But first let’s ask the question….is the world weary of the Ukraine situation?

According to data collected by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, shipments of military aid to Ukraine from European countries have been trending down since April. In July, Europe’s six largest countries made no new military commitments for the first time since the war started. The data includes arms shipments from the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland. The Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker reported that “the flow of new international support for Ukraine has dried up in July. No large EU country like Germany, France or Italy, has made significant new pledges.”

But while Europe’s arms shipments to Ukraine are down, its trade with Russia is up. It has been no secret that Russia’s oil exports have lost little to the U.S.-led sanctions. China’s and India’s increases in Russian oil imports alone have balanced losses to Western sanctions. China has increased imports of Russian oil by 55 percent, and Russia is now the second largest exporter of oil to India. Even Saudi Arabia has more than doubled its imports of Russian oil, while Russian oil now accounts for almost half of Turkey’s energy requirements.

Trade with Russia by Europe is up?  What happened to all those sanctions?

So it appears that the war is a bit trying on the world…..

Yes I know I have not been one of the cheerleaders of US support for Ukraine….of course I have my detractors who always deflect from the question I continuously ask…..what is the US goals for Ukraine?

Are we protecting democracy?

Not if oppositions parties have been banned, leaders jailed and media under government control…..

Is it that we just hate Russia?

Or maybe it is the sell of weapons and the greed that goes with that.

I have yet to hear one concrete answer to what our goals are for Ukraine…..

To date, none of America’s top leaders have said how our support for Kyiv is expected to achieve the outcomes sought. No one has articulated what a “weakened” Russia looks like or how we’ll know when that standard has been reached – or even why weakening Russia is a vital interest to the U.S. that is worth taking huge risks. These are not just academic or hair-splitting questions. They are foundational. Here’s why:

Since even before the war began, the United States has had no vision for the end state it wishes to produce. For example, if Biden’s objective prior to 24 February genuinely was to deter Russia from launching a war, it should have been clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a threat of sanctions alone would not have been sufficient to convince Putin not to invade.

Washington would have had to be aggressively engaged diplomatically with both Kyiv and Moscow to use the full heft of U.S. power to find a route to prevent war. There is no evidence the U.S. put any serious diplomatic effort towards averting war. Without a clearly articulated objective, there was nothing to guide the various departments of the Administration on how to achieve the desired outcome. The result was predictable: policy failure.

Virtually the only objective voiced by any member of Biden’s national security team since the war began has been Austin’s aforementioned desire to see Russia “weakened.” Yet if the White House doesn’t know what a weakened Russia looks like, how will it ever know if its actions are contributing towards a successful outcome beneficial to America? That’s where we are right now.

What Is America’s Goal for the Ukraine War? Answer: We Don’t Have One

Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top weapons-buyer, said this week that the US trained the Ukrainian missileers on how to use the Harpoon missiles that sank two Russian warships. This is how it always goes: first sell a besieged ally weapons, then train the foreign troops how to use them, then send military advisors for how to deploy the weapons, then send the CIA to pick targets, then send US troops when all of the above fails, kill tens of thousands of people (mostly civilians), then cut and run before you’re chased out of the country by the very people you claimed you wanted to protect…

So after all that the question remains….what is the goals for Ukraine?

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”