US war goal in Ukraine? Cripple the Russian military...

 

Sec Defense Lloyd Austin and Sec State Antony Blinken with Zelenskyy. BBC/EPA.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says that the US goal in Ukraine is to weaken the Russian military. BBC. Austin made the comments after meeting Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He said that the United States wants the Russian military crippled to the point that it can not do something like it was doing in Ukraine again. He was also optimistic that Zelenskyy could still win the war against Russia. The comments are unusually strong and may anger Russia, who has accused the United States of attempting to destroy Russia. 

My Comment:

There it is again, a Biden official saying the quite part out loud. This is not helpful rhetoric and will likely infuriate Russia. Russia is already mad at us for everything we are doing to them and given that they are a nuclear armed nation it would be wise if Austin would tone down the rhetoric. 

I think this strategy is an extremely wasteful one, largely because I don't think Ukraine can actually win the war against Russia. To be fair, I don't think that Russia can beat Ukraine in terms of taking over the whole country either, but it's not going to go the other way, where Ukraine pushes Russia out of the areas they have conquered as well as the Donbass republics and Crimea. We are just throwing good money after bad here. 

Is Russia being weakened in Ukraine? I think so. Though it's hard to tell how much damage has been done, but they have lost a lot of armored vehicles along with a few airplanes. Not to mention some of their best troops. From what I understand, Russia's airborne units, the VDV, have largely been destroyed. Plus they lost the cruiser Moskva, which is not something they can easily replace. 

But I don't think they have lost that much in the way of capability. They still have huge numbers of tanks, fighter jets and ships. I don't see them being able to simultaneously invade another country right now but if the war in Ukraine ends I think they would be able to do the same thing again. Their losses are heavy but most of them are replaceable. 

The other problem is that Western sanctions have not been anywhere near as effective as they suspected. Most non-Western countries have ignored the sanctions, most notably China, India and Brazil. Plus Europe has been unable to ween themselves off of Russian oil and gas. They may have lost access to some supplies but they should be able to rebuild their forces. 

I do think that our efforts to punish Russia have ended up weakening us. We may lose the dollar being the reserve currency, which would be an utter disaster. That's the worst case scenario but even then, we are depleting our stocks of anti-tank and anti-air missiles, which could be a real problem if China gets frisky with Taiwan. Sanctions have also hurt the west a lot more than it has hurt Russia. We need Russian oil, gas, fertilizer and crops and it's going to be extremely painful economically to continue these sanctions.