My good friend Colonel Ken Allard has sent me this Ukraine update for my newsletter readers. I hope you will read it!

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

Three weeks into the Russo-Ukraine War of 2022, it is reasonable to ask: Who is deterring whom - and from what?

So far, the only one being deterred seems to be Joe Biden, who clumsily refused to allow Polish Mig-29’s to be transferred to Ukraine despite the fervent pleas of embattled president Volodomyr Zelenskiy. Meanwhile, Old Uncle Joe was busy linking Vladimir Putin not only to the war in Ukraine but also to sky-rocketing American gas prices and rising inflation, twin outrages for which the Russian premiere bears only slight, if any, responsibility. Through such constant buffoonery, President Biden seems intent on channeling that canonical Mayor of Amity, hilariously reassuring townsfolk that a lucrative tourist season lay just ahead, despite Jaws occasionally snacking on their relatives.

Because we are a nation divorced from studying such politically incorrect subjects as military history, we can no longer distinguish the consequential from the trivial, the capillaries from the arteries.  From Afghanistan to Ukraine, our intelligence community has been hit hardest, seemingly unable to predict whether Tuesday will be followed by Wednesday. Not only were our intel weenies utterly mistaken in predicting how fast the Taliban would triumph but they also admitted last week to the House Intelligence Committee that they had seriously under-estimated the fighting spirit of Ukraine’s citizens. Naturally, they over-corrected, reciting a laundry list of Russian tactical shortcomings. Caught up in the latest zeitgeist, Francis Fukuyama - famous for predicting the end of history several decades too early - argued last week “Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine…The army in the field will reach a point whether they can no longer be supplied nor withdrawn, and morale will vaporize.” https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/preparing-for-defeat/

While we can all hope that Professor Fukuyama will be proven right, America’s enemies seem to be a long way from desperation. While we plead for them to produce additional oil and prepare to sign yet another nuclear non-proliferation scam, the Iranians were not deterred at all - raining their rockets down on an American consulate in Irbil, Iraq. How much does Putin fear NATO - with or without a rearmed Germany - when he launches air-strikes that came within a dozen miles of Polish territory over the weekend? And for good measure also threatened to target logistical routes acting as lifelines to the Ukrainian resistance?

Please forgive me for casting doubt on such widely-cherished Beltway assumptions: But Vladimir Putin and his fellow conspirators in the new Axis nations are not desperate! Instead, they have concluded - correctly in my view - that America suffers from catastrophically weak leadership, that it has abandoned its core spiritual values, as well as the world-beating confidence that our country once took for granted. While conceding that American martial prowess can be painfully recovered (or at least not entirely ruled out) neo-Axis leaders believe that the timing will never be better for a basic re-ordering of the global order. That new order will naturally reflect non-Western interests and dismiss any weaker set of values.  

Ukraine is already one major stake in this game, Taiwan is surely next while NATO’s newly-minted Baltic states might not be far off. When measured against the potential stakes, who cares if Russian logistical problems persist, if they lose a few tanks or if they sacrifice a few more generals trying to recapture the morale of their troops? As my friend LTG Jim Dubik wrote recently, “Like other raw realists, Putin has no intention of stopping with Ukraine…Raw realists (like him) take what they can, when they can, until someone stops them.” https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thehill.com/opinion/national-security/596614-the-world-after-the-war-in-ukraine-who-or-what-will-stop-putin?amp

I am also a realist of sorts, one who cherishes memories of the West Point faculty but now wonders how far the fault lines extend when five cadets are hospitalized after taking fentanyl-laced cocaine while on spring break. To say nothing of that loser who belatedly forfeited his commission only after posting a selfie that argued, “Communism will win.”  It is also frustrating to see other losers with stars on the shoulders of their World War II knock-off uniforms, who have either forgotten or never learned the harsh lessons of real war.

They now confront an opponent who will shrug off small shortcomings to focus on the larger objective- using traditional Russian reliance on massed troops and massed firepower to compel the enemy’s total compliance or complete obliteration. He will not be stopped by the mindless half-measures or the bloodless counter-moves now passing for “deterrence.”

During a three-decade career, Colonel Allard advanced from draftee to the West Point faculty and Dean of the National War College. The author of four books, he was also an on-air military analyst for the networks of NBC News.