The Ukraine Conundrum--Eurasia and the Fourth Reich

Ben Shapiro’s excellent two-part podcast interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seed for some very rotten thoughts…...

Ben Shapiro’s recent two-part interview podcast with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine is well worth your time as it opens several avenues of thinking, none of them pleasant.

While much of Zelenskyy’s answers were stream of consciousness impaired by his translator’s occasional gobblygook of English, discreet important issues (previously unaddressed) were raised.

Americans are concerned, especially after the Biden years of double-dealing with/by Ukraine, about where our $200+ billion in aid has gone. Zelenskyy notes their books are open to audit at any time, completely transparent—which does not mean accurate or truthful, after all. But he notes that Ukraine has been the recipient of only $104 billion in discreet U.S. aid in money and weapons. He reminds us that Ukraine did not purchase weapons or other non-monetary aid, and did not transport and set up these discreet items. Those expenses were borne by the U.S. He notes some of the value of that U.S. aid was in training his military to use and maintain the weapons. Given what DOGE continues to uncover about our government’s lax and sometimes bizarre fiscal activities, perhaps we best audit our side of the transaction first, then Ukraine’s. DOGE, just now entering the morass of Department of Defense cost-plus spending and repeated audit failures seven years in a row, might first audit just our aid military and otherwise that “went out the door”. Publishing this in detail would be very educational to both the advocates and adversaries to our “endless wars”. And a strong starting position for auditing what was received by the Ukrainians and for what they have used it. At the very worst, we would not want a lot of military aid end up in Russian hands, like our $85 billion in military equipment we bequeathed to the Taliban.

Zelenskyy notes that U.S. aid has been an exchange of value with the U.S. In their desperate fight for survival against a foe that has superior numbers of weapons and superior numbers of apparently willing cannon fodder, they have learned a great deal about Russian battle tactics, logistics, and innovation abilities (for example, the new wire-guided drones). And they are learning, perhaps, about North Korean battle tactics, since the Russians are using Korean state mercenaries in the Kursk incursion. The Ukrainians have made their own rapid innovations in weapons and tactics. Their production of new types of drones, both land-based and nautical, and their use of them on a modern battlefield has markedly evolved the concepts of infantry and armored ground warfare and vulnerabilities of naval and commercial shipping. They have carefully evaluated the capabilities, use, and defenses against many Russian weapon systems. All this first-hand knowledge and more Zelenskyy claims has been given to the U.S. That has present and future utility to the U.S. and to NATO.

As an example, more than forty years ago, one U.S. military method of personal defense against Russian chemical warfare was based on what the Israeli Defense Force found in a captured Syrian tank. It was a metal “band aid” box with wooden tongue blades and a autoinjector with an atropine-like substance. Our intelligence deduced that the Russians, who supplied the Syrians with their T-series tanks, must have a deployable nerve agent in a gel-like substrate that could be absorbed trans dermally. The tongue blades could be used to scrape off the substance; the autoinjector was an antidote for any actual exposure. Thus, in the early 1980’s some of us in the USAF medical corps were trained in the use of “chemical warfare” fatigue uniforms. These were two layers of thick canvas with an internal layer of activated charcoal. Very hot and very constraining. A very expensive partial solution to a problem possibly revealed by one small metal box in one (Russian) Syrian tank. Who knows what we may be gleaning, useful or not, from Ukraine’s experiences?

Zelenskyy finishes his long largely uninterrupted representations to Shapiro with two broader concepts, both of which we have recognized but choose to ignore. The President of Ukraine notes that Putin’s Russia does not simply want the Donbas region and Crimea. Putin fully intends to end Ukraine as a nation state and subsume it within a new greater Russia. Shapiro, as I will note below, spends considerable time on the history and sources of this intent following the second part of his interview with Zelenskyy. Ukraine’s leader finishes by reminding us (meaning the West), that unless the Russians can be stopped here, we (meaning Europe, and through NATO eventually the U.S.) will be dealing with them again. This is a recurrence of the Cold War Domino Theory that led to the expensive stalemates and defeats of the West in Korea and Vietnam, and partial victories and stalemates in Central and South America and other parts of Asia. Soviet expansionism was stopped not by military resistance or CIA operations, but by a prolonged drop in the price of oil which bankrupted their guns and butter campaigns. China, still relatively isolated economically despite Nixon’s terrible decision to entice them into capitalism, spent those years largely churning butter, only recently turning to guns. But Zelensky may be indirectly prescient. Is America prepared to deal with this possibility?

The flavor of America First is heavily spiced with vigilant political isolationism. George Washington, in his 1796 farewell address, specified this principle. “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible…. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation.” Note he wished no limits on our “commercial relations”, and perhaps this is where our capitalistic principle “the business of America is business” originated. The political interests of other countries, especially those of Europe, are again asserted by President Trump to be a “very remote relation”. With his insistence that Europe, especially NATO, immediately fulfill its financial obligations to itself and its own defense, he has perhaps re-established the supremacy of American commercial interests over political ones. He furthers this by his emphatic insistence on a complete restructuring of international trade relations with the United States. Our long-term policy of international diplomacy has been based on enticing other countries to copy or mirror at least some aspects of the American democratic republic with enhancements in commercial trade policy. Mr. Trump may not be far wrong when he says this method has resulted in many, if not most, other nations taking advantage both commercially and politically. As

eugyppius

has written in his Substack essay Political Stupidity, “irrational beliefs [nation-building] can be highly sophisticated, and they frequently function as a legendary, mythological or religious gloss upon actions or strategies that are at base completely rational and anything but stupid [expanding American imperialism]”. Our error may be twofold: seeking to “Americanize” other nations culturally, politically, and socially, and doing so by offering inducements. Perhaps we should leave self-determination to other peoples and concentrate on rewarding good commercial and political behavior by other nations rather than attempting to bribe them into compliance with our political standards. To use a bad metaphor, why should other nations, especially those who have chosen to be our adversaries, buy the cow when the milk is free?

The immediate response to our apparent political withdrawal and kicking over the table of international trade has been the latest hysteria of the moment. Media waxes catastrophically as that which bleeds leads. Commercial interests whose only timeline is their executives’ next quarterly report, and the giant casino of our modern Wall Street (forget the fundamentals, what does the algorithm say about the arbitrage?) call sky fall. Indeed, our whole economic model has become a casino, with all elements and participants betting their present and future on the full faith and credit of the house. The house in turn bases its own faith and credit on its ability to endlessly issue fiat money and credit out of thin air. We should not be, as Washington put it, “…ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.” One way or the other, history teaches us that the house’s bluff is always eventually called.

That Trumpian foresight is why the previously ignored importance has now become the present urgent tyranny. If we do not begin substantial economic course corrections now, our rout from reality first set by abandoning the Bretton Woods agreements and accelerated by four decades of ineffective bribery of the Chinese Communist Party with our industry and intellectual property will lead us to an economic sinking deeper than that of the Great Depression. Our Marshall Plan rebuilt the industrial and productive capacity of self-sustainment in Europe and Japan after WWII. Its extension as “nation building” in opposition to the potential spread of Communism has only sustained and emboldened those who choose to be adversaries. The political and cultural diversity of nations and peoples requires recognition, acceptance, and tolerance, but not selective promotion. Again, Washington: “In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded;…just and amicable feeling towards all should be cultivated.” Based on their behavior, I would add. The Bible teaches disciples to preach the Gospel, and if no one is interested, shake the dust off one’s sandals and walk on to others.

The physical isolation of the United States, protected by two broad oceans and less capable neighbors certainly bred much of George Washington’s version of aloofness rather than true isolationism. Transitioning to a diplomatic policy based on aloofness and transactional responsive engagement with those who choose to seek a “deal” with America (who come to us, not whom we go to hat in hand) may be even more important due to our modern instant interconnectedness. The game table of international economic and political activities may only be level one hand at a time. That can only be assured when the players are at the table, have given their buy-in, agreed to all the rules of the game, and agreed to trust the dealer. Each hand, each game, each set of players, will change with every deal. And all must be assured that the house can and will always pay out the same value without any purchasing power reduction via deliberate inflation. Soon the chips may no longer be American dollars.

Two examples of our usual history of international diplomacy based on inducement (hopeful bribery) versus our minimally, if ever, used reward after good behavior are both from the Obama-Biden twelve years. Obama’s “deal” with Iran tried to induce them to diminish and delay nuclear warfare capabilities till well after his Presidency, by providing relief from prior economic sanctions and billions of dollars in hard currency shipped in on pallets in the back of an American military cargo plane. The Iranians said, “thank you very much”, moved their storefront bar into a basement speakeasy, and used our hard currency to advance their nuclear program and arm their proxies conducting asymmetrical warfare in the Middle East and elsewhere. It was a bad deal, as Trump has said, but perhaps mostly because it kicked the can down the road into Obama’s delayed 3^rd term with his proxy, Joe Biden. Curiously it was Joe, who never got anything right in foreign policy in forty years in government according to his puppet master, who successfully used Trump’s intended method in foreign affairs. Biden famously told the Ukrainians in public that he was leaving their country in six hours, and if they didn’t fire one certain prosecutor before then, he would not give them their billion-dollar loan guarantee. He dared them to call President Obama. Whether they did or not (and that is an important tidbit none of the legacy media seems interested in), the threat held, they did as instructed and were rewarded with the billion dollars. And lots of follow-on aid, some of which may have bounced back via a certain drug-addled son. Simply speaking, wiser heads well-schooled in the intricacies and etiquettes of international diplomacy might call one of these methods bribery and the other extortion. While uncommon or well-concealed in diplomacy, less robust versions are everyday occurrences in business all over the world. Reading The Art of The Deal, one gains the impression that Trump abhors the idea of bribery or inducements and is very willing to withhold the reward of any deal unless and until the other party performs exactly as he has specified. He wishes the United States to be more aloof in international affairs but is willing to respond and engage transactionally with other nations who express, by their economic and political behavior, a desire to deal with us in a fair manner. How is that fairness determined? By rigorous, detailed negotiations that rapidly result in an iron-clad “contract” of what specifically is to take place over a verifiable planned schedule. If performance falters or fails, the U.S. will walk away and seek others. Trump appears less interested in the changing opinions and dalliances of foreign governments and nations, perhaps measuring diplomatic/economic affairs on a Gantt or Pert chart. Again,

eugyppius

has said government should not be stupid: “Stupidity, at least its political variety, frequently involves some element of internal incoherence.” Government and diplomacy may not be business. But they should not be intentions, promises, empty one-sided alliances, or accepted failures to abide by treaties.

Changing from an inducement model of diplomacy to a reward model may be our best hope of dealing with Putin’s larger intentions that are only signaled by his Special Military Operation (remember our phrase for the Korean War?). As noted above in Ben Shapiro’s second part of his interview with President Zelenskyy, that embattled leader vaguely referred to the need for the West to continue to support his country against Russia because a successful Putin might well soon be pulling the West’s sons and daughters onto the battlefield. Both parties of our government’s policy wonks, isolationists and interventionalists, find this idea specious. The interventionalists boldly require our active direct support and involvement, without American boots on the ground, because Europe might indeed be chewed up in small bites of assimilation or cooperation with Russia. We have an historical obligation to defend Europe regardless of its inherent intentions or capacities to defend itself, dating from the two World Wars. A large part of that assumed obligation is economic and cultural. But the interventionalists have little or no practical answers to three simple questions: how does America provide the massive amounts of weapons needed in an interminable Ukraine-Russian war much less its eventual expansion into Europe when we don’t have the defense industrial capacity to maintain our current level of supplies both domestically and for aid? Given that much of Europe has refused for many years to maintain or build up their own defenses, or develop truly cooperative defenses with exchangeable weapons systems, for example, how will they face a resilient Russian army even with our rapidly extinguished help? Most importantly, how will America and Europe, or Europe alone, effectively resist Russian armed aggression while avoiding escalation to at least tactical nuclear weapons? The Russians have persistently spoken a reverse Trumpism— “We will use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield if the West intervenes more directly…. but we may not”.

If Ukraine is our current Sudetenland, how long could we remain aloof beyond our Atlantic moat in the age of ICBMs, satellites, and cyberwarfare? What is Putin’s real long-term intent beyond his existential need for a warm-water port (Crimea) and his desire to resorb what he views as the historical heartland of Russia? Ben Shapiro covers this in the afterword of the second part of his interview with Zelenskyy. Shapiro has studied the works of Alexander Dugin, the “far-right” political philosopher of post-Soviet Russia. Dugin, still alive, detailed his vision of neo-Eurasianism and a Fourth Political Theory in works published in 1997 and after. He apparently is to Putin as Kissinger was to Nixon, a political guru of Russia’s messianic role in world history. Dugin believes in the absolute necessity, the right, of Russia to rule over Europe and Central Asia, perhaps in close cooperation with China (who would be a vassal state). He combines the political necessity of defeating sea-based empires (the Atlanticists) with a religious fervor to restore true Eastern Orthodox Christianity to the world. Putin has repeatedly voiced such opinions if not so clearly and forcefully as his mentor to whom he has referred on occasion. Putin is at that dangerous age for a messianic dictator. At 72, young and healthy for someone with ruthless absolute control of the Russian state and military. But old enough to have an accelerating desire to establish his legacy, to place his Russia firmly on the path to attaining Dugin’s visions. Presuming his eventual control, if not destruction, of Ukraine, where will these visions take him next?

Ukraine’s neighbors such as Transnistria and Moldova attract attention but are of too little importance. Their acquiescence to his desires would follow his dominance of Ukraine automatically. His preparations, Russia’s prior history, and his larger neighbor’s’ anxious actions point our attention north.

Finland, through long history a vassal of imperial and then Soviet Russia, graduated after WWII to watchful neutrality. With the Ukraine incursion, Finland has reevaluated their posture and vulnerability. They are now NATO members. More than that, they have formed a defensive cooperative alliance with other northern European states including Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Why are these countries somewhat more anxious than their southern neighbors who directly faced the Warsaw Pact for decades? Perhaps they realize that Russia’s next territorial expansions might more naturally and strategically be through the Baltic countries. At the southern end of these three small nations is Kaliningrad, an outpost of Russia on the Baltic left dangling since the dissolution of the USSR. At the northern end is Estonia, 39% of whom speak Russian and 22% of whom consider themselves ethnic Russians. Right next to St. Petersburg. Putin in years past had directly threatened Estonia, warning of oppressive measures taken against Russian speakers and his full desire and intent to intervene militarily to protect Russian speakers when and anywhere he wished. This is the same justification behind his takeover of Ukraine’s Donbas region. Rolling up Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, somewhat isolated in land warfare terms between Finland and Poland on Russia’s and Belarus’ borders, would secure Kaliningrad, provide important further access to the Baltic Sea, and a kind of wedge between mainland Europe and the Scandinavian peninsula. What on-the-ground evidence do we see for this possible intention?

We see what Finland, and her new allies, have seen. Thomas Groves details reasons in his recent Wall Street Journal article (https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-military-nato-europe-finland) The Russian Military Moves that have Europe on Edge. A massive buildup of Russian army forces 100 miles from the Finnish border, with an important Army headquarters in the offing. Russia has no realistic worry about Finland, Scandinavia, or NATO invading Russia via this route. America and her allies did land at Murmansk along with forces transiting the Caucasus and Siberia towards the end of WWI to intervene in the Bolshevik takeover of Russia and try to force it back on the eastern front, but in the age of satellites such a large invasion would be easily detected and thwarted. No effective land force could accumulate on Finland’s 800-mile border without detection and would need to travel immense distances to cause significant problems in Russia west of the Urals. The only reason for Russia accumulating a huge new ground force in this area is an offensive option. In that event, Europe’s (and our) three conundrums remain as stated above.

So how can President Trump, and/or the West, responsively engage Russia in some transaction to avoid the above fantasies? Mr. Trump’s current efforts seem to belie his own stated methods. He does not appear to have anything that Mr. Putin wants other than Ukraine. Mr. Trump has written that to make a deal, you must find someone who has become interested in exchanging their value for your value, and often this involves finding out what several accessory values that other party is also interested in. By incorporating those other accessory items into the negotiation, one can often make a deal that could not be based on the single exchangeable value alone. That is in part his process in the current “Tariff War”. He uses tariffs as the entry value, when he really wants to deal with many other international trade problems as part of the main negotiation. And, as is his usual method, he asks for the sun, the moon, and the stars when he is willing to settle, after hard dealings, for a few orbital satellites which were his primary object to start with. Yet we do not see this same methodology in dealing with Putin and Russia. He seems to have returned to the inducement school of international diplomacy. Perhaps because he cannot see any accessory values that Putin may want. Thus, our supplication— “If you stop the war you can keep Crimea and the Donbas”. Mr. Putin rightly responds, “I will keep Crimea and the Donbas in any case; I will take the rest of Ukraine by force unless you give it to me by keeping it out of NATO and completely demilitarizing it.” Are there no options?

Being a layman, I can only see the trees, not the forest. The U.S. and Europe do have additional political and economic options, all with the real risk of a nuclear attack in retaliation. We have not completely cut off all aspects of dealing with Russia economically. The U.S. could replace what little energy supplies still come to Europe from Russia. If not already done, Russia could be further excluded from international monetary settlement institutions. Most importantly, with an immediate and robust return to energy independence and coordination with our (supposed) allies in the Petro world, we could purposefully drive down the price of oil into the $40 per barrel region. While this would cause problems in our and other’s economies, some have said it would quickly bankrupt Russia, whose main funding of their economy and war efforts are international sales of energy. Damaging Russia’s ally Iran would be a secondary benefit.

Many other more complex actions are probably available and beyond the understanding of routine citizens. The absence of a flurry of such actions, given Trump’s propensity for simultaneous multilateral immediate actions, is puzzling. Given that absence it is hard to foresee a good outcome for Ukraine. Or perhaps for Europe. Hitler had his need for Lebensraum; Putin appears to need Eurasianism and a kind of Fourth Reich. None of us in the West should ignore his clear long-term intentions.