We’ll Rue This War Too

Recent history offers a wake-up call for U.S. foreign policy

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Justice

One retired colonel who does not march in lockstep with the bipartisan warmongers in D.C. is Douglas Macgregor. Macgregor’s recent article, “War and Regrets in Ukraine,” at The American Conservative website (Oct. 19) offers a sober view of the Russia-Ukraine war as Europe heads into winter. He suggests that Americans will one day look back and rue our involvement, as has been the case with Afghanistan, Iraq, and other wars back through Vietnam. Of course Washington is currently running only a “proxy war” in Ukraine, but its effects are and will continue to be wide-reaching.

A link to Macgregor’s article is below; first, some highlights:

  • He writes, “No one in the White House, the Senate, or the House consciously set out to turn the proxy Ukrainian war with Moscow into a contest of ‘competitive societal collapse’ between Russia and NATO. But here we are.”
  • “Washington’s governing strategic principles are unchanged from previous U.S. interventions around the world,” although the adversary in this war is not a small, poor country.
  • Political figures in D.C. “do not view U.S. foreign policy in the context of a larger strategy, nor do they comprehend Russia’s capacity to hurt the United States” and Europe.
  • An “ongoing buildup of 700,000 Russian forces with modern equipment in Western Russia, Eastern Ukraine and Belorussia” reflects “Moscow’s decision to adopt an elastic, strategic defense of the territories it seized in the opening months of the war.” No easy reverse here.
  • Macgregor calls attention to “Europe’s descent into economic oblivion this winter” and “support for Russia’s cause in China and India.”
  • For Washington, a “morally responsible and practical answer” exists: “Kiev should stop the bloodletting and make the best possible peace with Moscow it can.” But the enormous “transfer of cash to the Pentagon and the U.S. Defense Industrial Base” stand in the way.

Read the whole article at: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/war-and-regrets-in-ukraine/

Notice that, outside the Vatican, still no global powers are calling for peace.

 

Barbara E. Rose is Web Editor of the NOR.

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