Two interesting thinktank policy papers were released over the past two weeks, which somewhat flew under the radar. I wanted to examine them in light of not only Ukraine’s now-announced major battlefield reorientation, but the general pivotal inflection point on which the conflict stands at the cusp of 2024, to see what projections for the future can be gleaned.
I read both of the papers so you don’t have to, so I’ll highlight the most important points and see how they can tie together into some semblance of a Western/NATO ‘strategic’ redirection.
The first of the two is from the Estonian Ministry of Defense, which has been active in various prognostications and reports from their supposed confidential ‘sources’ within the Russian MOD:
The gist of this paper revolves around hatching ideas for how Ukraine can use its reorientation period to rebuild into a force that can defeat Russia.
It begins with the same tired gloat of how much larger NATO/EU’s combined economies and military spending are over Russia. It’s a bit of a sophomoric take, as they expect this to innately convert into victory, as if it’s just a ‘given’ that “bigger is better.”
This is an excellent analysis, well-worth reading in full. The first part is a discussion of an unremarkable Estonian Defense Ministry report (still worth reading). The second part contains the meat—a well-deserved takedown of American neocons and their destructive fantasies based on their report, The High Price of Losing Ukraine.
Taken together both of these reports reveal the total failure of American neocon policies and the tragedy of allowing a rogue group of committed anti-Russian neocons to take over governance of USA. If these powers had been stopped thirty years ago and USA & NATO had formed a healthy alliance with Russia, all members of that alliance would have benefitted enormously. Instead, the West now faces disaster wherever you look. ABN
American Buddhist Net 