https://sputnikglobe.com/20231216/scott-ritter-joe-bidens-world-war-iii-fantasy-1115624459.html

Scott Ritter: Joe Biden's World War III Fantasy

Scott Ritter: Joe Biden's World War III Fantasy

Sputnik International

On July 13, 2023, US President Joe Biden confidently announced to the world that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has already lost the war.”

2023-12-16T13:44+0000

2023-12-16T13:44+0000

2023-12-16T13:44+0000

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The “war” Biden spoke of was Russia’s Special Military Operation against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022.Biden’s bold statement was made during a press conference with Finland's President Sauli Niinisto, following a meeting with Nordic leaders that came on the heels of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.Biden declared that the US and its NATO allies had, through their decision to commit to the military victory of Ukraine over Russia, reached “an inflection point in history,” adding that “This fight is not only a fight for the future of Ukraine, it is about sovereignty, security and freedom itself.”The American president’s pronouncements followed similarly themed rhetoric spoken in Vilnius a day prior, where he announced to his NATO colleagues, “Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken,” adding that “We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.”Confronted with a trifecta of bad news—the calamitous defeat of the NATO-trained and equipped Ukrainian military in the much-hyped summer counteroffensive, a Russian Army that is growing stronger by the day, and the collapse of political will and fiscal ability on the part of Ukraine’s erstwhile allies in the US and Europe to continue funding Ukraine’s flagging war effort—Joe Biden was compelled to alter his pledge to the cause of Ukrainian and European liberty and freedom to “as long as we can,” with the modifier contingent upon the US Congress’ willingness to throw another $60 billion into the $120 billion in aid the US has provided Ukraine since May 2022.To intimidate Congress into yielding to his demands regarding money for Ukraine, Biden undertook a campaign of terror. “Frankly,” Biden said in a statement delivered at the White House in early December, “I think it’s stunning we have gotten to this point in the first place. Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership.”While many Republicans support continued funding of the Ukraine war effort, the issue has become politicized in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, where domestic issues tend to trump foreign affairs. And, currently, there is no more high-profile domestic policy issue than border security and immigration reform. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who has been a vociferous supporter of Ukraine, noted that while he would support continued funding of Ukraine’s war effort, he could not return to his home state of South Carolina to “try to explain why I helped Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel and did nothing to secure our own border. I will help all of our allies, but we have got to help ourselves first.”Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the House and a hardline conservative, indicated that the objection to continued funding for Ukraine went beyond simply funding issues. “What is the objective?” Johnson said to reporters after meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky earlier this month. “What is the endgame in Ukraine? How are we going to have proper oversight of the funds?”Both Graham and Johnson had been subjected to a full-court press by Joe Biden and the White House in an effort for the recalcitrant Republicans to reverse course on their objections. “We can’t let Putin win,” Biden pleaded. “If Putin takes Ukraine,” Biden noted, “he won’t stop there.” The US president said an emboldened Putin would move on to threaten his NATO neighbors. And then, Biden stated, “We’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops.”If the threat of a Third World War in the face of Congressional inaction wasn’t enough, Biden authorized the Pentagon to declassify and release to CNN an intelligence report that claimed that Russia had suffered enormous casualties in its war with Ukraine, with some 315,000 of an estimated 360,000 troops that made up Russia’s pre-conflict ground force, having been killed or wounded. The declassified intelligence report also claimed that 2,200 of Russia’s 3,500 tanks have been lost, along with 4,400 of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.The release of the declassified report was clearly timed to influence the US Congress by emphasizing the very talking points that have been repeatedly made by Senator Graham and others that the US aid was “Best money we’ve ever spent” because “the Russians are dying.”Given the history of the US intelligence community of declassifying intelligence reports for the specific purpose of releasing the information to mainstream media outlets to shape public opinion—even if the intelligence community knows the information contained in the report is wrong—one must take the report regarding Russian casualties with a heavy grain of salt. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia currently has some 617,000 troops deployed in the Special Military Operation zone. These forces are on the offensive, actively advancing on several fronts against a Ukrainian Army which is rapidly losing its ability to sustain large-scale ground combat operations. This doesn’t sound like the performance of an organization that suffered some 87% casualties, a figure which would make the survivors combat ineffective.The fact is, US and European support for Ukraine is flagging, and Ukraine is facing an existential crisis in the coming weeks and months that it most likely will not be able to resolve in its favor.While Russian troops are taking casualties, it is far more likely than not that the real Russian casualty figures are significantly less than the number reported in the declassified US intelligence report, spread out over the original force and the hundreds of thousands of mobilized reservists and volunteers who have entered the fighting since. These losses pale in comparison to the more than 400,000 dead and nearly one million wounded Ukraine has suffered.Russia’s combat power grows every day, with fresh troops and equipment being made available for the war effort. Ukraine, on the other hand, has exhausted its reserves, and is left scraping the bottom of its human resources barrel to man whatever units it is able to organize from what is left of Ukraine’s diminished, and diminishing, arsenal.While the Russian Army is indeed large, and growing, and its capabilities expanding as it becomes more combat experienced, it is an army with a very specific mission—the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Russian force structure is currently more than sufficient to defeat the Ukrainians on a frontage that stretches some 2,000 kilometers in length. It is even large enough to secure some additional Ukrainian territory, in addition to liberating the newly absorbed Russian territories of the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, and Lugansk regions still held by Ukraine. But there are physical limitations as to what one can accomplish with 617,000 troops and occupying all of Ukraine before invading Poland and/or the Baltics is well beyond the capacity of the Russian forces currently deployed in the Special Military Operation.Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin has never intimated that Russia had any intention to either occupy all of Ukraine or seek to attack NATO — just the opposite. The Russian goals and objectives of the Special Military Operation are spelled out very clearly — demilitarization (the destruction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces), de-Nazification (the elimination of the regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the pro-Nazi political element inside Ukraine), and permanent neutrality for Ukraine (i.e., Ukraine will never join NATO). There is no intent to take the war to NATO. Such thinking is a fear-based construct of the Biden administration that is inaccurate and far removed from reality, little more than a fantasy which the sober-minded Russian government, ever mindful of the need to carefully manage escalation because of the Special Military Operation, will pay scant attention to.Joe Biden and his national security team are scrambling to manage the consequences of policy failure. Putin, it seems, has not lost the war with Ukraine. Russia is winning, something no amount of funding by either the US, the Europeans, or both, can reverse. The best thing that could happen to Ukraine is for the congressional Republicans to hold steadfast to their objections and allow Ukraine to be taken off the life support that US funding provides. Ukraine is a terminal case. Continuing to underwrite its failed war effort simply prolongs the agony of its people.

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