7/16/23

 Sunday, July 16, 2023

In bed at 9:30, half-awake, half-sleeping between 5:10 and 6:15, dreaming of Michael & Gabby's wedding problems.  Let Lilly out.  62℉, high of 78℉, sunny, Air Quality Alert, AQI=146, Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups. The wind is W at 10 mph, 5-13/22 mph.  No rain.  The sun rose at 5:27 and will set at 8:28, 15+2.

An oil I did during the Balkan wars

Cluster bombs, Donbas, Passchendaele, and the end game.  Ukrainian president Zalenski blasted his country's NATO allies before the recent summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, accusing them (and notably the U.S. and Germany) of at least timidity if not cowardice for refusing to set a timetable and a date certain for the admission of Ukraine into the NATO alliance.  He also has many times proclaimed that his government's goal is the outright defeat of Russia and the withdrawal of all Russian military forces from all land that prior to the 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula was within Ukraine's internationally recognized borders.  President Biden has often announced the American position that it is entirely up to the Ukrainian government to decide on its end game, i.e., when and how its battlefield conflict with Russia will end.  We have read for some time now that Ukraine's springtime counter-offensive to regain lands lost to the Russians is, as widely predicted, going very slowly.  The Russians have had more than a full year to 'dig in,' i.e., to fortify its defensive positions in the Donbas and northern Crimea, a 620 miles front.  Also, the Ukrainians, which is to say NATO, is running out of ammunition.  Both the Ukrainians and the Russians have been promiscuously shelling the other side with artillery shells (and other weapons of course) for almost a year and a half.  President Biden has now announced that the U.S. will provide heavy artillery cluster munitions to Ukraine.  Each 155mm shell is packed with 72 armor-piercing, human-killing 'bomblets' fired from as much as 20 miles away spread over a wide target area.  According to Biden, the U.S. will provide these munitions will be provided until suppliers can catch up with Ukraine's shortage of conventional artillery shells.  So far, the United States alone has provided more than 2 million conventional artillery shells to Ukraine on top of the supplies Ukraine had in its own depots and what other NATO countries have provided to Ukraine.  Some thoughts:

1.  Cluster bombs are particularly nasty weapons.  That is why most nations have banned their use, but not US, as in the U.S.  Nor Russia, nor China, or North Korea.  We're in particularly nasty company.  We apparently have tens of thousands of them, perhaps hundreds of thousands of them  The 'bomblets' are armor-piercing; imagine what they do to human and animal bodies.

2.  The problem isn't so much that Ukraine has used up all its'155mm shells; it's that so have the NATO countries, at least to the extent that they dare not share what they have with Ukraine.  PLUS, they don't have the industrial capacity to make as many as are required in Ukraine.  What does this suggest in terms of battle-preparedness in the NATO nations?

3.  Biden says we are shipping these weapons to Ukraine for use only until the shortage of 155mm shells is 'caught up.'  This sounds disingenuous since there is no evidence (that I knw of at least) that NATO will ever catch up with the alleged need.  

4.  The war seems to have degenerated into something like the trench warfare of World War I.  Which is to say both side pounding the piss out of each other while making little headway in terms of territorial advances, like e.g. the infamous Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium, with hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides.   Are we in for a long, drawn-out, stalemate?  Will the whole war end up being like the Battle of Bakhmut, with both sides battling over a city that is no longer a city, a no-man's land filled with the empty shells of buidlings destroyed by artillery and other weapons?  The Ukrainian government wants its Eastern regions and Crimea back; Russia of course can't cede them back without international humiliation.  We can see that NATO's arsenal is already being depleted by one regional war.  Its economic wellbeing is also being tested by this war.  It may be the case already but if not surely NATO's unity will start coming apart as each nation's citizens ask how much should we sacrifice so that Zelenski gets back Donbas and Crimea.  Are we really confident that the people in Donbas and Crimea prefer to be a part of Ukraine rather than of Russia?  I have to believe that the government and the people have no more confidence than I do in Biden's promises that "we will not waiver" and "only Kiiv will determine when and under what circumstances this war will end."  Ukraine is paying for the war in blood and otherwise but the U.S. and NATO allies are paying for it in dollars and euros.  Are American and NATO allied citizens as committed to Ukrainian control of Donbas and Crimea as Vlodymir Zelenski is?  I don't think so.  I suspect that Putin is correct in thinking that NATO's unity will eventually give way when it comes time to consider endless warfare vs. a negotiated settlement with Russia keeping Crimia and probably Donbas and a land bridge between Crimea and Russia.

If I try 100 different iterations of this knockoff, I will find X times 100 ways to get things wrong, or at least other than what I had intended, or hoped for.  Skin tone, hair, eyes, nose, mouth, colors, values.