Posturing is not policy. How the West doomed Ukraine.
As any rookie strategist knows, outcome-focussed policy is based around the alignment of ends, ways and means: what you set as your goals must be matched with a clear strategy and the necessary resources to achieve them. Ukraine as a Western proxy war has proven a massive failure on all three counts.
Henry Kissinger nailed it back in 2014: "For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one." The former US Secretary of State was cautioning the West against using Ukraine as a proxy for East-West confrontation. He was ignored and the US and EU abandoned a more nuanced approach to diplomacy in favour of a massive militarisation of Ukraine. In January 2022, the West rejected Russia’s central demand for a written guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO. The Russian army crossed the border a month later.
NATO’s Project Ukraine crossed what US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns called “the reddest of red lines” for the entire Russian political establishment. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians are dead; the West is staring into the face of defeat on the battlefield; Ukraine is shattered and will take generations to recover; an economically wounded and divided Europe seems to be having a mental break-down; and, whenever the war finally ends, Ukraine will face harsh conditions imposed on it, ironically, by both the US and Russia.
Ends, Ways and Means. Why the West is worse than rookies
The entire Western elite from the US President through to people like Boris Johnson, Macron, Starmer, Von der Leyen and co had in recent years become obsessed with what Kissinger derided as posturing over policy.
He suggested the West and Russia "should return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing" in order to solve the Ukrainian crisis. So let’s assess those ends, ways and means.
Fail: the end goal was a pipe dream
The West’s goals in the war were variously stated as regime change in Russia, dismemberment of the Russian federation, the crushing of the Russian economy, defeat on the battlefield and the reconquest of all territory, including Crimea. Ukraine, they all said, was on an irreversible course to NATO membership. Such were the dreams of warriors.
Fail: the way to victory didn’t exist
To the contrarians like me, the Western “ways” – its strategy and tactics – seemed daft. Given Russia saw the conflict as existential, in the highly unlikely event of Western success on the battlefield, the war risked escalating to the nuclear level, perhaps limited to tactical nukes, perhaps not.
Which triggers the paradox: the closer the West got to military success, the closer the West got to nuclear war. In the end, Russia was able to eviscerate the Ukrainian counter-offensive of 2023 which failed to even cross the first of a series of Russian defensive lines. Roads and fields in eastern Ukraine were littered with billions of dollars of brand new Bradley fighting vehicles, Leopard tanks, other expensive kit and, most tragically, tens of thousands of bodies. With the exception of the successful but strategically misguided Kursk incursion into Russia, now eliminated, the Ukrainians have been slowly pushed back and teeter on the edge of collapse.
Fail: the means to victory just weren’t there
Despite the invocations of a few madmen generals and politicians, the West committed few boots on the ground. The Ukrainians did the fighting and dying; the West supplied the resources. The contrarian military analysts like Mark Sleboda and Colonels Danny Davis and Douglas MacGregor pointed out the futility of this approach, pitting the Ukrainians up against a Russian army that was more numerous, better equipped and, once it overcame teething problems, more lethal.
The West also lost the military industrial competition as Russia had a significant advantage in stockpiles of artillery and an arms industry that could both innovate and ramp up production in ways the profit-driven suppliers in the West simply could not.
Russia was strategically superior to the West
In contrast, Russia’s ends, ways and means were conceived and executed more effectively. The West, for example, chose dramatic, headline-grabbing tactics like the Kursk incursion; the Russians contented themselves with attrition warfare.
Consequently their core goals are likely to be realised: an end to NATO expansion, return to Ukrainian neutrality, incorporation of at least four ethnic Russian oblasts plus Crimea into Russia, protections for ethnic Russians remaining in Ukraine, and limits on its military. Given the dramatic shift in the EU to becoming a military bloc – Russia could possibly seek to veto Ukrainian membership of the EU which previously had been acceptable to them.
None of this will be pleasing to many people in the West but realist analysis is not about comforting illusions; it is about facing harsh truths and navigating a path to a better world for everyone.
It is time to put aside the propaganda
It is time to de-demonise Russia and to start the process of normalising relations with the super-power to achieve the best outcome for all parties, particularly Ukraine. Vilification is useful to mobilise support amongst the gullible masses at the start of and during wars, but when peace comes it is time to put aside the propaganda. The Russians, if victorious, will not be sipping coffee in Vienna next week nor marching into Piccadilly Circus. As Glenn Diesen has pointed out many times, Russia’s focus and future lies firmly in building a prosperous Eurasia and ushering in a multipolar world.
All the mainstream experts, four-star generals and Western leaders foolishly miscalculated and, as former US Ambassador Chas Freeman predicted, callously tried to fight to the last Ukrainian. War, with all its horrible consequences, should not be undertaken if the result is likely to be a worse end state than you could have achieved through diplomacy. So who got it right?
The analysis of those virtually barred from the mainstream media has been proven correct. People like John Mearsheimer, Danny Davis, Glenn Diesen, Brian Beletic, Mark Sleboda, Alexander Mercouris, Rachel Blevins, Geoff Roberts, Chas Freeman, Pascal Lottaz, Ray McGovern, Larry Wilkerson and, dare I say it, myself, saw long ago where this was heading: Russia could not and would not be defeated in a war on their borders which they saw as necessary to overcome an existential threat. Mearsheimer predicted with great accuracy a decade ago what would happen, why it would happen, and why it could and should have been avoided.
The West developed over decades a sickening obsession with moralistic narratives combined with endless violence that usually achieved the opposite of their stated objectives – think of Vietnam, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Ukraine.
It is high time for the West to get off its high horse and have the intelligence and decency to make peace with Russia and end the Israeli-Western genocide of the Palestinian people, not to mention the brutal assaults on Yemen and Lebanon that has stripped it of all preaching rights.
Eugene Doyle
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
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