Emma, who is is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, and Kelly, who is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, a Nonresident Fellow with the Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, should be banned from the classroom. Their article in Foreign Affairs, How Ukraine Can Win Through Defense — A New Strategy Can Protect Kyiv and Stop Moscow From Winning, is another desperate attempt to make chocolate mousse out of horse shit. Can’t be done and it certainly is not palatable.

What is it with the two journals that are supposed to be the guiding lights on U.S. foreign policy? I am referring to Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs. Foreign Policy put out the delusional piece this month by Rose Gottemoeller and Michael Ryan that I shredded on Tuesday (Ukraine Has a Path to Victory). But Foreign Affairs is the biggest offender. In December it published Dmytro Kuleba‘s plea for help, There Is a Path to Victory in Ukraine. Foreign Affairs now follows up with the article by Ashford and Grieco. Nothing says panic in Washington like a spate of “Save Ukraine” articles in these two preeminent journals. I think both journals would be better off running a series based on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross writings on the Five Stages of Grief.

Anyway, back to the ladies. Mademoiselles Ashford and Grieco believe that Ukraine can stave off defeat by building defenses and doing to Putin what Putin did to Ukraine in its ill-fated offensive. They still fail to grasp that Russia’s victory was not just a function of building robust defensive lines. Russia had air superiority, glide bombs, hypersonic missiles and an ample supply of artillery shells, not to mention copious amounts of land mines. They write:

If Ukraine can defend the territory it controls in the coming months by using capabilities such as antitank mines and concrete fortifications, it can deny Russia a path to complete victory and perhaps even open the door for negotiations. Putin evidently believes that time is on his side; a strong, sustainable Ukrainian defense would prove him wrong.

These gals clearly don’t understand that Vladimir Putin is a Rolling Stones fan.

Putin has more than time. He has an industrial base that is cranking out artillery rounds as a rate that the United States and Europe could not match in five years. Putin has a robust military that is recruiting 500,000 volunteers a year while Ukraine is still struggling to come up with a plan to scarf up new cannon fodder. Russia has the luxury of being able to train new recruits for 12 months, while Ukraine, if it can drag some unsuspecting souls out of discos and grocery stores, can send their folks off to Europe for four weeks of learning how to put on a uniform.

Let’s give the ladies credit. They do have a moment of lucidity:

Despite the apparent stalemate on the battlefield, it is unlikely Putin would agree to a cease-fire until after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, which he surely hopes will deliver him a Trump presidency and thus a better deal. He is also undoubtedly aware of the grim math of land warfare: Russia has a larger military-age population to draw from than Ukraine and a stronger industrial base. On paper, time is on his side.

Thank you Captain Obvious for this no shit analysis. That moment of clarity is blown away by this strawman:

Even after two years of war, Putin’s exact objectives are unclear. The initial assault in February 2022 clearly aimed to decapitate and subjugate the Ukrainian state. When that failed, the Kremlin indicated that it sought the full conquest of four Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhiya. At a strategic level, however, Putin’s political objectives are relatively clear: weaken Kyiv, seize as much territory as possible, and prevent Ukraine from further integration with Europe.

Let me repeat for the learning disabled in the U.S. National Security community — Putin has two objectives. First, demilitarize Ukraine. That is taking place through attrition and, as an unexpected benefit, he also is demilitarizing NATO, who is unable to produce air defense missiles and artillery shells that Ukraine would need to mount a credible defense. Second, de-nazify Ukraine. Putin and his Generals are not going to stop until the filth of Nazi scum prevalent in Ukrainian ranks are wiped away. Real clear. Real simple. Don’t make this more complicated than it is.

This is the problem. The so-called foreign policy experts that populate think tanks and Congressional committees in Washington, DC do not know a damn thing about Russia. They are obsessed with a 1980s vision of Russia and are refusing to take a fresh look at Russia as a nation, as an industrial power and as a legitimate military force. These dummies do not realize that if Putin suddenly disappears that Russia is not going to crumple into a fetal position and beg for the West to love it. Ain’t going to happen. Russia understands one thing that the United States does not — it will defend the motherland at any cost. Russians are proud of their country and its history. It has rejected the legacy of the Soviet era and embraced Orthodox Christianity. The United States? Its borders are being flooded with a tsunami of migrants, its major cities are filled with homeless drug addicts and crime, its politicians are busy enriching themselves at the expense of their countrymen and the government is promoting and protecting sexual deviance.

Russians, unlike Americans, understand science and know that men cannot have babies and that women cannot grow a penis. It is this grasp on reality that gives Russia the confidence that it will prevail in preventing the West from turning Ukraine into Jeffrey Epstein land.