Ready for WWIII?

Biden approves 1000s of cluster bombs for Ukrainian use. These are banned in most of the world and will be considered a war crime by many.

The US has decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine to help its military push back Russian forces entrenched along the front lines - despite the ex-White House press secretary saying last year that Russia's use of the bombs was a 'war crime'.

The Biden administration has been weighing up a decision on sending the munitions since December, and is expected to announce on Friday it will send thousands of them as part of a new military aid package worth $800 million.

So this is our plan? To provide Putin with an excuse to escalate to some form of nuclear attack? I am sure it would not take much for Putin to demand that America forced his hand by going against their own ethics to assist Ukraine in this war. I've stated it before and I will state it again. Putin will not just allow Russia to lose this war. If they start to lose by any conventional means, he will resort to other options, including nuclear. The reality for Putin is that if Russia does lose, then he is done. Putin is not the sort man who would not run out all of his options before allowing his own personal destruction. Nuclear is certainly an option. Maybe a last resort... but Putin would not leave anything on the table.

But I digress...

The fact is that Ukraine is running out of supplies in spite of the assistance from the United States (and limited assistance from the rest of Europe). According to experts (not playing cheerleader for Kiev) the latest Ukrainian counteroffensive was an almost complete failure, with Ukraine being out gunned in munitions by 10-1 and suffering heavy casualties. Russian strategy recently has been to consolidate positions and start to fortify defenses. It's always harder to lay siege than it is to defend from a position of strength. In many ways the war has turned a bit upside down with the Ukrainians deciding to move forward rather than play defense and the Russians taking stronger hold of their war gains.

More to the point, these same experts are saying that Ukraine's biggest issue is not supplies, albeit that is an issue. The biggest issue is that they are running out of soldiers. While they did have a large number of military aged men willing to join up at the start of all this, new recruitment has been drying up, and there is little or no time to train people before sending them directly into battle. Not a recipe for success in any war. Especially one that has all the earmarks of a Korea or Vietnam style quagmire. Short of the United States or Europe putting boots on the ground, the situation is becoming more and more dire. But one has to wonder if that is the point all along. We seem to be doing everything in our power to provide "just enough" to keep Ukraine from being run over, but not nearly enough to allow them to actually win. If that is not by design, then it is a whole new level of Biden administration incompetence.

For whatever reasons, Biden and gang have hitched themselves to the Zelensky wagon. If he fails, then they will have failed or at least that is how it will play out. I would provide odds that the next Republican candidate for President will not try to "out-war" Biden on this one, but rather will criticize the haphazard manner in which we have supported them, while offering a solution to get the f out of there. There will come a time (if that time has not already been here) where it makes sense to negotiate an end. Our current leadership seems 180 degrees against it. I am not sure that will be a popular position a year from now. Heck, I am not so sure that a majority of Americans would not like to see some form of negotiations today. Polling has been all over the place with some polls suggesting fairly strong support for US providing aid, while others show that number hovering right around 50%. There seems to be strong disconnect between the people who claim that an Ukrainian victory is important and those who believe the United States needs to play an active role.

Even the most popular of wars seem to lose favor the longer they go on. At some point in time we will stop pretending to care about Donbas and Crimea and accept the fact that it doesn't much matter whether they are Russia or Ukraine.