Ukraine can still win this war – but it will need our help Editorial: The foreign secretary’s surprising entreaty to the US Senate – that it should not show the kind of weakness displayed against Hitler in the 1930s – was as timely as it was powerful. The complacency many Western politicians have shown to Russia of late is astonishing: we cannot allow Putin to be appeased
Understandably, but unfortunately, overshadowed by the dynamics of the war in Gaza, which constantly threatens to escalate from fresh humanitarian disaster into a regional conflagration, the conflict in Ukraine seems set firmly in a pattern of indefinite attrition. As such, the balance of advantage is tipping towards Russia.
In line with some striking historical precedents, Russia’s armed forces, and especially its navy, may be poorly led, badly equipped, prone to corruption and incompetent – but there are lots of them. A seemingly endless supply of manpower, of varying quality, and of basic but serviceable materiel, supplemented by supplies from Iran and North Korea, means that it’s possible the Russian “meat-grinder” approach and well-dug-in defensive stance will exhaust the Ukrainians.
Smaller in population, and with reported difficulties in recruiting fresh troops, this is becoming an awkward situation for Ukraine. The summer offensive yielded less territory than hoped, and Kyiv’s allies are proving increasingly unreliable. Short of money, shells and the best fighter aircraft, the Ukrainians are not able to press home the substantial technological edge that Western weaponry has given them, and no matter how brave their soldiers and pilots, there is only so much that can be achieved with valour alone. They need help.
JKM I was trying to write some pithy searching and apt comments here. but this task is now beyond me... perhaps others can try. Biden's speech was appalling - a Hollywood narrative of a B grade war movies, clichéed beyond bearing. Do media editors' no longer possess a sense of the ridiculous, the absurd, the trite, the false, the exaggerations, the demonisation, the manipulative ? Obviously not and this failure will take us to some even darker places, from which our very survival is questionable.
What is the cause of he moral corruption of our leadership? Can others enlighten me?
Re: Further news re our path to WW3 from the UK Foreign Minister.
What is the cause of he moral corruption of our leadership? Can others enlighten me?
They've always been like this: its both us and the era that have changed.
Soviet communism was a great boon: they could always get poor fools to fight over the idea of a superior "capitalist" ideology with its associated "liberty & freedoms", but with the soviet era gone now it's a mere return to the old competing powerblocks: a regression to the " Great game" as our arms-promoting teen-loving princeling put it but with the UK & the rest of the west as mere expendable auxiliary sidekicks to their Yanqui masters.
The Brit elite are particularly obsequious slaves to the transatlantic unipolar idea: because as ex empire English speakers they still think they own it...but the public methinks, as a whole view it with the healthy suspicion it deserves.
.. there are infintely more people unsuited than suited. That is to say, there are far greater numbers of moral, decent, ethical, compassionate, empathic, etc. people.
But the elites have their eye out for just that one person among the many. They test you when you are younger. If you are normal and decent you may not even sense that you were tested. They watch you if you seem to have any ambition. Then there is that occasional “meteoric rise” among the ambitious, that is supposed to be so impressive to those ambitious people who didn’t get wafted upwards and cannot understand fully quite why.
Its called “self-selection”.
When there is an enormous field to choose from, and just a handful required, is it any wonder that it never changes? When the elite is totally and mind-blowingly rotten an external push does the trick. Watch this space.