Joe Biden has admitted on CNN that the reason they are sending cluster bombs to the Ukraine is that they are out of conventional 155mm shells. This makes more sense. The idea that they were sending the cluster bombs as a strategic decision did not make any sense.
Basically, if the US is incapable of producing the most basic supplies for the war, then the war is effectively already over. Arguably, it’s been over for a while, but this is a war that is very much built around 155mm shells, and if you do not have those, you can’t really keep fighting it.
Russia is producing a lot of shells, by the way. They are not going to run out.
What we appear to be seeing now is that the Biden White House wants to keep this thing going until after the election, at which point they are planning to escalate into some kind of WWIII situation. Apparently, these people do not think that starting a world war before the election would be a good idea.
Meanwhile, you have various persons involved in the administration attempting to scale things back and prepare for talks. William Burns, the head of the CIA, is one such person. Richard Haass is not a member of the administration per se, but he is an important figure in the collective Washington establishment, and he’s been attempting to foment some kind of agreement with Russia.
No one knows what is going to happen. I include in that the people making the decisions. There is no real “decider,” because Biden is so far gone.
As always, we are left with these same two options:
- Russia wins, or
- NATO invades and then you have a world war
As far as who would win the world war – I really have no idea. We know that China is fully behind Russia. We don’t know about countries like India, or the Gulf States. Several smaller countries will just make decisions based on who looks like they are winning.
Probably, Russia will launch nukes. I think Putin has been pretty clear about that. Much of the leadership in the US seems to have deluded themselves into believing that Putin is both a lunatic, who is very weak and is lashing out, and is also much too reasonable to launch nukes. General Petraeus has declared that it isn’t really a very big deal if Russia launches nukes.
If I were the Russians, I would go full-on in the coming months, and just totally obliterate the Ukraine, so that the US is incapable of using this as an “in” for WWIII after the election. Overall, I would have been a lot less cautious than Putin has been.
Anyway, whatever.
I don’t really care.