Every now and then, I hear a piece of commentary about the Ukraine war that makes it sound like we are repeating all the same mistakes we made in Iraq. I absolutely do not believe this is the case.
The Iraq War was an ideological war that we chose to fight. It was also a war that we fought with our own military. These two facts make it fundamentally different from our current indirect intervention in Ukraine.
Here's another difference: the proponents of the Iraq War wanted to see the U.S. spread freedom and democracy to parts of the world where they had never existed. They said so at the time. They also demonized anyone who disagreed with them.
This week, on my friend Derek Hunter's radio show, I had the opportunity to make the case in favor of the support we are currently providing to Ukraine against the Russian invaders. I'd like to restate that case here without going into too much detail, simply because I think it is a mistake for realist or non-interventionist thinkers to reflexively draw such an equivalence between Iraq and Ukraine.
Iraq was a disaster, of course. The cliche at that time was that you could not spread freedom and democracy at gunpoint. The more accurate criticism was probably that you cannot impose a democratic order and the rule of law overnight in a country that has never had either, and whose residents don't necessarily seem interested.
As a consequence, the Iraq invasion was not only costly in terms of American blood and treasure, and in Iraqi lives taken as collateral damage, but also in the dramatic destabilization of the region. The rise of Iran is our fault. We may have caused millions of Arab Christians to be driven from their homeland. The Iraq War was a calamity, a textbook case for a non-interventionist foreign policy, or at least for rejection of idealistic notions of spreading freedom and democracy by waging war.
What is happening in Ukraine now is completely different — for us, anyway. We did not invade, nor did we start the war, nor are we siding with those who did. Nor, in fact, are we trying to spread any idealistic vision. Rather, Russia is pursuing an interventionist foreign policy, advancing the other of the two competing visions for the world's future. The Russian and Chinese authoritarian model for the future is a world where there is no rule of law, no human rights, no privacy, and certainly no democracy. If their model succeeds, your social credit score will determine what you are allowed to do and where you are allowed to go. The American vision is the one we are used to for ourselves. We cannot and should not impose it, but what if others try to adopt it for themselves? Should we let them be destroyed without a fight? --->READ MORE HERE
Russian President Vladimir Putin may have overestimated the Russian military’s own capabilities again, and therefore its major offensive in the east of Ukraine will end prematurely in the spring rainy season and will not be effective, analysts of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) are convinced.
Source: ISW
Details: Andrii Cherniak, Representative of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post on 1 February in an interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the Russian military to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by March 2023. Cherniak also stated that Russian forces are redeploying additional unspecified assault groups, units, weapons, and military equipment to unspecified areas in the east of Ukraine.
"Putin may have overestimated the Russian military’s own capabilities again. ISW has not observed any evidence that Russian forces have restored sufficient combat power to defeat Ukraine’s forces in east of Ukraine and capture over 11,300 square kilometres of unoccupied Donetsk Oblast (over 42 percent of Donetsk Oblast’s total area) before March as Putin reportedly ordered," ISW emphasised.
According to the ISW’s preliminary assessments, a major Russian offensive before April 2023 would likely prematurely culminate during the April spring rain season before achieving operationally significant effects.
"Russian forces’ culmination could then generate favourable conditions for Ukrainian forces to exploit in their own late spring or summer 2023 counteroffensive after incorporating Western tank deliveries," a report of ISW said. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
+++++Russia-Ukraine News LATEST UPDATES: (REUTERS) (AP) (NY POST) and (WSJ)+++++
+++++Band of Barbers, Judges and Security Guards Uses Soviet-Era Guns to Repel Russian Drones+++++
+++++Along Ukraine-Belarus border, a war of nerves — and drones+++++
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