The War Is Going To Widen

Via CBS News:

The U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division has been deployed to Europe for the first time in almost 80 years amid soaring tension between Russia and the American-led NATO military alliance. The light infantry unit, nicknamed the "Screaming Eagles," is trained to deploy on any battlefield in the world within hours, ready to fight.

CBS News joined the division's Deputy Commander, Brigadier General John Lubas, and Colonel Edwin Matthaidess, Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, on a Black Hawk helicopter for the hour-long ride to the very edge of NATO territory — only around three miles from Romania's border with Ukraine.

. . . Skirting northward along Romania's Black Sea coast, the Black Hawk eventually touched down at a forward operating site where U.S. and Romanian troops were pounding targets during a joint ground and air assault exercise.

The tank rounds and artillery fire were real. The drill was meant to recreate the battles Ukraine's forces are fighting every day against Russian troops, just across the border. The war games so close to that border are a clear message to Russia and to America's NATO allies, that the U.S. Army is here.

We may assume that with the CBS reporters riding a helicopter with a general, the visit and even the precise wording of the report were fully approved by the Pentagon, and by extension both Secretaries Austin and Blinken. The president was in Delaware.

Meanwhile, from Gen Petraeus, who seems to be the unofficial spokesman for what has been communicated to Putin via channels, we hear:

Former #CIA director and ex-commander of #US and #NATO forces in Afghanistan David Petraeus does not rule out that a US-led multinational contingent may take part in the war in #Ukraine

— C4H10FO2P (@markito0171) October 22, 2022

The last we heard from Petraeus in this vein, it was to imply that the use of nukes in Ukraine would bring a strong US reaction, and this had been communicated to Putin. Opinion now seems to be that with Russia potentially planning to blow the Nova Kakhova dam as part of its retreat from western Kherson, the resulting flooding would represent a humanitarian disaster worse than a nuke, and by the way a war crime.

It appears that Western elites are more and more uncomfortable with ongoing Russian war crimes in Ukraine, which would include the civilian suffering resulting from destruction of the Ukrainian power grid during autumn and winter. There have been interesting comments on the reddit thread reacting to Petraeus's statement:

NATO intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo. It stopped the wars and forced a peace partly because of the unatable security situation caused in Europe. I think NATO has grounds to do intervene in meaningful way as it could be in the collective best interests of North Atlantic countries. In terms of peace, economics, and regional stability.

. . . Nevertheless, presuming what you are saying is "let's not use that as an excuse to not engage", I'd also like to see NATO members (if not the organization itself) with boots on the ground on a volunteer basis.

Even better would be recent NATO intervention performed at the behest or with the approval of the Security Council such as has happened several times in recent history. But clearly that's not going to happen with Russia in the council.

The question I've had from the start, and I've been raising it here, is that any conceivable end state for the war is going to require international enforcement. Even if Ukraine is able to push Russia back to the pre-2014 borders using only current levels of Western aid, that won't solve anything -- Putinist Russia will simply rearm and stage continuing provocations indefinitely, resulting in an even less tenable situation in Europe than was caused by Bosnia and Kosovo.

I've got to assume the lizard people have figured this out and will move to restore stability sooner rather than later. In fact, I think they've even figured it out by now that a "negotiated settlement" that simply restores a status quo ante February 24 won't work, either. One way or another, NATO will be directly involved. There's going to be a need to get this fixed.