A limited, polite, cheap war that no one wants to stop

At the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine, the American strategist of Romanian origin Edward Nicolae Luttwak wrote on his Twitter account that "Putin is finished", because "by invading with a much too small army the largest country in Europe, the former cautious player of poker became a reckless roulette player".

A strategist and historian with wide international recognition, Professor Luttwak has been an adviser within the Pentagon and to numerous heads of state and government.

In a March 2022 editorial published on the website Unherd.com, Luttwak states that by invading Ukraine, "Putin succeeded in making the NATO alliance strong."

Less than a year later, the statements on his Twitter account began to "undergo" significant changes. Professor Luttwak wrote in March 2023 that "Russia's war has not been successful, but it is sustainable, given Putin has sufficient soldiers, weaponry and political support".

From the belief that Ukraine's victory is only a matter of time and support from the NATO alliance, the American strategist has moved on to calls for a negotiated solution to the conflict.

Against the background of a recent statement by the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, according to which "we are working on a multi-year package of measures with substantial funding", Professor Luttwak states that thus "there is no end to the war in sight, not even this year , not next year and not after that".

According to the American strategist, the fighting continues "because of a virtue that is also a sin", respectively "the war in Ukraine is not a total war, but a limited one, with American and Russian embassies still operating in Moscow and Washington , with American and Russian astronauts sharing space capsules, with anxious phone calls from the CIA director when Moscow is briefly in turmoil."

The fact that "the war in Ukraine is polite and limited" is good news for Edward Luttwak, while the bad news is that "as long as only the Ukrainians are under enemy fire, none of the other protagonists have a strong reason to end it battles", and the war "risks extending at least another 500 days".

But are there still material and human resources for this time horizon, especially against the background of the recent information in the American press, according to which "Ukraine's counteroffensive will not achieve its objective"?.

The statements belong to anonymous sources within the American secret services and were recently quoted by the Washington Post, where it is also stated that "the grim assessment is based on Russia's brutal efficiency in defending the occupied territory through a network of minefields and trenches".

General Mark Milley, the soon-to-be-retired US Army Chief of Staff, was asked, also by the Washington Post, whether Ukraine can win.

"It depends on what you mean by the word win", replied the American general, and then declared that the objective of "a free, independent country with intact territory can be achieved both by military means and by diplomatic means".

Military analyst Andrei Martyanov, a former officer in the Soviet Union's navy and the author of the books "Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning" and "The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs" mocks the commander of the American army and claims that there is only one definition for victory.

"Victory means only one thing, namely the achievement of the political goals of the war," Martyanov writes on his blog, and "the key political goal for Russia is the annihilation of Ukraine as a vassal of NATO and the elimination of the Kiev regime and its sponsors."

For some, the fact that only Ukrainians are dying under enemy fire is good news. What kind of man would say such a thing? Maybe someone called Andrzej Duda, who is currently the president of Poland?

In an interview with the Washington Post, Duda was asked why conservative Americans should support Ukraine. "It's very simple. Right now, Russian imperialism can be stopped cheaply, because American soldiers are not dying" and "if we don't stop Russian aggression now, there will be a very high price to pay," replied the president of Poland.

Does Duda think that the Polish soldiers or other vassals on NATO's eastern flank are cheap cannon fodder in the confrontation with Russia?

For Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a former tank commander in the Gulf War and former advisor to the US Department of Defense, the limited war in Ukraine cannot last much longer because "we have reached the most dangerous point of the conflict, the one where the Kiev regime can collapse and disintegrate at any moment".

This point of view is also shared by Michael Vlahos, military historian and strategist, former professor at the Naval War College and former president of the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs within the US State Department.

In a recent article in Compact Magazine, "The Ukrainian Army Is Breaking," Professor Vlahos argues that Ukraine's military is about to cross the threshold that separates a defeated army from a destroyed one, as the number of casualties per population after better of 500 days of war approaches the level recorded in Germany in the First World War in an interval of about 1,500 days.

According to the American professor, three major factors complement this catastrophic loss rate and force it closer to the brink of destruction. The first is represented by the fact that "the war began with high hopes, and now it seems impossible to win", followed by the additional blow represented by the impossibility of denying the fact that "external support from friends and allies is beginning to evaporate".

"This is a particularly acute negative factor, if allied support is the emotional foundation of the army's belief in final victory," points out Michael Vlahos.

Third, "those who promised victory and swore that the world would support the military until victory was achieved, no matter how long it took, are increasingly seen as liars and deceivers," and "the military and the whole nation feels that they have been betrayed by their rulers". Vlahos emphasizes the fact that "all this fell on Ukraine in the last six weeks".

"Reciprocal attacks on infrastructure will not lead to results. Now, against the background of the failure of the offensive of Ukraine to change the map, as the Russian military has become stronger, the time has come for a peace plan from the US," Professor Luttwak recently wrote on his Twitter account, where he claims that "Ukraine won its freedom, that's enough".

A few days ago, Luttwak returned to the idea of a victory for Ukraine, according to his statements to the German newspaper Die Welt, but for this it is necessary to go to a "total war" and mobilize at least 3 million citizens.

It seems that even the renowned strategist Edward Luttwak cannot conceive that, at the current stage of the fighting, a US peace plan, at least from the current administration in Washington, will be accepted by Russia only if it is made in Moscow. It remains to be seen what the demand for unconditional surrender will look like.

As far as the European authorities are concerned, the war in Ukraine has other undeniable "benefits": it is the perfect cover both for the ongoing economic collapse, fueled by irresponsible green policies based on ignoring the most basic laws of physics, and for the forced march towards totalitarian society.

Let there be war, then! And if he remains polite, so much better, especially when cannon fodder is so cheap.