The War in Ukraine: A Solution Ignored

The Trump Administration is moving at warp speed. Given last week’s blow-up in the White House with Trump, Vance and Zelensky, and subsequent developments in Europe, what happens next with Ukraine, Putin, the war and peace, is anyone’s guess.

However the chips fall, let’s be clear, there are no secrets. Everyone involved knows the situation - that Trump wants the war to end, that Ukraine has no chance of “winning” or even regaining territory without enormous inputs from the U.S. and Europe, that the Trump Administration will never provide those inputs, that Russia will never agree to Ukraine in NATO, that what territory Russia now occupies, it will continue to occupy, etc. Putin knows all that, Trump knows it, Zelensky knows it, the Europeans know it. No one has an ace up his sleeve; the basic outlines of a deal should be clear enough to all.

That doesn’t prevent neo-cons, Democrats and anti-Trumpers everywhere from making wild – and wildly conflicting - claims.

First, they want us to believe that any deal with Putin is per se wrong, that the only acceptable end to the war will see every Russian soldier back in his country and, I assume, all of Crimea, Donbas, etc. back in Ukrainian hands. That’s because, if we make a deal with Putin over Ukraine, “Poland is next” and, after Russia invades and subverts Poland, World War III. All that is according to one of the vice-chairs of the Democratic National Committee. The august Rachel Maddow chimed in that anything short of the complete ousting of all Russians from Ukraine would be “abandoning the free world and lining up instead with the world’s dictatorships.” Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw threatened to kill Tucker Carlson just for suggesting that the hundreds of billions of dollars sent to Ukraine could have been better spent on improving the lives of Americans. Etc., etc.

So, according to the usual suspects, this is the gravest of crises, one that risks WWIII but whose only acceptable solution is a peace that no one believes is possible. You figure it out; I can’t.

If that’s not enough, U.S. and European observers say that Ukraine’s main problem is a shortage of military personnel. Many Ukrainian men have been killed or disabled, many have deserted and many are resisting conscription, so Ukraine is hamstrung by a lack of combat personnel with which to forestall a catastrophe of unimaginable horror. What to do?

Well, one thing to do is (a) screamingly obvious, (b) reasonably simple and (c) completely ignored. Ukraine has plenty of warm bodies with which to prosecute its war, but is frankly ignoring them. I refer of course to Ukrainian women, many of whom are perfectly capable of shouldering a rifle and stopping a bullet. Currently, only about 65,000 women are serving, all of them having volunteered. That’s about 7% of the total active force. If the main problem is a shortage of personnel and if the survival of the nation, the absorption of Poland by Russia and WWIII are at stake, why leave half the population on the sidelines?

Clearly, the Ukrainian military brass doesn’t doubt women’s ability to serve; otherwise, what are those 65,000 women doing in uniform? And of course other countries, like the U.S. and Israel, loudly ballyhoo women’s ability to do all military jobs. And yet, neither the U.S., nor Europe, nor NATO nor Zelensky has even hinted at doing an obvious and simple thing to avert Armageddon. At the very least, putting hundreds of thousands of additional troops in the field would add hugely to our bargaining power against Putin.

And yet, complete silence, aka, just more of the same.

When Russia invaded in February of 2022, the news brimmed with stories of Ukrainian women, children and old people streaming toward Poland and military-age men streaming toward their nearest enlistment office. Not a word about women in combat, even amid the then-widely-held belief that Russia would overwhelm Ukraine in a matter of weeks or possibly even days. Feminists nowhere took to the streets demanding gender equality, rolling up their sleeves, flexing their bi-ceps and proclaiming “we can do it!”

The end of Ukraine is supposedly at stake but it doesn’t do the obvious to save itself. Strange.

Or maybe not so strange.

After all, when it comes to being slaughtered in war, women’s exemption and men’s disposability are the oldest of traditions. Human history may be a story of constant change, but not when it comes to who fights wars. The only difference between today and the time of Julius Caesar is that now we pretend to embrace gender equality, while happily turning a blind eye to it when it suits us.

The refusal to even mention conscripting Ukrainian women to fight strongly suggests something else – that what’s at stake in Ukraine isn’t what the neo-cons, anti-Trumpers, etc. are claiming. No, the neo-cons want endless war (as usual) and the anti-Trumpers want us to believe that the president is a pawn of Putin (as usual), so they do what they always do – set their hair on fire and scream about the end of the world, all as a cover for their pet projects.

But it’s all just a hustle. A deal will be made, the war will end and no, Putin won’t invade Poland. Remember, you read it here first.

Still, it’s interesting that, even with the news and newsmakers predicting the direst consequences, anti-male sexism and female privilege are such “givens” that, even “at the point of a gun,” they go unquestioned and almost entirely unnoticed.

But some of us do notice, and notice as well how far out on the fringe that puts us.