"There's a lot noise and lights. A lot of excitement. But you end up right back where you started from." That's how Washington Post columnist Max Boot described the current Administration's chaotic approach to the Russia-Ukraine War at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting yesterday. It's a "merry-go-round" in his words.
Russian dictator Putin wants to achieve at the negotiating table what he can't seem to accomplish in his brutal, unprovoked war against an independent nation that poses no threat to Moscow. When the Council's Kenan Fellow Stephen Sestanovich asked Boot whether in this context the U.S. can deal with the complicated policy processes inherent in the Russia-Ukraine War, his emphatic response was ... "no!" "I would not apply the term 'policy process' to these people," he added. "It's just chaos."
The Administration's point person in all of this is the real-estate mogul Steven Witkoff who excels at having absolutely no experience in any of this. Boot said that, "Witkoff gives the impression that he doesn't know what he's doing," making him Putin's second favorite U.S. asset in this ordeal.
Without serious adults managing the U.S. role in settling the war, and doing so without ever conceding Ukrainian territory illegally invaded and occupied by Russia, there is little hope. Former top Russia hand in the U.S. Department of Defense Laura Cooper said in yesterday's conversation that despite Russia now firing twice the missiles and drones at Ukraine annually than over previous years, it will still take them 4.5 years to secure the eastern territories they want to steal. That's why "they'd rather do it at the negotiating table," she reminded everyone.
The truth is that Putin may not have the time to enact a military "victory." Another Washington Post Russia expert Catherine Belton punctuated this view at the session by saying, "The Russian economy is running out of steam. The civilian economy is quietly dying." This is just the time that the U.S. should be increasing the harshness of its Russia sanctions and look to break Putin's economy and the willingness of the Russian people to tolerate this war. Don't hold your breath.
