The US conceives a guerrilla war that in the long term will wear down Russia
Ukraine resists the Russian onslaught more successfully than the Pentagon expected. Still, the capital could fall within days, President Joe Biden told congressional leaders Thursday night in a conference call. The Ukrainian army, armed to the teeth by the US and NATO, only aspires to slow down the advance.
Kiev could fall as fast as Kabul to the Taliban, but the Eastern European country is not Afghanistan. On the contrary, the United States believes it has learned from it and now sees the possibility of Ukraine being a new Afghanistan for Russia. Washington’s Plan B would be to fuel a guerrilla war that, over time, will wear down Putin’s government and even overwhelm it, if opposition to the war continues at home.
Unlike Afghanistan, Ukraine is providing Washington with some of the episodes of heroism Americans love so much. The 13 uniformed Border Guardsmen who lost their lives “with honor” on Serpent Island, where they clashed with two Russian warships, opened the “Star and Stripes” portal this Friday (Stars and Stripes, the magazine Pentagon military). His war cry picked up by radio – “Russian ships, go to hell!” – could serve for a Hollywood script, but for now it feeds the legend of a resistance of film that justifies all the military aid in the world.
They defended an island of 18 hectares, slightly larger than Perejil, as bare and strategic for the defense of the Black Sea as the Strait of Gibraltar. Several Republican congressmen believe that the US Navy, which has avoided the area since December 15, has to dominate the Mediterranean with the USS Harry Trump aircraft carrier and the four destroyers anchored in Rota to break the naval blockade that currently prevents the US from UU and NATO resupply ammunition to the Ukrainian Army. The Stinger missiles and anti-tank Javelins they provided have been put to good use, because if the strategy of publicly anticipating the steps that Putin was going to take was of any use, it was to delay the invasion and arm Ukraine.
US intelligence has shone in this conflict like never before in this century, marked by failure to anticipate the 9/11 terrorist attacks, spread misinformation about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and underestimate the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan. “In my opinion, Vladimir Putin would not be in Ukraine if we had not precipitously left Afghanistan last August,” Senate Opposition Leader Mitch McConnell said after listening to Biden. “With that we send a message to the two great tyrants of the world, Putin and Xi (Jinping, China) that the United States is losing interest in playing a greater role in the world. That perception of weakness contributed to what we are experiencing now.”
With the longing for the strong man, it is heard that “with Trump this would not have happened”, although the former president’s admiration for Putin fuels Russian propaganda, as Hillary Clinton recalled this Friday on the “Morning Joe” program. In the US Congress sit nearly a hundred war veterans who crave action but know the pain of war too well to want to inflict it on American soldiers. Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, defends providing Ukraine with “all the weapons and intelligence” it needs to “kill all the Russians it can”, because in his opinion the United States has “the moral obligation not to allow autocratic regimes to attack democracies.
The Biden administration has lost the diplomatic battle to convince China to prevent the invasion, despite sharing its real-time intelligence with Beijing to convince it of the danger. He now needs to show his teeth to Russia to prevent the war from spilling over and in that he enjoys bipartisan support. The question is, will there be any free territory left in the Ukraine from which to organize the resistance? Without that, the geopolitical chessboard is complicated.