The Phony War
“It’s a hard way to fight a war — village by village, house by house — — with no guarantee of success.”
So reported the New York Times recently in a front-page article about small gains in Ukraine’s “counteroffensive” against Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile ABC’s reporter showed Ukrainian troops firing at invisible targets, and said Ukrainian commanders “claimed” to have penetrated Russia’s first line of defense.
These are reporters’ private ways of signaling to a knowing reader that the story is bullshit. An actual Ukrainain counteroffensive would involve large-scale troop movements against Russia’s heavily fortified front lines — across a minefield that stretches hundreds of miles. Depleted Ukrainian forces would be relying on fresh recruits who have never seen combat. It’s not gonna happen.
This is a phony war — — small-scale combat and aimless bang-bang, conducted for the benefit of “embedded” reporters and TV cameras. The main purpose is not military but political. These war stories are propping up two presidents — Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine and Joe Biden in the US.
Zelensky recently replaced his defense minister — the new guy a bearded hipster who wears Ukrainian peasant blouses to staff meetings. Zelensky said nothing about changing miliitary strategy. He said defense minister Rustem Omerov would be devising “new formats of interaction with the military and society at large.” A cool spokesman for a non-offensive war.
Biden has dug hmself into a foreign-policy foxhole by promising NATO membership to Ukraine and a fight to the finish with the Russians. Poor Joe has to make it look good until election day 2024. After that, he can slink away from these unwinnable goals — and hope that too much isn’t made of yet another misadventure in “promoting democracy.” Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya — the list goes on, a compendium of countries we set out to “help,” and leave in far worse shape than we found them.
Half a million people have been killed over the last year and a half in Ukraine.
“How many deaths will it take ’til we know that too many people have died?”
— Copyright 2023 by Tom Phillips
