and right, will argue isn’t worth defending. He’s playing games like that with Baltic Sea maritime boundaries right now because there’s a much lower chance of winding up in a Pearl Harbor type of situation where Americans demand Putin’s destruction. And the only reason that American leaders aren’t as scared of this happening with China as they are Putin’s empire is an intellectual blindness about anything Asian.
There is pretty much only one way to get Americans to back a war, and that’s attack America directly or be directly implicated in an assault, whether the allegation is proven true or not. Abroad, ironically, Americans are on their own - plenty of US citizens lived in Kyiv when Putin’s orcs came marching in, but did the US military deploy to protect them? Nope. Putin is holding Americans right now under what are probably false charges simply because he can.
Now, if Putin, China, North Korea, or anyone else fired a single missile that hit American soil? Millions of people would demand an overwhelming nuclear response.
The flip side of this stance is that America’s allies are of even less lasting importance to D.C. as Americans abroad.The US will only intervene in a fight if the risks aren’t too high. That’s why, regardless of what happens on the domestic front, until it adopts meaningful structural reforms it cannot be trusted to live up to its international promises. Whenever American leaders and pundits talk a big game about how the US will always be there, remember that it took Joe Biden having an utterly disastrous debate performance to knock the chattering classes out of their ridiculous habit of covering for all of Biden’s screwups because criticizing him might help Trump.
It’s now a 50/50 thing at this point whether Biden even makes it to the election, and if he somehow does narrowly beat Trump he’ll be a four-year lame duck anyway. But never underestimate the stubborn power of a well-connected family desperate to maintain its position.
Of course, when America’s leading Team Blue publications are running pieces suggesting that Biden’s cabinet remove him using the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, you’re in unprecedented territory. In decades of observing US politics I’ve never seen an uproar quite like this, and it isn’t merely a media freakout - the vast majority of Americans have been against Biden running again. He can only survive this tide of rare sensible thinking among Democrats by defying all the old norms about Presidents that the party claims to cherish and attacked Trump for shredding.
Quite frankly, speaking as a Clinton voter in 2016 and Biden voter in 2020, Joe Biden’s continued occupation of the White House is as dangerous as Trump’s return - and will likely be what guarantees this outcome. His public statements over the past week have made it abundantly clear that he’s either delusional and controlled by his wife and son or a stone-cold con artist who will say anything to get what he wants. The 25th Amendment was positively made for this moment. Joe Biden cannot credibly represent America abroad, serve as Commander-in-Chief with the full confidence of the military chain of command, and definitely shouldn’t have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear button. This was true of Trump, and it is of Biden too.
The sensible, honorable thing to do if you’re Biden is resign now. Let Harris take over at the NATO summit and prove herself while there’s still time. But Biden has no honor. He will do whatever he thinks is best for himself and call that the national interest. Harris actually has a chance of beating Trump and maybe pulling Democrats in the House and Senate to victory too. Biden has zero upside, just the insipid claim that because he barely beat Trump once, no one else ever possibly could.
Regardless, at this point just about the only thing that might save Harris or Biden is the tide visibly turning in Ukraine. It could before the election if they’d arm Ukraine appropriately. History will judge them harshly if they do not find some intestinal fortitude very soon. Biden might be happy with himself so long as he does his “goodest” job against Trump, but the rest of the country won’t see it that way.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Labour just displaced more than a decade of Tory rule. Now, there are generally only two aspects of UK politics that greatly concern me: support for Ukraine and the future of Larry the Cat, whatever other mouser is on duty at Number 10. I’ve always been intrigued by and supportive of Scottish Independence, but the scandal-plagued Scottish National Party is at low ebb, so unless Labour mucks things up bad it looks like the UK will hold together. Even if it doesn’t rejoin the EU, a closer association with Europe than the USA is wise.
Successive Conservative governments have been extremely supportive of Ukraine, and fortunately Ukraine policy does not appear to have been a major point of contention. In a way, the support of Boris Johnson and the procession of Prime Ministers after, culminating in Sunak, seems a bit of an outlier for a Euroskeptic party anyway. I’ve always suspected that it was mainly, like their “Global Britain” play, a way to distract from the impacts of the UK leaving the EU in Brexit.
By acting like a mini-US, the UK aimed to align more closely with the Anglosphere. This has not been a great bet, as US capital investment Britain will aim to do what it has in the US over the past few decades: hollow out vital public services by pretending that profit is the best metric of success in every situation. Incoming PM Starmer has his work cut out for him, and despite being a regular BBC reader (and The Guardian, for a laugh) I have absolutely no idea who he is or what he’s about. In general, that kind makes the best political leader in a democracy. It’s ego that causes trouble - witness the USA.
Elsewhere Scholz’s center-left SPD party in Germany is expected to perform poorly in the next federal elections, but with the hard-right AfD soaking up votes in Eastern Germany the old pro-russia sentiments aren’t likely to carry much weight with the rest of the German political ecosystem, at least so far as I understand it from afar. So I expect that Berlin will continue to strongly support Ukraine even if Germans in general tend to be pretty pro-peace on the whole.
Then there’s France, which was set to install a right-wing government with substantial power over domestic, but not foreign, policy. But a broad alliance of leftist parties managed to do what the left never can in the USA: develop a coherent strategy that appeals to a broad base of voters. They’re the largest party in the new parliament and aren’t hostile to Ukraine aid, so there shouldn’t be any wrenches thrown into the increased French support that Macron has promised.
A number of analysts have noted that 2024 is set to be a decisive year for democratic countries across much of the planet. There are any number of elections that will each reshape the constellation of democratic power in some way. But if Britain, France, and Germany all strongly back Ukraine, together they can do much to compensate for the loss of American leadership and funds. A sane Democrat like Harris would probably get along well with Starmer, where Trump is likely to amplify Ukraine skeptics like Orban of Hungary even if he ultimately floods Ukraine with weapons to push Putin into peace talks.
As uncertain as the geopolitical future might seem, Ukraine’s fight is certain to go on until victory. Putin has not given up his ambition of taking most or all of Ukraine or destroying the Ukrainian identity entirely. Expending limited high-precision missiles to hit hospitals in Kyiv is a sign that the spirit of Irpin, Bucha, and Mariupol is the spirit of russia itself. A children’s hospital, really? This is why we call them orcs.
Putin doesn’t fear democracy spreading to his empire - he’s already solved that. Elections will not bring change to Moscow, only military defeat in Ukraine that fragments Putin’s empire. This is a pure war of conquest waged in the name of empire. Putin and his fellows have decided they have a right to Ukraine’s lands and who lives there. China at least sees Taiwanese people as part of its multi-ethnic civilization. The russian world is a pale imitation of the idea of civilization, just like the Nazi “Third Reich” was.
Putin is waging a war against anyone who tells him he can’t have something that he wants. Because he’ll always find something else worth taking, some new grievance justifying further expansion, the fight can only end when he can no longer make it continue. The sooner that happens, the fewer people have to die. This year’s elections in the democratic world will help determine how long it takes, but not who ultimately wins.
Cut off American aid to Ukraine, and the war doesn’t end. Putin will restore his strength, Europe will assume that the USA’s next step is to abandon NATO, and the next phase of the fight will be even more intense as everybody arms up. Manage to push China into going from tacit to overt backing for Moscow, and the nightmare can even go global.
Recently, a group of so-called “realist” scholars of international relations put together a letter calling for Ukraine to basically surrender for the good of the world. Names that I spend several years getting to know all too well in my Berkeley days are now ignoring virtually every aspect of their theoretical paradigm that made it attractive.
Originally they understood that you have to take firm steps to maintain the balance of power. They were students of Otto von Bismarck’s realpolitik, which argues that every country is ultimately out for itself and seeks to undermine all rivals. Which in the case of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine calls for every country adjacent to russia to take this moment to settle old scores.
Instead, they’re saying that a weaker power should surrender to a stronger one even though it’s successfully resisted attack for so long that the long term stability of their enemy is in question. This is so backwards that it can only be explained by a desire to maintain the world map as it presently stands purely for the sake of it.
Historians routinely make the mistake of thinking that they’ve discovered some novel case unlike any other. Social scientists do the opposite: they fail to spot the distinctive tree in the forest every time. It’s partly a matter of training. But laziness and self-interest play their own part.
To make realism work demands a systems approach. Yes, countries pursue their own narrow self-interest, but the way they conceive of it matters. This is controlled by the competition between groups of elites within countries that aim to establish a ruling regime or displace another. Sometimes, a regime can go malignant. Like a cancer it seeks any excuse to spread, and then countries go to war.
And In Completely Different News
As I mention every now and again on this blog, in addition to applied science I also write science fiction. In truth, I’ve never seen the two worlds as distinct - narrative is a form of applied science, and both fictional and real accounts employ it.
My science fiction is deeply rooted in science, both the Bivrost Nine and Bringing Ragnarok series despite the appearance of humanity’s old gods in their Norse aspect in the latter. It’s actually structured as a philosophical exploration of war, death and the meaning of life all in one. War and Peace, but space opera. A tad bit too much so, in fact: that’s why I’m four books through a remastered edition of the full saga, with the last two done by September. If you’re going to take the Norse Eddas and use them as the metaphysical foundation for science fiction, you’d better put in the work, right?
The latest book in the newer Bivrost Nine saga, Earthborn Rising, came out on July 4th on Kindle (print coming soon). To boost visibility and make the prequels accessible I’m also running a special on both Bivrost Nine and The Scae Resurgence ending this coming Sunday, July 14th. Price for each is $/£0.99 for the week.
Taste in fiction is extremely personal, but if anyone likes my writing style you’ll see it strongly reflected in my sci-fi stories. The Bivrost Nine series is about an entrepôt and spiritual center that winds up at the center of a galactic struggle against an overwhelming force. I began writing it in 2021 as kind of spiritual successor to Babylon 5, a 1990s era TV series that though corny remains unique. Instead of presenting alien species as cartoons or convenient monsters, it brought a diverse array of peoples together to explore the challenges involved in diplomacy and alliance-building.
I take that idea and meld it with a galaxy that in a grand sense functions a lot like an ecosystem. And much as humans stand in relation to Earth in modern times, so perhaps does the entire galaxy have its own alpha predator, with an agenda most difficult for its victims to understand.
Obviously this story isn’t about Ukraine. But at the same time, is kind of is. Though the first book was released before Putin’s assault on Ukraine began, it was always going to be about an independent community taking a stand against impossible odds. Then Ukraine did it for real.
If nothing else, Ukraine’s fight is an inspiration for the ages. It shows that ordinary people can push back against the machine. The power of people like Putin and Biden is mostly a sham. They fight to protect their own interests using ideas like nation and faith as proxies. It’s the ordinary folks on the front lines, in whatever context, who actually make history.
Sadly, they rarely get to write it. But now that drones record so much, the perspective of history might finally change. We’ll see.
Stay cool out there, people. And safe as you can.