Opinion: NATO losing credibility on Ukraine

There is one way to “win” a war without winning on the field of battle and that is to become the side that can dictate what determines success in the war.

There are presently three sides in the Ukraine conflict. They are, Russia, Ukraine and the collective West.

In his book, “The Russian Art of War,” Jacques Baud notes that at the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation, Vladimir Putin enumerated two objectives for the campaign and has never abandoned either of those.

They were the de-Nazification and the de-militarization of Ukraine.

Baud further says that at no time did Putin list territorial gains as a target. Indeed, one of the items up for negotiation during the Istanbul peace talks was that Russia withdraw troops from Ukraine.

It was the collective West, not Putin, who proclaimed that Putin’s goal was to seize territory. Recall the many times that senior government representatives of the collective West decried the fact that Putin has already lost the war because he failed to take Kiev in three days and the Ukraine in 10. They dictated what determines success in the war.

Recently, the Europeans all began asserting that if Putin won in Ukraine he would march into Poland or the Baltic states and then further into all of Europe. They are in a panic, saying Putin must be stopped, and theorizing who can accomplish this feat. It can only be NATO.

If the war ends tomorrow, the collective West will claim they won because Putin failed to achieve the goals they set for him. If Putin takes all of Eastern Ukraine including Odessa and stops at the Dnipro River, they win because he feared the shadow of a united NATO staring him down.

The same thing is true if there is stalemate and a DMZ is negotiated even if that DMZ is on the Polish border, major headlines will read, “Collective West Stops Putin Cold With Unified NATO.”

In reality the NATO will have lost all credibility on the battlefield, Ukraine will be destroyed, Russia will have achieved what it set out to do but the collective West will still declare victory. They will have successfully dictated what determines success in the war.

That’s the plan. More than a million Ukrainian casualties? They believe, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

Rube Render is a former Clovis city commissioner and former chair of the Curry County Republican Party. Contact him:

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