Ukraine and the escalation ladder

If my post yesterday, Hands up if you think Russia is bluffing – and the Scott Ritter address it housed in the opening minutes of this video – were unnerving (and we should be unnerved) here’s a slightly  more reassuring note from the ‘offensive realist‘, John Mearsheimer.

I disagree with Professor Mearsheimer on two important generalities. One, he overstates the power of the Israel Lobby. Why? Because he understates the alignment of Israel’s interests with those of the US ruling class.

That error flows from another. Offensive Realism, though affording greater explanatory power than the idealist claptrap of our political and media castes – such as that the West’s elites give a flying fig for human rights in distant lands – fails to see the US as hub of a dying hence triply dangerous empire. That failure, I say, underpins his perverse stance, remarked upon by others – including his friend and on many things ally, Jeffrey Sachs – as regards China. His refusal to join the dots, to see that America’s bilateral policy of containing China is not distinct from but of a piece with its attitudes to Russia and Iran, translates into a failure to see that his outstanding critiques of Washington’s catastrophic policies in the Middle East and Ukraine apply equally, and for the same reasons, to its provocations in the China Seas.

But when the professor speaks on matters Ukraine, I listen. You should too. This being Monday morning, I baulk at recommending another long video, forty-two minutes in this case. Should you have time, you’ll find it rewarding. Besides his customary lucidity, unfailing courtesy and scrupulous eschewing of the sensational, if you’re one of the two million Brits who’ve signed the petition that Starmer hand back the keys to No. 10 you’ll enjoy his quiet line of questioning as to which planet its occupant truly resides on.

And if you haven’t a spare 42 minutes? You could just take my word for it that John does not discount Scott’s WW3 fears as baseless – only a fool would do that – but tempers them with the same observations I made in Five things to know about Kiev’s ATACMS.

Yes, NATO crossed the reddest of red lines last week:

Here, verbatim, are the words of the Russian President on September 25th this year:

I would like to draw your attention specifically to the following. The updated version of the [constitution amending] document is supposed to regard an aggression against Russia from any non-nuclear state but involving or supported by any nuclear state as their joint attack against the Russian Federation. It also states clearly the conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons.

And, yes, Russia responded with Friday’s Oreshkin  strike on a military-industrial site in Dnipro. As Andrew Korybko said three days ago in Putin is finally climbing the escalation ladder:

… faced with the choice of either escalating or continuing his policy of strategic patience, the first of which could foil attempts by Trump to reach a peace deal while the second could invite more aggression, Putin chose the former … Putin rattled Russia’s nuclear sabre in the most convincing way possible short of testing a nuclear weapon. ¹

This leads us back to Professor Mearsheimer. In that 42 minute video he makes the point, lost on an infantilised Western public, that Mr Putin has long faced domestic criticism for being too appeasing in the face of decades of Western provocation. Both –  provocation, and domestic criticism – make the situation every bit as dangerous as Scott suggests. However, as I noted in Five things …

… the ATACMS reach of less than 200 miles, when the Russians have moved their serious strike capabilities outside this range, makes them a nuisance but not a serious military threat

… and in any case:

Russia has options other than the thermonuclear … she now has escalatory dominance at all levels bar the nuclear (and parity on that) …. With the gloves off, every USAF and naval asset of an empire overextended across four continents becomes a military target; every cog and gear of its faltering financial sway an economic one.

Or as the prof puts it in yesterday’s video, Putin is in the escalatory driver’s seat. Whatever you think of the man – and what most in the propaganda-blitzed West think of him is seldom what we might call informed; rather, a textbook case of weak opinions strongly held – from a species survival perspective, that’s A Good Thing.

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1. This is outside this post’s remit but, also today, both Caitlin Johnstone and Simplicius the Thinker – the former with her characteristic forthrightness of tone, the latter more nuanced – point to Trump’s latest cabinet picks as signalling his intent to play hardball on Ukraine. I think the situation is more intricate; that Trump – who, like Putin, has home audiences to placate – is in sabre-rattling ‘escalate to de-escalate’  mode. But who can be sure, given both the fix we’re in and the president-elect’s unpredictability? Watch this space.