Nato

The beginning of the year has not gone as well as it could have for Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Mostly because he is now dead, but also because Zhirinovsky, a Russian politician of the “managed” (pro-Kremlin) opposition, predicted and vigorously supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If Zhirinovsky were able to follow the campaign from his hospital bed, it could not have met his expectations. The imperial Russia of his imagination ought to have come into glorious existence, but its armed forces instead suffered reversal and humiliation. Zhirinovsky was the long-time leader of the Russian Liberal Democratic Party — a grouping that, as many wags have separately concluded, was under his leadership neither liberal nor democratic nor, in some lights, a party.

The fog of war doesn’t just apply to generals, sergeants, and privates. It applies to strategists and outside observers, including the best-informed journalists on the ground. All are swamped by a confusing barrage of information, some accurate, some not, none of it complete or definitive. That’s why, after over a month of fighting in Ukraine, it helps to step back, consider the basic outcomes, and try to project what will happen next. Remember, though, the “fog of war” applies to these assessments, too. First, let’s clear away Russian misinformation. The Kremlin’s recent claim that their main goal was never to seize Kyiv but always to take eastern Ukraine is simply false.

While most Americans believe that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is morally wrong, there is in some corners a pervasive sense of annoyance with the conflict. The real enemy, some say, is China, and they believe that America should not focus on the last vestiges of 20th-century conflicts at the expense of losing focus on those of the 21st. They see NATO and the rest of the Cold War infrastructure as representative of a dying world. Instead of propping up this order, they argue, America should be hard at work building a new order to take on China. The goal of a new American-led, anti-China world order is a necessary one. The currently existing old order is ill-fitted to combat China, which indeed will be America’s main 21st-century enemy.

Liberal internationalists, neoconservatives and NeverTrumpers are having the time of their lives these days, ridiculing anyone on the political right who has ever said a good thing about Vladimir Putin. Those “Putin groupies” as a Wall Street Journal columnist described them, include former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and, of course, Trump himself. Trump described Putin as a “genius” and said he was a better president than Barack Obama — and he isn’t the only American president to compliment the Russian leader. President George W. Bush said about Putin, “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.

The Russian Defense Ministry held a briefing last week claiming that they have discovered US-led biological laboratories in Ukraine. Moscow stated that a rapid halt was brought to the facilities’ activities, adding that Kyiv and Washington had violated the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological and Toxin Weapons. The Kremlin did not feel the need to provide evidence of its claims, par for the course in Putin’s Russia.

One thing I have always found fascinating about Russia is that when they tell us they are going to do something, they usually do it. So when Moscow struck a military base near the Poland-Ukraine border that was a staging ground for arms shipments, we shouldn't have been surprised. They told us that was their next plan of action just twenty-four hours before they did it. But that’s just the beginning of what Russia likely has in store for the West, NATO, and the entire world if we aren’t careful. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s plan seems simple: chaos on a scale that will extend far beyond Ukraine. You see, Putin is starting to come to grips with the fact that he can’t win the war in Ukraine — at least on paper — unless he destroys Ukraine.