With GWOT Back on the Front Page, U.S. Should Make Peace with Russia

What is going on in the Donbass is quite clear. One can even pick it up by reading the Gray Lady's reporter Andrew Kramer. In Donetsk Kramer writes in "Ukrainian Troops Press Rebels in Their Eastern Strongholds" of a junta military  terrorizing the civilian population prior to Putin's meeting in Minsk on Tuesday with Poroshenko. The idea is if Kiev can maximize the crisis Putin will make concessions to make the problem go away, the problem being a fundamental break down in Donbass society, a 21st-century version of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War:

DONETSK, Ukraine — With street fights and artillery barrages, the Ukrainian military pressed its advance on Wednesday on the two eastern provincial capitals held by pro-Russian separatists in a day of violence that killed 52 civilians and Ukrainian soldiers and an unknown number of rebels. 

In one of the heaviest artillery attacks yet on the center of Donetsk, the larger of the capitals, shells struck street kiosks and residential apartment buildings near the stadium of the Shatyorsk soccer club, in the city’s heart. Fighting on the outskirts, particularly around the strategic town of Ilovaysk, a transportation hub, has also flared in recent days. 

The fighting has intensified as the Ukrainian and Russian leaders prepare for a meeting in Minsk, Belarus, on Tuesday to explore a diplomatic solution to the conflict, suggesting the sides are maneuvering to achieve the strongest possible military position before then.

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Shells landed for a second day in a neighborhood of Makiyivka, near Donetsk, about a mile from a separatist checkpoint. One blew out the windows in the bedroom of Anna Zyukova’s 2-year-old son, Vladislav, leaving pockmarks of shrapnel sprayed into the wallpaper behind his crib. “Thank God we got him out yesterday” to a relative’s home away from the shelling, Ms. Zyukova said. 

At the rebel checkpoint, a commander who offered only his nickname, Chaika, or the Seagull, said he was as baffled as anybody by the scattershot shelling into residential districts. His position was in a forest, away from homes. 

“We are soldiers and we are fighting,” he said. “We understand when they shoot at us. But why are they firing at the residential areas? We don’t know.”

As for Luhansk, Kramer casts doubt on junta reports that the Ukrainian military controls a big chunk of city real estate:

In Luhansk, the other remaining separatist stronghold, government forces have now gained control of “significant parts” of the city after days of street fighting, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security Council, told reporters in Kiev. 

Though block-to-block fighting began in Luhansk late last week, the government’s claim of controlling areas there could not be independently confirmed. In a brief telephone interview Wednesday morning, a human rights researcher in the city said he had seen no sign of the Ukrainian Army so far.

It is going to be a long weekend of terror for the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk. The rebel militia will not be broken in four-to-five days. Putin is ready to make a deal. The question is whether Kiev is. Maybe the junta cannot. Maybe all Kiev is able to do is wage war and commit atrocities. If this is the case, hopefully Washington has figured out by now where this is all heading, World War Three, and will force a deal down the throat of its ghastly offspring.

The Obama administration would be wise to settle things with Russia because it looks like the Global War on Terror is back on the front burner. Since last year it has become apparent that the U.S. had decided to go along with the Gulf monarchies in rolling back the Arab Spring. The Sisi coup which ousted the Muslim Brothers in Egypt last summer followed by the rise of Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq occurred with Saudi blessings. The U.S. assented, albeit meekly, but it assented nonetheless.

Now there is evidence -- we'll see, it is too early yet to tell -- of a division between the House of Saud and Uncle Sam (unless one believes that IS is a free actor, which I do not). And it looks like Kurdistan was the source of that division. Islamic State fighters battered the vaunted Kurdish pesh merga, took control of Mosul Dam and threatened Erbil. The U.S. responded with airstrikes coordinated with Iraqi special forces and the pesh merga and routed the jihadis. The jihadis answered with a "golden oldie," a snuff flick meant to sow terror in the Far Enemy.

The U.S. being the biggest bully on the block will need to respond in some fashion. The question is what IS does next. My sense is that the jihadis are too vulnerable, too spread out. If they were to go all in on a high-profile attack on the Far Enemy now they would pay dearly. So the Foley beheading is likely a one-off. Islamic State will turn its attention back to Syria, which is what they have been trying to do since the U.S. military asserted itself on behalf of the Kurds.

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I'll be out of town the next few days. Back on Sunday.