{"id":22134,"date":"2023-09-22T07:45:29","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T05:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=22134"},"modified":"2023-09-23T09:09:23","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T07:09:23","slug":"defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/?p=22134","title":{"rendered":"Defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Brenner, Scheerpost<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The United States is being defeated in Ukraine. One could say that it is facing\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>defeat \u2013 or, more starkly, that it is\u00a0staring defeat in the face<\/em>.<\/strong>\u00a0Neither formulation is appropriate, though. The U.S. doesn\u2019t look reality squarely in the eye. We prefer to look at the world through the distorted lenses of our fantasies. We plunge forward on whatever path we\u2019ve chosen while averting our eyes from the topography that we are trying to traverse.\u00a0 Our sole guiding light is the glow of a distant mirage.\u00a0<\/em>That is our\u00a0lodestone.<\/p>\n

It is not that America is a stranger to defeat. We are very well acquainted with it: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria \u2013 in strategic terms if not always military terms. To this broad category, we might add Venezuela, Cuba, and Niger. That rich experience in frustrated ambition has failed to liberate us from the deeply rooted habit of eliding defeat. Indeed, we have acquired a large inventory of methods for doing so.<\/p>\n

\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9<\/p>\n

What were Washington\u2019s objectives in sabotaging the Minsk peace plan and cold-shouldering<\/span> subsequent Russian proposals, in provoking Russia by crossing clearly demarcated red lines, in pressing for Ukraine\u2019s membership in NATO; in installing missile batteries in Poland and Rumania; in transforming the Ukrainian army into a potent military force deployed on the line-of-contact in the Donbas ready to invade or goad Moscow into preemptive action? The aim was to either pin a humiliating defeat on the Russian army or, at least, to inflict such heavy costs as to cut the ground from under the Putin government. The crucial, complementary dimension of the strategy was the imposition of economic sanctions so onerous as to implode a vulnerable Russian economy. Together, they would generate acute distress leading to the deposing\u00a0of\u00a0Putin \u2013 whether by a cabal of opponents (disgruntled oligarchs as the spearhead) or by mass protest. It was predicated on the fatally ill-informed supposition that he was an absolute dictator running a one-man<\/span> show, The U.S. foresaw his replacement by a more pliable government ready to become a\u00a0willing but marginal\u00a0presence on the European stage and a non-player<\/span> elsewhere.\u00a0In the crude words of one Moscow official, \u201ca tenant-farmer on Uncle Sam\u2019s global plantation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The taming and domestication of Russia was conceived as a vital step in the impending great confrontation with China \u2013 designated the systemic rival to American hegemony. Theoretically, that objective could be achieved either by enticing Russia away from China (divide and subordinate) or totally neutralizing Russia as a world power by bringing down its stiff-backed leadership. The former approach never went beyond a few desultory, feeble gestures. All the chips were placed on the latter.<\/p>\n

Ancillary benefits for the United States from a war over Ukraine that would bring Russia low were a) to consolidate the Atlantic alliance under Washington\u2019s control, expand NATO and open an unbridgeable abyss between Russia and the rest of Europe that would endure for the foreseeable future; b) to that end, the termination of the latter\u2019s heavy reliance on energy resources from Russia; and c) thereby, substituting higher-priced LNG and petroleum from the United States that would seal the European partners\u2019\u00a0status as dependent economic vassals. If the last were a drag on their industry, so be it.<\/p>\n

\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9<\/p>\n

In a sense, the most noteworthy inheritance from the post-Vietnam experience is the honing of methods to photoshop history.\u00a0\u00a0Vietnam was a warm-up for dealing with the many unsavory episodes in the post-9\/11 era. That thorough, comprehensive cleansing has made palatable Presidential mendacity, sustained deceit, mind-numbing incompetence, systemic torture, censorship, the shredding of the Bill of Rights<\/span> and the perverting of national public discourse\u00a0\u00a0\u2013 as it degenerated into a mix of propaganda and vulgar trash-talking. The \u201cWar on Terror<\/span>\u201d in all its atrocious aspects.<\/p>\n

Cultivated amnesia is a craft enormously facilitated by two broader trends in American culture: the cult of ignorance whereby a knowledge-free mind is esteemed as the ultimate freedom; and a public ethic whereby the nation\u2019s highest officials are given license to treat the truth as a potter treats clay so long as they say and do things that make us feel good. So, our strongest collective memory of America\u2019s wars of choice is the desirability \u2013 and ease \u2013 of forgetting them. \u201cThe show must go on\u201d is taken as our imperative.<\/p>\n

\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9<\/p>\n

The focal shift from Russia in Europe to China in Asia is less a mechanism for coping with defeat than the pathological reaction of a country that, feeling a gnawing sense of diminishing prowess, can manage to do nothing more than try one final fling at proving to itself that it still has the right stuff \u2013 since living without that exalted sense of self is intolerable. What is deemed heterodox, and daring, in Washington these days is to argue that we should wrap up the Ukraine affair one way or another so that we might gird our loins for the truly historic contest with Beijing. The disconcerting truth that nobody of consequence in the country\u2019s foreign policy establishment has denounced this hazardous turn toward war supports the proposition that deep emotions rather than reasoned thought are propelling us toward an avoidable, potentially catastrophic conflict.<\/p>\n

A society represented by an entire political class that is not sobered by that prospect rightly can be judged as providing\u00a0prime facie<\/em>\u00a0evidence of being collectively unhinged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Brenner, Scheerpost: The United States is being defeated in Ukraine. One could say that it is facing\u00a0defeat \u2013 or, more starkly, that it is\u00a0staring defeat in the face.\u00a0Neither formulation is appropriate, though. The U.S. doesn\u2019t look reality squarely in … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.ee\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}