Edward Luttwak, a well-known war hawk, says that the Western alliance faces a choice in the Ukraine war – direct intervention by NATO troops or acceptance of a humiliating defeat.
I think that’s true. It is very similar to the situation President Lyndon Johnson faced in 1965.
Image via The Telegraph
He had to choose whether to send American troops to South Vietnam or face a humiliating defeat at the hands of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong insurgents. He chose to send troops.
The situation then was more favorable to the USA and its allies than it is in Ukraine now.
The USA then was by far the greatest industrial power and apparently the strongest military power in the world. North Vietnam, although backed by the Soviet Union, was poor and primitive.
Yet 10 years later, in 1975, the humiliating U.S. defeat came about anyway, after the loss of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives.
Russia is a much more formidable militarily and industrially than North Vietnam was, and the United States is weaker. Russia has a decisive advantage in the production of missiles and artillery shells, which are the deciding factor in this war.
Luttwak says that NATO troops could be confined to non-combatant roles, and leave Ukrainian troops to do the actual fighting.
This reminds me of the argument for U.S. “advisers” in South Vietnam. It is naive to think you can send troops into a war zone with the expectation they won’t have to do actual fighting.
The Russians, with their superiority in missiles, would target NATO troops wherever they were in Ukraine.
In fact, I think that there are NATO troops covertly and unofficially in Ukraine already, and that they already are being targeted by Russia.
Russia does not have overall military superiority to the United States. It could not intervene in a hypothetical Mexican civil war the way the United States. has intervened in Ukraine. But it does have the upper hand in the specific war that is being fought in Ukraine.
This fact is dawning on pro-war leaders and commentators in the West, as shown by the article by Simplicius the Thinker. It’s time for the U.S. government to accept reality and cut its losses today, rather than setting itself up for an even bigger humiliation tomorrow.
LINKS
It’s time to send NATO troops to Ukraine by Edward Luttwak for Unherd.
The welfare-addicted West is too decadent to rearm itself, let alone Ukraine, by Lewis Page for The Telegraph.
Ukraine outnumbered, outgunned, ground down by relentless Russia by Max Hunder for Reuters.
Russia producing three times more artillery shells than US and Europe for Ukraine by , , and
Ukraine’s Artillery Shell Shortfall by Antti Ruokonen for Lawfare.
Edward Luttwak Says It’s Time to Send NATO Troops by Simplicius the Thinker. This is an extremely long blog post, but I think you would get something out of it even if you just scrolled through it and noticed the highlights. It points out the growing admission by Americans and Europeans that their war is being lost. If you read only one of the linked articles, I recommend you read this one.
Tags: NATO, Proxy War, Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine and Russia, War Economy, War Production
Phil Ebersole's Blog 
April 9, 2024 at 12:44 am |
Putin is also a war hawk, else this war would never have happened.
I seem to remember large numbers of Soviet “advisors” in both Korea and Vietnam. Some of them flew fighters. Some of them manned antiaircraft missile batteries. Some of them were tank crews. The numbers I’ve heard ran to 10K. That’s how proxy wars go.
NATO wouldn’t go for sending NATO troops in an official capacity. A few countries would refuse. What might happen is a few individual countries could send volunteer detachments for medical support, training, and tech jobs. Maybe rear echelon positions that would allow Ukraine to send those troops to the front. Could even be tripwire troops. Not enough to launch an attack but maybe enough to help with defense and enough to force a country’s involvement. Create a line beyond which Russia wouldn’t want to push because that really would get NATO involved.
That’s the kind of thing France was talking about and the much of the eastern flank of NATO seems supportive. Biden and Scholz don’t like the idea but Macron seems to be running with it. The French are… interesting.
We see this as a proxy war but parts of Europe see it as more. People from Warsaw to Helsinki see it as existential for them. They are not sure that Article 5 has teeth but it is their only hope. They have no buffer between them and Russia.
Moldova doesn’t feel very comfortable either. If Ukraine falls they are next.
LikeLike