You recognize this fragment, don’t you? Suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. At the outbreak of the hostilities, Ukrainians were very much aware of the proportion of the opposing forces, and so they were willing to negotiate. Such talks even began in Turkey but – lo and behold – Kiev received a command to back out. Now the hostilities are slowly nearing its second year and the number of casualties is rising. More than four hundred thousand (FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND) Ukrainians are said to have lost their life, but despite these horrible losses and despite the ten thousand being played off against the twenty thousand – to adduce the introductory parable – the war continues and there is no sign of it coming to an end. Why? Do Ukrainians really think they can beat the Russian bear? Do Ukrainians really think they can regain lost territories? Do Ukraine’s Western supporters and guardians really think Ukraine can win and regain its lost territories? Anyone in his right senses cannot believe that, especially high-ranking officials, whether in Ukraine or in the West, because they have all the data and, consequently, they know that ten thousand is fighting a losing battle against twenty thousand. If they know it – assuming we are dealing with people in their rights senses – then why is this war being prolonged?
The war is being prolonged for three reasons, two of which are rather familiar to the reader. One purpose in having this war go on is to weaken Russia as much as possible, to keep it engaged in a conflict, to make Russian president less and less popular among Russians and – maybe? – have the Russian people topple him down. A highly unlikely event, considering the highest approval rates that Vladimir Putin gets as compared to all the other leaders around the globe (Western leaders are credited with less than 50% of approval). The other reason is to deplete American stockpiles of arms so as to have a pretext to replenish them i.e. so that the industrial military complex can have new government lucrative commissions for the production of replacement equipment. There is yet a third important reason why the war – a proxy-war between the United States and Russia – is being prolonged.
Up to February 14, 2022, American troops had carried out military operations or – simply put – outright wars and interventions in very many places of the world, and nowhere did they encounter an enemy to be reckoned with. Whether it was Iraq or Yugoslavia, America’s opponent was significantly weaker, smaller, and usually politically isolated. It is in Ukraine that the American military are encountering an opponent that is a match. It is not only the type and quality of the advanced weaponry that the Russians use, but also the strategy and the tactics that they employ. Americans want to learn about their rival (enemy) as much as possible from the warfare. Ukraine is their laboratory, a military area where a war game is conducted, a war game for real with this precious exception that no American soldier gets killed (save for mercenaries, but that’s a different story). Americans have their advisors there on the ground, they have American mercenaries i.e. American active duty soldiers in disguise, while obliging Ukrainians provide the Pentagon with any and all intel. The war in Ukraine is a huge opportunity to study the Russian army in action. It is a huge opportunity to make Russians reveal the most secret, the most advanced of their weapons. Wars being wars, a hope arises that some of the most advanced types weapons might be intercepted. The reader might recall how the British received the whole V-2 ballistic missile that landed in marshes in occupied Poland and was retrieved, disassembled and documented by the Polish Home Army and then sent in pieces to the United Kingdom by means of a Dakota that flew from southern Italy to Poland and back.
Ukraine cannot win this war, just as ten thousand cannot prevail over twenty thousand. Nor can the collective West win it. Still, the United States can keep one of its global rivals militarily engaged (for more information, see the geopolitical ideas developed by RAND in 61 Gefira Feb 2022), study the Russian strategy and tactics and hope for intercepting as many items of Russian military technology as it is possible. That is why Ukrainians must die.
