Screw The Facts - Europe Commits Itself To Further Escalation

[D. Schlenk]

https://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=282164


Screw The Facts - Europe Commits Itself To Further
Escalation


by Moon of Alabama

Feb 21, 2024


Moon of Alabama - Feb 20, 2024

International relations professor Andrew Latham opined in a
recent piece that the idea of total Ukrainian victory is
delusional.

Unfortunately some people, predominantly in Europe, still
stick to the delusional idea:

In professional journals, on influential websites and
across the full spectrum of media outlets, observers,
analysts and pundits alike continue to inform us that,
yes, there is a way for Ukraine to prevail over Russia,
expelling the latter from all of its territory,
including Crimea.
...
[That's nonsense.]
...
In short, Russia is winning the war and there is little
to suggest that any foreseeable political, economic,
tactical or technological developments are likely to alter
that fundamental reality. So why are we seeing arguments
about an ultimate Ukrainian battlefield triumph, in the
face of all the devastatingly contradictory evidence?

Well, applying Occam’s razor — the principle that “other
things being equal, simpler explanations are generally
better than more complex ones” — I would suggest that the
delusional belief that there is a pathway to total
victory for Ukraine is based less on evolving military
or geopolitical realities than on a simple psychological
dynamic, one best summed up in the concept of “commitment
escalation.”

According to this concept, individuals or groups some-
times exhibit a tendency to persist with a failing
argument, even as that argument becomes increasingly
untenable in light of the facts. This behavior is marked
above all by an adherence to prior commitments — sunk
costs, as the economists might put it — regardless of their
present plausibility or rationality. It is a psychological
dysfunction.

The German government under chancellor Scholz is one group
which has stuck to the fallen argument. There is no way the
Ukraine can win or that Russia could lose that war and any
additional price paid for attempts to invalidate that is
just wasted.

Since the start of the war the EU's and Germany's reaction
to it have been on the wrong path.


Cont. reading: Screw The Facts – Europe Commits Itself To
Further Escalation

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/02/screw-the-facts-europe-commits-itself-to-further-escalation.html#more

As I wrote on February 28 2022:

Germany's crazy move to add $120 billion to defense
spending (up from some $40 billion p.a.) will within a
few years create a strong military imbalance in Europe as
Germany will then dominate all its neighbors. This is
unnecessary and historically very dangerous. The shunning
of economic relations with Russia and China means that
Germany and its newbie chancellor Olaf Scholz have fallen
for the U.S. scheme of creating a new Cold War. Germany's
economy will now become one of its victims.

On February 4 Russia and China declared a multipolar
world in which they are two partnering poles that will
counter the American one. Russia's move into the Ukraine
is a demonstration of that.

It also shows that the U.S. is unwilling to give up its
supremacist urges without a large fight. But while the U.S.
over the last 20 years has spent its money to mess up the
Middle East, Russia and China have used the time to prepare
for the larger conflict. They have spent more brain time on
the issue than the U.S. has.

The Europeans should have acknowledged that instead of
helping the U.S. to keep up its self-image of a unipolar
power.

It will take some time for the new economic realities to
settle in. They will likely change the current view of
Europe's real strategic interests.

Unfortunately the change of mind is taking much longer than
I had hoped for.

Commitment escalation has so far blocked any change. Instead
of changing its path the EU seems to be willing to get more
deeper into the morass.

In May 2022 I described the immediate reaction to the war as
a kind of hysteria:

The European response to the U.S. proxy war against Russia
was based on media driven hysteric moralizing or maybe
moralizing hysteria. It was and is neither rational nor
realistic.

The European 'leadership' decided that nothing but the
economic suicide of Europe was sufficient to show Russia
that Brussels was seriously miffed. Dimwit national
governments, including the German one, followed that
program. Should they stay on their course the result will
be a complete de-industrialization of western Europe.

I had hoped for saner heads to gain the upper hand over this
development. That, unfortunately, has not happened (yet?).
Europe instead seem to drift towards even more lunacy.

Twelve rounds of sanctions against Russia have not hurt
anyone but Europe's economy. Why then release round
thirteen?

In Germany some politicians now dream of further arming the
Ukraine, of getting Germany "battle ready" and of "carrying
the war into Russia".

No thought is given to the rational responses Russia could
take if such nonsense prevails. What would happen if it, in
response, would carry the war into Germany? Russia has the
means (missiles) to do that while Germany lacks the means
to prevent it.

The U.S. has ended the distribution of weapons and money to
Ukraine. I do not expect that to revive until after the
inauguration of the next president. In fact, it may not
revive at all.

The next president may look for a conflict with China and
put more effort into those attempts than to hustle with
Russia over some backwater in eastern Europe.

Ukraine will be left to Europe to pay for and to clean up.
Germany, as the main payer into the EU's budget, will be the
most hurt by that.

Is it really difficult to understand that the path towards
further fighting Russia will only lead to devastation?

Why then is there no effort made to prevent it?