Some wars are those of necessity in that a civilization is in danger of perishing even if the odds of persevering are slim. That was the case in the Second World War and with the War between the Greeks and the Persians in the Fifth Century B. C. and also, I think, with the Spanish Armada, which was out to destroy what the Protestant Reformation had created. Most wars are less so in that a negotiated peace could have gotten most war aims without the need for carnage. The colonies could have worked out a way to remain tied to Great Britain if Parliament had been willing to negotiate with Benjamin Franklin, the reluctant revolutionary. The North could have swallowed an independent Confederacy, leaving it to its cruelty and rural idiocy while it remained dependent on Northern capital and industry, which in fact is what happened for the hundred years that followed the end of the American Civil War. The Spanish American War was unnecessary for the United States to take over the declined Spanish Empire as part of its economic sphere of influence, sometimes deciding to keep territories, as in Puerto Rico, or give them up, as in Cuba, or hold them only for a half century, as was the case with the Philippines. The logic of the geo-political order trumps the need for war. The same is the case with Ukraine. What appears in newspapers in the past few days are limited Russian war aims--a Ukraine pledge not to join NATO and the annexation into Russia by some eastern Ukraine provinces--could have been agreed to by negotiation before the war started were Putin willing to give up or even defer trying to reconstitute the Russian Empire at the time of Catherine the Great. But some leaders are itching for a fight and we think that prudent leaders are the ones who are reluctant to wager the stakes of war, that you might lose your seat at the table and not just the stakes that had been anted up.

The war of Russia on Ukraine can be understood as a war to rectify the borders of what had happened when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, just like the border wars that occurred when Yugoslavia did in the 1990’s. But those were just ethnic conflicts that got out of hand because concentration camps and ethnic cleansing sullied the point by introducing these matters in Europe for the first time since the Second World War. Putin, on the other hand, was to rectify back to the Eighteenth Century and declared war to do so when that had not been necessary to achieve his major objectives. So Biden decided to take sides in the war very vigorously but without shedding American blood on the grounds that Putin had gone to war in the first place. The war itself was the casus belli for taking sides when Biden could have said that let Putin take Ukraine in that it was outside of the Western sphere of influence even though Ukraine was more culturally allied to Europe. But Biden did not let that pass and so has applied the measures available--arms shipments and economic warfare-- to counter Putin. It is clear that either Biden or Putin is the winner, never mind whatever happens to Zelensky and his people.

How do you keep up this war or any war in a way that is responsible and judicious, which means risking not too much to make sure as to command the resources that will allow a side to win. FDR managed he war wisely, by general accounts, because he did not panic but thought that time was on his side in that his ever increasing arms and mobilization would work to create overwhelming force and that the only danger was that the American people might lose heart and give up on the sacrifices, though the protection of two oceans meant that the domestic front was never seriously threatened. The domestic front was pretty normal, prosperous, in fact, even though casualties mounted. FDR made clear to his people that they should not be distracted from his war aims. It was not a war to protect the British Empire nor a war to rescue the Jews. It was an alliance against Fascism and not to repel Stalinism. FDR was, therefore, careful and circumspect, carefully marshaling his resources and avoiding disruptive matters.

Biden is following this circumspect manner. He is not overly ambitious, not suggesting that Putin will fall (until yesterday), even though many commentators were saying that Putin’s fall is now inevitable. Putin used assistance to overcome Ukraine as he could while not escalating the chips on the table by unlimbering the Western arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that being the hole card that Putin may or may not keep in reserve. All in all, Biden is playing by the book in that he minimizes risk and consults his allies on every forward move. That is supposedly the right way to wage war, even though some exceptional politicians, like Lincoln, was dramatic in shaking things up to reshuffle the deck as when he announced the Emancipation Proclamation, but that was also a considered move to mobilize the war as one about freedom rather than just union, and only did so after a victory, so that the war was moving towards its endgame even though it really wasn’t yet there, tht waiting for the continued attrition of the Confederate forces. Similarly, D-Day knew that repulsing the invasion of Europe was Hitler’s last chance while a defeat for the Allies on June 6, 1944 meant only that Eisenhower would have to be replaced by a general who could do the trick the next spring-- providing that the Germans did not develop new weapons that could significantly change the war.

Who are the people who could master how to wield a war? It is difficult to say. Monarchists would say that the terms of office for President or Prime Minister are too short so that they have rough experience so as to master their own administrations much less international statecraft. The difference is that politicians who rise in a democracy often have had decades of experience before they achieve the highest rung and so have played many parts and have met enough foreign leaders that they are familiar with handling world events. And so Biden can be thought of as having been seasoned enough to know the playbook he is handling, having been in the Senate for more than thirty years and then as Vice President for eight. But experience is not the best preparation. Lincoln was not experienced. Kaiser Wilhem was experienced but insufficiently circumspect to see the awful nature of a new war. George H. W. Bush was experienced but still got himself into a quagmire where he had to enforce a no fly zone where he was thereby ever vulnerable to Saddam Hussein's missiles and the very experienced people around George W. Bush got themselves in a situation where everybody was firing on Americans. So experience is not the answer even if Biden rests on it but relies even more on judgment to determine how to read the invisible book from which he reads.

So if going by the book is just being careful and deliberate, Biden is measuring up. He has unified NATO so as to shore up his defenses and shipped arms to fight an offense and protected the home front by not putting Americans at risk. He has denounced aggression and it seems to be successful in getting the support of the American people. But none of these matters have been tested in that the Russians have not done something significantly stabilizing? Would Americans rally to the cause if there were serious cyber warfare attacks against the homeland or if Poland was required to answer the Russians for a bit of chemical warfare against Ukraine? It is hard to say, given how weak are the reasons for our war with Russia over Ukraine. After all, it is about just the fact that there was a war at all and that wars engender civilian casualties, which is perhaps not at all a cause for major escalation. The war between democracies and autocracies would seem a pretty thin reed on which to continue a war with damages to our side, especially since most of the war aims,by Putin, which is Ukraine not in NATO and eastern provinces of Ukraine ceded to russia matters that could have been accomplished by negotiation and still available, or so it seems to Zeelensky. Nothing to fight a major war over. So far, Biden playing by the book has been lucky.

Biden said yesterday that He thought Putin did not deserve to stay in power. That was backtracked as meaning that Biden was just responding to seeing the Ukraine refugees in Poland, just as when he said Putin was criminal because of the slaughter of civilians. But commend biden for saying to the American people what he means, which is that Putin is criminal whether or not there is a war crimes tribunal and that, so too, Putin does not deserve to remain as the head of russia given his misbehaviors, and that no one in the west will feel safe if Putin stays in office and so, sooner or not much later, there will be a reckoning about russian leadership. Biden confides to the American people the sense that the American people sense is the truth. But there may be something more hinted at, which is that we are in the end game in the war, that Putin is clearly losing the war, what with hunkering down around Kiev and not trying to defeat it, and bolstering mainly in Ukraine's east. That is why Biden, more aware than the rest of us about the real situation in the Russian armed forces, can be thinking about the future, or when Putin will leave office. He would not be talking about that if Putin’s worst was still ahead. My fear, however, is that Biden is wrong and the worst might be yet to come, however careful has been Biden’s management of this war.

Some wars are those of necessity in that a civilization is in danger of perishing even if the odds of persevering are slim. That was the case in the Second World War and with the War between the Greeks and the Persians in the Fifth Century B. C. and also, I think, with the Spanish Armada, which was out to destroy what the Protestant Reformation had created. Most wars are less so in that a negotiated peace could have gotten most war aims without the need for carnage. The colonies could have worked out a way to remain tied to Great Britain if Parliament had been willing to negotiate with Benjamin Franklin, the reluctant revolutionary. The North could have swallowed an independent Confederacy, leaving it to its cruelty and rural idiocy while it remained dependent on Northern capital and industry, which in fact is what happened for the hundred years that followed the end of the American Civil War. The Spanish American War was unnecessary for the United States to take over the declined Spanish Empire as part of its economic sphere of influence, sometimes deciding to keep territories, as in Puerto Rico, or give them up, as in Cuba, or hold them only for a half century, as was the case with the Philippines. The logic of the geo-political order trumps the need for war. The same is the case with Ukraine. What appears in newspapers in the past few days are limited Russian war aims--a Ukraine pledge not to join NATO and the annexation into Russia by some eastern Ukraine provinces--could have been agreed to by negotiation before the war started were Putin willing to give up or even defer trying to reconstitute the Russian Empire at the time of Catherine the Great. But some leaders are itching for a fight and we think that prudent leaders are the ones who are reluctant to wager the stakes of war, that you might lose your seat at the table and not just the stakes that had been anted up.

The war of Russia on Ukraine can be understood as a war to rectify the borders of what had happened when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, just like the border wars that occurred when Yugoslavia did in the 1990’s. But those were just ethnic conflicts that got out of hand because concentration camps and ethnic cleansing sullied the point by introducing these matters in Europe for the first time since the Second World War. Putin, on the other hand, was to rectify back to the Eighteenth Century and declared war to do so when that had not been necessary to achieve his major objectives. So Biden decided to take sides in the war very vigorously but without shedding American blood on the grounds that Putin had gone to war in the first place. The war itself was the casus belli for taking sides when Biden could have said that let Putin take Ukraine in that it was outside of the Western sphere of influence even though Ukraine was more culturally allied to Europe. But Biden did not let that pass and so has applied the measures available--arms shipments and economic warfare-- to counter Putin. It is clear that either Biden or Putin is the winner, never mind whatever happens to Zelensky and his people.

How do you keep up this war or any war in a way that is responsible and judicious, which means risking not too much to make sure as to command the resources that will allow a side to win. FDR managed he war wisely, by general accounts, because he did not panic but thought that time was on his side in that his ever increasing arms and mobilization would work to create overwhelming force and that the only danger was that the American people might lose heart and give up on the sacrifices, though the protection of two oceans meant that the domestic front was never seriously threatened. The domestic front was pretty normal, prosperous, in fact, even though casualties mounted. FDR made clear to his people that they should not be distracted from his war aims. It was not a war to protect the British Empire nor a war to rescue the Jews. It was an alliance against Fascism and not to repel Stalinism. FDR was, therefore, careful and circumspect, carefully marshaling his resources and avoiding disruptive matters.

Biden is following this circumspect manner. He is not overly ambitious, not suggesting that Putin will fall (until yesterday), even though many commentators were saying that Putin’s fall is now inevitable. Putin used assistance to overcome Ukraine as he could while not escalating the chips on the table by unlimbering the Western arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that being the hole card that Putin may or may not keep in reserve. All in all, Biden is playing by the book in that he minimizes risk and consults his allies on every forward move. That is supposedly the right way to wage war, even though some exceptional politicians, like Lincoln, was dramatic in shaking things up to reshuffle the deck as when he announced the Emancipation Proclamation, but that was also a considered move to mobilize the war as one about freedom rather than just union, and only did so after a victory, so that the war was moving towards its endgame even though it really wasn’t yet there, tht waiting for the continued attrition of the Confederate forces. Similarly, D-Day knew that repulsing the invasion of Europe was Hitler’s last chance while a defeat for the Allies on June 6, 1944 meant only that Eisenhower would have to be replaced by a general who could do the trick the next spring-- providing that the Germans did not develop new weapons that could significantly change the war.

Who are the people who could master how to wield a war? It is difficult to say. Monarchists would say that the terms of office for President or Prime Minister are too short so that they have rough experience so as to master their own administrations much less international statecraft. The difference is that politicians who rise in a democracy often have had decades of experience before they achieve the highest rung and so have played many parts and have met enough foreign leaders that they are familiar with handling world events. And so Biden can be thought of as having been seasoned enough to know the playbook he is handling, having been in the Senate for more than thirty years and then as Vice President for eight. But experience is not the best preparation. Lincoln was not experienced. Kaiser Wilhem was experienced but insufficiently circumspect to see the awful nature of a new war. George H. W. Bush was experienced but still got himself into a quagmire where he had to enforce a no fly zone where he was thereby ever vulnerable to Saddam Hussein's missiles and the very experienced people around George W. Bush got themselves in a situation where everybody was firing on Americans. So experience is not the answer even if Biden rests on it but relies even more on judgment to determine how to read the invisible book from which he reads.

So if going by the book is just being careful and deliberate, Biden is measuring up. He has unified NATO so as to shore up his defenses and shipped arms to fight an offense and protected the home front by not putting Americans at risk. He has denounced aggression and it seems to be successful in getting the support of the American people. But none of these matters have been tested in that the Russians have not done something significantly stabilizing? Would Americans rally to the cause if there were serious cyber warfare attacks against the homeland or if Poland was required to answer the Russians for a bit of chemical warfare against Ukraine? It is hard to say, given how weak are the reasons for our war with Russia over Ukraine. After all, it is about just the fact that there was a war at all and that wars engender civilian casualties, which is perhaps not at all a cause for major escalation. The war between democracies and autocracies would seem a pretty thin reed on which to continue a war with damages to our side, especially since most of the war aims,by Putin, which is Ukraine not in NATO and eastern provinces of Ukraine ceded to russia matters that could have been accomplished by negotiation and still available, or so it seems to Zeelensky. Nothing to fight a major war over. So far, Biden playing by the book has been lucky.

Biden said yesterday that He thought Putin did not deserve to stay in power. That was backtracked as meaning that Biden was just responding to seeing the Ukraine refugees in Poland, just as when he said Putin was criminal because of the slaughter of civilians. But commend biden for saying to the American people what he means, which is that Putin is criminal whether or not there is a war crimes tribunal and that, so too, Putin does not deserve to remain as the head of russia given his misbehaviors, and that no one in the west will feel safe if Putin stays in office and so, sooner or not much later, there will be a reckoning about russian leadership. Biden confides to the American people the sense that the American people sense is the truth. But there may be something more hinted at, which is that we are in the end game in the war, that Putin is clearly losing the war, what with hunkering down around Kiev and not trying to defeat it, and bolstering mainly in Ukraine's east. That is why Biden, more aware than the rest of us about the real situation in the Russian armed forces, can be thinking about the future, or when Putin will leave office. He would not be talking about that if Putin’s worst was still ahead. My fear, however, is that Biden is wrong and the worst might be yet to come, however careful has been Biden’s management of this war.