The Tribune

With Charlie Harper

LAST week, US president Joe Biden gave an address to the country that appealed for Congressional passage of another big package of military aid to Ukraine. Fox News, Newsmax and the more liberal cable outlets all interrupted normal programming to broadcast Biden’s mid-day remarks. The US continues to double down on Ukraine and on resistance to Vladimir Putin’s armed Russian invaders.

The State Department followed up Biden’s plea with the following announcement from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: “Unless Congress acts to pass the President’s national security supplemental funding request, this will be one of the last security assistance packages we can provide to Ukraine. Helping Ukraine to defend itself against Russian aggression and secure its future advances our national security interests and contributes to global stability around the world, and we need Congress to act immediately.”

This was underscored again in an earlier exchange between a reporter and Blinken. The outlines of a likely settlement to this brutal war of attrition are to be found within the question and Blinken’s response. Here is the exchange:

Reporter: “And secondly, if I may, could I get your thoughts on former (NATO) Secretary General Rasmussen’s plan that would see Ukraine be allowed to join NATO, but without Russian-occupied territories being covered by Article 5 (an attack on NATO ally is an attack on all)?

Blinken: “What you describe is not at all what I’m hearing, seeing, nor what we’re doing. We have now more than 50 countries in the effort to resist the Russian invaders, most, but not all of them NATO members, who have been almost from day one fully part of the effort to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs not only to defend itself against ongoing Russian aggression, but to help enable it to retake territory that Russia seized from it.

“At the same time, there’s also – and I think this is critically important – a commitment on the part of many countries to help Ukraine build a future force that can ensure deterrence and ensure defense against aggression going forward. And that’s critically important, coupled with the efforts that we’re making in other areas – for example, to generate private sector investment in Ukraine so that its economy can continue to grow, to build, and it has resources of its own – as well as making sure that it’s advancing on reforms to strengthen its democracy, which will be tremendously facilitated by the fact that the European Union is engaging Ukraine in – on the accession process, and of course reforms are necessary for that.”

The reporter’s question is nonetheless significant and illustrative of a growing sense in many quarters that the US and its allies in the West and elsewhere may have to urge Ukraine to settle for exactly the solution the reporter outlined. A prolonged war of attrition in Ukraine that stretches both budgets and patience in the democratic West is not going to be tolerated indefinitely politically, militarily or economically.

That’s why Biden is increasingly stressing that the US needs to stay the course in Eastern Europe. He and his advisers know that another year of stalemate means a Korea-type solution whereby the current battle lines effectively become the new Russo-Ukrainian border – and Kyiv is soon welcomed as a full NATO member, even as South Korea has become a democratic free-market economy since the Korean War armistice in 1953.

It’s not ideal from anyone’s point of view. Putin reportedly thought his army would roll into Kyiv. We have seen that Ukraine will fight to the death to preserve its independence that is still less than 35 years old.

But it is also true that before Putin’s aggression starting ten years ago in Crimea, Ukraine was regarded as a hotbed of crime, corruption and general misbehaviour.

President Zelensky, facing an election next year, knows that the territory seized by Russia was largely ethnically Russian. Given the clear alternative of literally exhausting his electorate in a no-win stalemate, he will find a way to broker peace off the battlefield.

The Americans’ many loyal allies in Western Europe will have seen popular support steadily erode for continuing to support Kyiv in an evidently fruitless quest to actually defeat the Kremlin. While they will follow Washington’s lead with high-minded declarations and continued assistance to Ukraine, it is already apparent that there won’t be endless popular support for such budgetary drains.

It may well be that the last person to join in what seems to be an inevitably growing consensus to end this war will be US president Joe Biden. Hopefully, if he is re-elected, he will acknowledge that much as he would like to do so, he cannot use his Ukrainian proxy to defeat Kyiv’s much wealthier and still domestically popular Russian rival Putin.

On the other hand, if Donald Trump is somehow returned to the White House in November, all bets are off. Putin’s cynical reliance on the unpredictable nature of American voters and popular opinion will have been spectacularly vindicated. Still, pundits shouldn’t catastrophize too quickly.

Conservatives caution that with Trump, you have to watch what he is actually able to accomplish, not what he says. While many liberals proclaim that he will turn the US into an autocracy – and he might well prefer to do just that – the US has shown considerable resiliency despite the recent threats to its lofty traditions and ideals.

And while Trump clearly admires and probably envies Putin, few in the American government, judiciary or military share that misguided view. A newly reelected Trump would find it difficult, if not impossible, to simply abandon Ukraine to the Kremlin.

Indeed, a good indicator of what Trump might be able to do as president may be found in the attitude and public remarks of GOP foreign policy traditionalists in the US Senate such as minority leader Mitch McConnell.

Only if they forswear decades of Republican interventionism and the use of American military power abroad would a thorough capitulation of Western interests in Ukraine be conceivable. And that’s not likely to happen.

Next year, the world will await the outcome of America’s November elections to see who will be chosen for a second term as president, and what the balance of power in the country’s legislature will be. But either way, abandonment of America’s role in the world in general and in Europe in particular is unlikely to change significantly.

Record amount of elections in 2024

Meantime, the world in 2024 will experience an unprecedented wave of elections. The prestigious US Atlantic Council estimated recently that as many as 75 nations will hold significant votes next year. The US and Ukraine are but two of them. Never before in human history have so many plebiscites been scheduled.

Other noteworthy elections will be held in South Africa, India, Mexico, the UK and the European Union, among many others.

Altogether, the Atlantic Council experts, who hosted a recent on-line event on the subject, estimated that 4.2 billion people will be heading to the polls next year.

According to these experts, serious issues lurk in several key votes. In India, for example, the elections are menaced by repeated incidents of repression of journalists offering reporting and commentary independent of the ruling party, as well as recurring threats of violence.

And listeners were reminded of the assault on Brazil’s parliament three years ago by supporters of the losing party – just two days after the January 6 riots in Washington, DC.

But guests from Google and Microsoft both said the biggest single issue in ensuring honest and fair elections will be the need for management and dissemination of information voters could trust. They estimated that $10 billion will be spent in the US alone on next year’s general elections, and much of that staggering sum will be spent on false narratives.

Both decried censorship and a tilt toward the right-wing agenda on X, formerly Twitter. The growing threat to authentic information posed by Artificial Intelligence was often noted. They worried about a nagging feeling among voters around the world that “everything in our lives is outside our control.” Why vote if you feel that way?

Voting is a sacred democratic right. Ensuring its authenticity, the panelists warned, must come from an active collaboration between voters and civil authorities. It will be fascinating to see how the Americans and many others manage it next year.