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"The United States is being defeated in Ukraine.
"One could say that it is facing defeat — or, more starkly, that it is staring defeat in the face. Neither formulation is appropriate, though. The U.S. doesn’t look reality squarely in the eye. It prefers to look at the world through the distorted lenses of its fantasies. It plunges forward on whatever path it’s chosen while averting its eyes from the topography it is trying to traverse. Its sole guiding light is the glow of a distant mirage. That is its lodestone."
So writes Michael J. Brenner, Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, in a very persuasive article.
Is he right?
Russia has certainly been humiliated. The Russian soldiers that entered Ukraine had dress uniforms in their knapsacks and instead the invasion went horribly wrong for them.
I find it hardly surprising that Ukraine is not powerful enough to recapture the 20% of her territory that Russia occupies.
Other people, however, really thought it was possible that this might happen. A clever Lithuanian friend, for one, until he read the Pentagon papers back in April. The Anglo-American defence establishment broadly did or said they did.
The various dissidents of different sorts from John Mearsheimer to Scott Ritter and Douglas Macgregor, who said the Ukrainians offensive would fail, were right.
If the Ukrainians can contain the Russians where they are now that would be a victory, but can they, having lost so many soldiers?
What would be a defeat for Ukraine would be for the Russians to capture all the coast. This was what some British 'senior defence contacts' of journalist Michael McTugh feared earlier this year.
In my opinion the West was wrong to push a counter-offensive on Ukraine.
Michael Brenner expects the Russians, having inflicted huge losses on the Ukrainians in return for a few villages, to sweep the board and thus defeat America.
America he expects to sue for a ceasefire and not to get one.
We shall see.
He could very possibly be right. It sounds plausible, which the cheerful stuff I read in the papers all summer never did.
One thing I know is that I give up reading the hopelessly biassed mainstream media coverage of this war, except for one or two independent minded thinkers who somehow occasionally get coverage. Sir Lawrence Freedman is hopelessly parti pris. So are that whole King's College London crowd.
These are the people who talk about Russian disinformation when anyone has the temerity to argue against their view of the war.
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