{"id":54282,"date":"2025-07-20T11:39:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T19:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=54282"},"modified":"2025-07-20T11:39:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T19:39:20","slug":"the-russia-ukraine-war-goes-on-and-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/20\/the-russia-ukraine-war-goes-on-and-on\/","title":{"rendered":"The Russia-Ukraine War Goes On and On"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from\u00a0Bracing Views<\/a>\u00a0with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

Roughly three and a half years have passed since Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the war shows little sign of ending. President Trump has gone from boasting he could end the war in a day to following the policy of the Biden administration in providing weapons and aid to Ukraine. To most Americans, the war has become background noise, barely perceptible. Most Ukrainian flags have been put away or deleted from Facebook and similar social media sites.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for a primer on the war that\u2019s both critical and balanced, check out Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies\u2019 book, \u201cWar in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict,\u201d\u00a0now available<\/a>\u00a0in a revised and expanded second edition. ($20 paperback; $10 ebook, from OR Books.)<\/p>\n

Benjamin and Davies recognize the war didn\u2019t erupt out of nowhere in February 2022 nor was it completely \u201cunprovoked<\/a>.\u201d As much as they deplore and denounce Vladimir Putin\u2019s decision to invade, they recognize Putin had his reasons. Putin is more rational actor than a power-hungry dictator, and he\u2019s arguably driven more by securing Russia\u2019s position (and regional dominance) than recreating a Tsarist Russian or Soviet empire. Unlike most American commentators, Benjamin and Davies favor a diplomatic solution that would end mass killing on both sides. Not surprisingly, their views have gained little traction in the pro-war, anti-Putin mainstream media.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the U.S. mainstream media, NBC News posted\u00a0an article yesterday<\/a>\u00a0citing Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. An unrepentant neocon, Rice is happy that Trump is sending more weapons to Ukraine while threatening more sanctions as well. In short, Trump is following a traditional neocon script while also keeping weapons factories in the U.S. going full blast. Rice approves!<\/p>\n

What I found most staggering from Rice was this claim cited by NBC:<\/p>\n

Rice also criticized the Biden administration for, in her view, having taken its time to get desperately needed weapons to Ukraine from the outset. \u201cIf you had given them everything at the beginning of the war,\u201d she said, when \u201cthe Russians were on their back foot, [Ukraine] could\u2019ve won this war outright.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Excuse me, but WTF? What does giving Ukraine \u201ceverything\u201d at the beginning of the war in 2022 mean? Fighter jets, main battle tanks, long-range missiles, nuclear weapons? Ukraine wasn\u2019t even an ally of the U.S., nor was it ever a part of NATO. And would Ukraine really have won the war against Russia with \u201ceverything\u201d? What about the risk that Russia would have escalated as well, perhaps calling on its arsenal of 6000 or so nuclear weapons?<\/p>\n

Rice\u2019s call for more smoking guns to have been sent to Ukraine early in 2022 almost certainly would have ended in a mushroom cloud or two. But I suppose that\u2019s OK with her as long as the mushroom clouds were limited to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Remember 2023 and the failure of the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive?\u00a0I do<\/a>. Remember all the hype about U.S., German, and British wonder weapons like Abrams, Leopard, and Challenger tanks?\u00a0I do<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s hope that Trump\u2019s gambit to push Putin to some kind of compromise settlement bears fruit. No war should go on forever. Haven\u2019t enough people died on both sides?<\/p>\n

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William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is\u00a0Bracing Views<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Reprinted from\u00a0Bracing Views\u00a0with the author\u2019s permission. Roughly three and a half years have passed since Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the war shows little sign of ending. President Trump has gone from boasting he could end the war in a day to following the policy of the Biden administration in providing weapons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-54282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"Neocons and Weapons Makers Are Happy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54282"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54286,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54282\/revisions\/54286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54282"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=54282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}