West’s support for Ukraine war is declining

Joe Biden’s Ukraine war has failed to progress as planned. After recapturing the eastern Kharkiv region and its capital city Kherson at the end of last year, Ukrainian forces have been stalemated by Russia. Ukraine’s widely touted 2003 spring offensive slipped into summer and stalled on the edge of Russia’s 20-kilometre deep fortified front line along the 965- kilometre border. Their battle-readiness waning, Ukraine’s soldiers face the mud, rain, snow, and ice of winter.

The US President Biden and his partner NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg find themselves facing increasing isolation as allies waver and count the costs of sustaining the Ukrainian war effort.

“I have no doubt that we will certainly achieve all the goals we have set for ourselves,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told soldiers during an event for awarding medals where he announced his candidacy for the 2024 elections. With US and European assistance, Ukraine recruited, trained, and armed 60,000 soldiers comprising a dozen new brigades with the objective of cutting through Russia’s formidable front line. Where Ukrainian forces were deployed to breach the Russian lines, they were in “penny packets” rather than in strength and failed to achieve their objective. When Ukraine’s counter-offensive finally commenced in early June, tanks and armoured troop carriers were trapped in Russia’s trenches, blown up by mines, and taken out by airstrikes and armed drones.

US and NATO military planners did not take into consideration the dictum of the 18th-19th military strategist, Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz who held that the ratio of attacking to defending forces should be three-to-one. Instead, the ratio was one-to-five: Ukraine’s brigades were up against as many as 300,000 well-dug-in Russians. High tech Western weaponry provided to Ukraine did not overcome World War I trench warfare and lower tech Russian shells and bombs.

Biden, NATO, and Western backers also did not take into consideration that Ukraine – with a population of 44 million, limited manpower, manufacturing capabilities, and resources – has taken on trans-continental Russia. It has a population of 144 million, infinite weapons manufacturing capabilities, and massive resources.

Putin intends to increase the size of the Russian military from by 170,000 to 2.2 million and boost the military budget for the next three years. Russia also has time in its favour. After establishing its defensive lines, Russia simply needs to fend off Ukrainian assaults, sit tight, rotate troops from time to time, and service weaponry. Biden and company do not have time. Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February 2022, halfway through Biden’s presidency, prompting NATO and allies to press Ukraine to deliver victory within the first year. When this did not happen, the deadline was fixed for the end of 2023. This is not going to be met.

As the stalemate stretches toward 2024, popular support for Ukraine is diminishing in the US and Europe and the global south has been increasingly alienated by the war and has boosted ties to Western-sanctioned Russia. Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza has accelerated the process of popular disillusionment with Biden, NATO, and the West. Ukraine’s disappointed, clearly frightened President Volodymyr Zelensky has tried to tie the success of his country’s war with Russia to the existence of the “free world.”

Weaponry and funds no longer flow freely from the West to Ukraine. Support for the war effort has been undermined by political bickering, particularly in Washington. Congressional Republicans insist that a $100 billion bill for funding the Ukraine war and Israel’s war on Gaza must include a financial package for preventing Latin American immigrants from crossing from Mexico into the US. Biden thought pairing funds for Ukraine with money for Israel’s war effort would get round the problem but his ploy has failed. Just over half the US public continues to support the war and the percentage is falling. Biden, Stoltenberg and Zelensky gambled on US military training and arms to do the trick. They clearly do not read military history. Since World War II – which Washington belatedly entered 1941 after Japan attacked Hawaii – the US has “won” only one war.

The US lost the 1950s Korean war as that country remained divided between the Communist North and the pro-US South. Despite massive carpet bombing and the use of poisonous chemical agents, the US lost the 1955-1975 Vietnam war to the Communist Viet Cong. Thanks to a coalition of Western and regional powers, the US can be said to have “won” the 1991 war to drive Iraqi occupation forces from Kuwait. The US and its allies lost the 2001-2021 Afghan war against the Taliban.

In 2003, the US and its partner Britain defeated the Iraqi army, overthrew the government of President Saddam Hussein, and occupied Iraq. But Washington “lost” the war by installing a pro-Iran sectarian government which was incapable of countering the threat posed by Al Qaeda and Daesh. Daesh captured 40 per cent of Iraq which had to be liberated by a new US coalition, leaving key regions in Iraq in ruins and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in refugee camps. Iraq has not recovered. Washington has been reviled for attacking a country which was never a threat to US security, thereby violating the UN charter which prohibits wars of aggression.

During his 2019 campaign for Ukraine’s presidency, Zelensky pledged to sort out Kyiv’s problems with Moscow. To do this, he had to remove from Ukraine’s constitution the intention of joining NATO, a “red line” for Moscow. It had tolerated the NATO accession of former Soviet satellite states but had made it clear Ukraine’s desire to join the Western alliance was unacceptable and Ukraine would face consequences if it went ahead and applied. Russia’s massing of troops along the Ukraine border during November and December 2021 was intended as a warning to Ukraine, NATO, and the US — which they ignored. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the result. Ukraine has paid a high price in death and destruction and will have to negotiate sooner rather than later. Mother Russia might not “win” her wars but does not suffer “defeat” as her popular passive and active armed resistance to the invasions of Napoleon in the 19th and Hitler in the 20th centuries have shown.