Some Neo-Cons Slowly Coming To Grips With Reality In Ukraine
This week’s “No Shit Analysis” award goes to Eugene B. Rumer for his Wall Street Journal op-ed, It’s Time to End Magical Thinking About Russia’s Defeat. Only took him 22 months to figure this out. He may be a slow learner but give him some credit, he finally awakened from his dream world and is beginning to grasp that the Ukraine project is swirling down the toilet.
Eugene B. Rumer is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington DC. Previously, he served at the State Department, on the staff of the National Security Council and at RAND.
Despite his pedigree, he is struggling to acknowledge reality and still feels the need to spin nonsense. Here is an example:
Putin has reason to believe that time is on his side. At the front line, there are no indications that Russia is losing what has become a war of attrition. The Russian economy has been buffeted, but it is not in tatters. Putin’s hold on power was, paradoxically, strengthened following Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed rebellion in June. Popular support for the war remains solid, and elite backing for Putin has not fractured.
Yep. Russia’s economy is so battered that it is headed toward 4% growth, its defense industry is out-producing Europe and the United States combined, it is manufacturing new, more deadly drones and the stores across Russia are filled to the brim. If that is “battered” give me some.
Poor Rumer just cannot admit that Russia is winning, which is why he opts for the awkward phrase, “no indications that Russia is losing.” Nope. Just the opposite. Plenty of indications Russia is winning. Moscow’s air defense system has thwarted Ukraine’s multiple, feckless attempts to inflict serious damage on Russian military assets and the Russian Army is in the process of carving up Ukrainian defenders trying to hang on to Avdeeka.
Rumer does enjoy a moment of clarity in this paragraph:
Putin can also look at his foreign-policy record with satisfaction. His investments in key relationships have paid off. China and India have provided an important backstop for the Russian economy by ramping up imports of Russian oil and other commodities. Instead of fretting about lost markets in Western Europe or Beijing’s reluctance to flout U.S. and EU sanctions, Putin has decided that it’s more advantageous in the short term simply to become China’s junior partner in the economic realm. Goods from China account for nearly 50% of Russian imports, and Russia’s top energy companies are now hooked on selling to China.
The West’s plan to topple Putin and carve up
Source: The Gateway Pundit
