Screw The Facts – Europe Commits Itself To Further Escalation

Guest Post by Moon of Alabama

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.
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[That’s nonsense.]
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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 sometimes 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.

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.

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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?

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