{"id":1971684,"date":"2023-07-13T09:25:05","date_gmt":"2023-07-13T13:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/lies-damned-lies-and-ukraine\/"},"modified":"2023-07-13T09:26:44","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T13:26:44","slug":"lies-damned-lies-and-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/lies-damned-lies-and-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine: A Web of Deception"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Flies-damned-lies-and-ukraine%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1971684&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Engaging in an Endless Quagmire: The West&#8217;s Misguided Approach to the Russian War in Ukraine<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As the Russian war in Ukraine drags on, three phrases have become a constant political drumbeat: \u201cfight for democracy\u201d; \u201cas long as it takes\u201d; and \u201cuntil Ukraine wins.\u201d Each phrase is vague, bordering on the incoherent; together, those phrases are leading the West down the primrose path to endless quagmire.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The West&#8217;s Clear Interests in Ukraine<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are clear Western interests in Ukraine: prevention of Russian aggression across borders; degradation of the Russian military, so as to undercut future aggression; deterrence of China from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senate-democrats-defeat-bid-to-protect-abortion-survivors\/\" title=\"Senate Democrats Defeat Bid to Protect Abortion Survivors\">taking similar action<\/a> in Taiwan; solidification of the European alliance against both Russia and China. The West has achieved virtually all of these goals: the chances that Kyiv falls to Moscow are now essentially zero.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The Flawed Basis of Western Negotiations<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yet, the West, in maintaining that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy must lead all negotiations, has now boxed itself in. It does on the basis, first, of the \u201cfight for democracy.\u201d This is wrong on both practical and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/senator-and-husband-who-spent-career-in-government-have-net-worth-of-up-to-to-7-million\/\" title=\"Senator And Husband Who Spent Career In Government Have Net Worth Of Up To To  Million\">political levels<\/a>. Practically, as mentioned, Ukrainian democracy is not likely to fall to Russia \u2014 and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/lies-damned-lies-and-ukraine\/\" title=\"Ukraine: A Web of Deception\">greatest future threats<\/a> to Ukrainian democracy will likely be internal corruption. Politically, no one believes that the West will maintain an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ted-cruz-rips-democrats-for-toting-ukraine-flags-a-ukrainian-flag-is-like-a-covid-mask\/\" title=\"Ted Cruz Rips Democrats For Toting Ukraine Flags: \u2018A Ukrainian Flag Is Like A COVID Mask\u2019\">open-ended war<\/a> against Russia in order to preserve \u201cdemocracy\u201d \u2014 the West abandoned Afghanistan\u2019s nascent democracy after a 20-year effort to the tender predations of the Taliban.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The West has also said that it will maintain the war \u201cas long as necessary.\u201d This, too, is a lie \u2014 and everyone, including Russia, knows it. After Iraq and Afghanistan, does anyone believe that the West will keep up funding to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Finally, the West says that Ukraine must \u201cwin.\u201d But by most metrics, the West has <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">already <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">won. The West has little interest in toppling Putin \u2014 if, for example, the Wagner Group had taken over Russia, that would not have been a positive step in favor of world peace. And all of its original goals have been largely attained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The West&#8217;s Dilemma: What Now?<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The question is what the West\u2019s interests are <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">now<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The West knows, for example, that this war will not end with all Russian troops leaving historic Ukrainian territory. Ukraine will not wind up in control of Crimea, or all of the Luhansk and Donetsk region; Ukraine\u2019s vaunted counteroffensive has made less progress than originally projected, because aggressive war is more difficult than defensive war. Yet the West continues to maintain that any end to this conflict must be negotiated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has said that the war will not end until all Ukrainian territory is liberated of Russian presence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, what would an end to the war look like? Everyone has known the answer to this question for over a year: Ukraine preserves her sovereignty, and is given Western guarantees of defense, including possible membership in NATO; Russian control of Crimea and parts of Donbas is confirmed. Such a deal, imposed from the outside, would also give Zelenskyy an offramp with his own people: he\u2019d be able to blame the West for forcing him to give away territory, which would allow him to retain his leadership position.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But that would be \u201cour\u201d definition of winning, which President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have specifically forbidden. So we\u2019re now in the catch-22 of saying that we\u2019ll support Zelenskyy\u2019s untenable \u201cwin everything\u201d war and that we will also only admit Zelenskyy to NATO once the war has ended \u2014 creating an incentive for both Zelenskyy and Putin to continue the war. This is unnecessary. And it\u2019s happening due to the cowardice of Biden and other Western leaders, who want to look like heroes while simultaneously putting Zelenskyy and the West in an unwinnable, quagmire situation.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the Russian war in Ukraine persists, three phrases echo incessantly in politics: &#8220;fight for democracy,&#8221; &#8220;as long as it takes,&#8221; and &#8220;until Ukraine wins.&#8221; These vague and incoherent expressions are steering the West towards an endless quagmire, jeopardizing clear Western interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":1971685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1971684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1971685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}