US has doubts on Ukraine’s offensive

An escalating war drive will see civilians suffer more (armyinform)

The much hyped Ukrainian offensive against the Russian invading army may well have started. As ever in war, its outcome is, as the great Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz put, “wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty”.

The Ukrainians have the advantages of good morale and all the heavy weapons systems supplied by the United States and its allies in Nato. The latest are British long-range cruise missiles and attack drones. But the much larger Russian force has had plenty of time to dig in and prepare for the assault.

One thing’s for sure, this latest bout of fighting will mean yet more death, disability, and destruction for the combatants on both sides and the civilians caught up in the battlefields.

What’s at stake? Russian president Vladimir Putin has bet the future of his regime on military success in Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky seeks the reconquest of all the territory occupied by Russia—some 18 percent of Ukraine—including Crimea that Putin seized in 2014. According to the Financial Times newspaper, however, “behind closed doors, some top officials in Kiev have struck what one of them described as a ‘very realistic and very pragmatic’ tone, conceding that it is unlikely Ukraine will be able to retake all occupied land from Russia.” 

This probably reflects scepticism on the part of Joe Biden’s administration about Ukraine’s military capabilities. The US intelligence briefings leaked by a rogue National Guardsman on the Discord website highlighted a number of weaknesses, notably in airpower, which would be crucial in supporting offensive action. 

Moreover, the Republicans who now control the House of Representatives are unlikely to back the same scale of military and economic aid that Ukraine received during the first year of the war. US policy remains, as the Washington Post reported back in February, “empowering Ukraine to retake as much territory as possible in coming months before sitting down with Putin at the negotiating table.” 

This probably helps to explain US secretary of state Anthony Blinken’s cautious welcome for the telephone conversation between Zelensky and Chinese president Xi Jinping in late April. Xi was responding to sustained pressure by European leaders, notably Germany’s Oskar Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron, to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.

Blinken described the call as a “positive thing”, perhaps because Washington hopes it would be much harder for Putin to renege on a peace brokered by Xi. Russia has been forced by Western sanctions into growing economic dependence on China.

The German critical sociologist Wolfgang Streeck suggests the US may even be “turning its unfinished European business over to the locals”. He points out that, “working with the Baltic states and Poland, the US has managed in recent months to push Germany into something like a position of European leadership, on the provision that it takes responsibility for organising and, importantly, financing the European contribution to the war.”

When Zelensky visited Berlin last Sunday, Scholz pledged £2.35 billion additional military aid to Ukraine. The day before, German heavy weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall announced that it will build a factory in Ukraine to repair and service tanks jointly with the state-owned defence group Ukroboronprom.

“Europeanising” the war would allow US imperialism to focus on the real threat to its global hegemony—China. The war in Ukraine is bleeding Russia. 

It also allowed Washington to brigade its main allies in Europe and the Pacific against both China and Russia, under the banner of an expanding Nato. This is a grim prospect, and not just for the Ukrainians and Russians dying as cannon fodder on the battlefield. The world is increasingly locked into a global struggle between rival imperialist giants. 

We need to build a movement that refuses to take either side and instead targets their system.