As we all well know, the so-called European right made considerable, even surprising, gains in the European Parliament elections. This should somewhat dampen the momentum of those who want to increase tensions with Russia. But here are some scenarios they could pursue and even use to justify the expansion of the right. In other words, as Lambert says, this is still a very dynamic situation.
French President Emmanuel Macron is making a surprising gamble by calling early elections after Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won the most votes in the European Parliament elections, with exit polls showing 32% of the vote compared with around 15% for Macron’s League. Given Macron’s poor political instincts, it’s hard to see the move working out for him.
Germany’s Green Party also suffered a major defeat. The provisional total is It came in second in 2019 with 20.5% but has now fallen to fourth place with 12.8%. The CDU/CSU came out on top with 30.9%, while the AfD rose from 11% to 14.9%. In Italy, Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy are estimated to have won between 26 and 29% of the vote, beating left-wing candidates who got between 21 and 25%.
In Austria, the right-wing Freedom Party led with 26.7% of the vote, but in the Netherlands and Hungary, support for the right fell short of expectations.
As The Guardian summed up, “Mainstream pro-European parties are set to retain their majority despite the rise of far-right and radical parties.”
Still, the results should add to a growing sense of horror at the lack of voter enthusiasm for the Ukraine project, despite attempts to stoke fears of imminent Putin’s pan-European domination. To be sure, we’ll see plenty of sloppy analysis of why more voters are refusing to bow to the centrists’ dictates. In many countries, the reasons are local, and likely oversimplified in an attempt to craft a blanket explanation. In the absence of better facts, James Carville’s “It’s the economy, idiot” is probably as good as any assessment.
But then again, broadly speaking, these “populist” right-wingers are nationalists, not keen on NATO adventurism or suspected Putin stooges. And it is likely that European and US leaders are now privately terrified by the risk of a Le Pen, and then a Trump, victory. But what will they do?
It is true, as Aurélien has said for some time, that all Europe can do in the long run is sulk in grandeur. Short of escalating to nuclear war or another spectacularly nasty military campaign, Russia is on track to overwhelm the Ukrainian military and be able to dictate the terms. Even if the West shows no cracks in its former anti-Russian solidarity, it is proving short on means. Ukraine’s allies have run out of weapons and have tried to keep supplies up. Brave words about increasing arms production have produced only modest results, even as Russia has significantly increased production of key equipment.
As experts have noted, even if US/NATO forces were able to continue supplying Ukraine with munitions, Ukraine is short on soldiers, especially those who are more than cannon fodder. It is unclear how representative these images are, but the fact that they exist is telling.
Earlier this year, the Sunday Times reported: #Ukrainian #Soldier At the forefront are 43-year-old middle-aged recruits from the 43rd Infantry Brigade in the Kharkov region, soldiers who look much older than 50.#Elderly It has been taken. #mobilization #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/RL4Zv3bU8d
— Best Health 4 You (@besthealthyou) June 9, 2024
Putin also discussed the sustainability of the Ukrainian military. During an interview with a foreign journalist:
According to our calculations, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lose about 50,000 personnel per month. Sanitary losses and irreparable losses are roughly equal. The current mobilization does not solve these problems. They mobilize about 30,000 people per month, most of them compulsory. There are almost no volunteers.
According to our data, in the past two months they have mobilized about 50,000-55,000 people, but this mobilization will not solve their problems as it will only make up for losses.
The issue leads to the lowering of the draft age, namely from 27 to 25. According to Ukrainian sources, the US government is insisting on gradually lowering the standard from 25 to 23, then to 20, and finally to 18. They already require 17-year-olds to register for the draft. This is a request from the US government to the Ukrainian leadership.
Putin also said, in effect, that the U.S. would keep Zelenskiy on to implement unpopular measures like conscription at 18, and would replace him when he no longer had any usefulness. Zelenskiy appears to have eliminated any immediate threat and is relatively safe for now.
The Biden administration (not just Biden, but Blinken, like a Victoria Nuland mini-me) despises Putin with the passion of a thousand burning suns. They will never tolerate negotiations with Putin or the Russian government. Macron, NATO, the UK, Poland and the Baltic leaders also show serious hostility.1
Putin’s intelligence is therefore consistent with the United States and key allies refusing to back down and continuing to pressure Ukraine to keep fighting, whatever the cost, Ukrainian men killed, injured, and territorial losses.
But we warned early on that Russia could win the war and lose the peace. The problem is that Putin’s main motivation for launching the special military operation was that the ongoing conflict in Donbas and the possible deployment of long-range missiles in Ukraine posed a direct threat to Russia’s security, whether as a full NATO member or in some kind of tacit informal capacity.
How will Putin achieve a cessation of violent conflict and improve Russia’s security?
Russia is militarily very superior, but it still faces two problems. First, Western absolutism means that Russia is likely to achieve maximum territorial gains within the interests of the Russian leadership. The West is determined to fight the Ukrainians to the last man. Already, its weapons supplies are drying up.
From an administrative point of view, Russia has no desire to hold hostile territory, which would mean that the territory it wishes to integrate into Russia would be limited to a little west of the Dnieper, in order to protect the major cross-river cities of Kiev, Dnipro, Zaporizhia, Kherson, and the Black Sea coast of Odessa.
Note that Russian control of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast could provoke a radical reaction from the West, but it is a risk Russia must consider, which is why Putin called Odessa a “seed of discord,” though in recent times Putin and other leaders have frequently described Odessa as a Russian city. And it goes without saying that Russian control of Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea would give it economic control over Ukraine.
But that doesn’t mean the West doesn’t have the resources. Even if the US and NATO coalition succeeds in killing and wounding most of the young people left in Ukraine on the battlefield, reducing their numbers, there will still be a western Ukraine that is ethnically Ukrainian and hostile to Russia. Russia doesn’t want to occupy it. But the alternative may be worse.
With populists being demonized, and Trump in particular gaining popularity in opinion polls, the current US leadership is taking steps to restrict him. From CNN in February:
Last December, lawmakers from both parties quietly inserted language limiting the president’s ability to withdraw from NATO into an annual defense policy bill passed with bipartisan support, perhaps anticipating former President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of the alliance.
Such preventative measures are likely to become a top priority. And here’s a quick spoiler: if I can think of these, I’m sure you can think of many more.
Early in the war, Colonel Douglas MacGregor discussed the possibility of forming a “coalition of the willing” of 100,000 troops from the US, Poland, Romania and the UK. Later, he envisaged it as a strike force to support Ukraine, stressing at the time that the numbers were too small to be likely to turn the tide of the war. (If I remember correctly, these comments were made before the defeat of the summer counter-offensive, so Russia was weaker than it is today.)
But what if the US were to reframe this as a strictly defensive operation to protect what remains of Ukraine? The US could try to achieve what they claim is a frozen conflict by declaring the borders of a demilitarized zone and then stationing coalition forces on the other side of it, in western Ukraine.
And with the West now firmly in control of the territory and having a pretext for a full-scale military presence, there is always the possibility that Russia could install long-range missiles in Ukraine, something it certainly doesn’t want.
Readers are welcome to question this notion, but Mark Slevoda, who tends to be conservative in his analysis (i.e. biased towards the “worst outcomes for Russia”), volunteered, without elaborating, that Russia occupying western Ukraine might be the best option, even though until recently he had not thought so.
Of course, as John Helmer pointed out early on, Russia could use a power cut to create a large demilitarized zone, the width of which would depend on the missile ranges of whatever Western powers deem appropriate, and unlike forming a “coalition of the willing,” this could be done fairly quickly.
Please note that the purpose of this post is not to suggest that Western countries will carry out any particular plan. However, the unexpected rise of the right wing and their little (at all?) dismay at Trump’s conviction seems to have caught the attention of many. And one of the thoughts they may be pursuing is how to create facts on the ground that would thwart their actions.
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1 It is not clear why Macron went from being open to negotiations with Putin to being hostile: Was it because Putin snubbed Macron by spreading rumors that he considered Macron’s lengthy phone calls a waste of time, or because Macron blamed Russia for France’s recent missteps in Africa?
