The Washington Blob has learned nothing and forgotten everything.

November may be twenty political lifetimes away, but the Blob seems intent on pressing the Ukrainians to kinda, sorta keep up the fight until at least the Midterm Elections have passed.

Diplomacy is about surviving in to the next century.  Politics is about surviving to Friday afternoon!

– from the episode “A Victory for Democracy” (1986) from the series Yes, Prime Minister.

Yes, Prime Minister could have been produced last weekend.  Meanwhile, David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest (1969) could have come out the weekend before that.  Consider these passages:

[From the perspective of The Establishment,] The Establishment was very small, which was necessary, and it was in charge of a country, which was very young and which could not make the right decisions itself, and thus unity within the Establishment was very important.

From the beginning, [Vietnam] had been … a tiny issue overclouded by the great issues.  It had risen to pre-eminence partly because of neglect and omission, a policy which had evolved not because a group of Westerners had sat down years before and determined what the future should be, but precisely because they had not. 

The attitude was essentially that there was little to lose, a certain small investment in American money, virtually no investment in American lives.  In the beginning there was little illusion about the legitimacy of the government, or the state, or its chances for survival.  That illusion would come gradually, later on, for a commitment is a subtle thing, with a life of its own and a rhythm of its own.  It may, as in the case of South Vietnam, begin as something desperately frail, when the chances for survival are negligible.  For a while, oxygen is breathed in, mouth-to-mouth, at great effort but little cost, and then the very people who have been administering the oxygen, desperate to keep the commitment alive (not because they believe in any hopeful prognosis, but because they do not want to be charged with failing to try and give first aid), look up one day and find that there is indeed a faint pule, that the patient is more alive than dead. But at this point they are not relieved of the responsibility; instead, for the first time the commitment really begins, and now they are charged with keeping it alive... Its death would mean genuine political repercussions.

The business in Ukraine surely does not map neatly into the Vietnam template, but I did spend some time this afternoon looking for this last passage.  And it was after first reading all of these passages over these last few days that an idea came to mind: The Biden Administration really is just “winging it” in Ukraine, desperately hoping that some electoral advantage may come of the entire matter in the midterm elections in November.  More than that, it will keep feeding the beast until at least the election passes.  But, absent a bigger commitment, will time run out?  And, if so, can we anticipate a bigger commitment?

November is a long time from now, and the war in Ukraine has moved beyond the initial, aborted phase in which the Russians had hoped to bluff their way in to Kiev and to impose regime change.  The war has moved into a Bear Hug phase in southeastern Ukraine with Russia right now trying to encircle the important logistical node that is comprised of the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.  Capturing this logistical point might enable the Russians to secure easier passage further west to another logistical node, the city of Dnipro on the Dnipro River.

How did we get here?  Doing the anti-Putin thing was the easy thing to do in the early going, for the Administration might get credit for it going in to the midterm elections; the electorate might come round on the matter, Because Putin.  Indeed, the agents of The Establishment on both sides of the aisle, but especially the Democrats, may perceive some cost to giving up on Get Putin, because they’ve been gaslighting the country with this stuff since 2016.

Whether or not that is a reasonable interpretation of the domestic politics, the reality is that the front in southeastern Ukraine could soon deteriorate, and yet the Administration remains situated to step in an encourage the parties to bargain their way to a deal.  There might be a lot less of free Ukraine to bargain over by the time elections roll around.

To get some idea of conditions on the ground, consider these maps courtesy of liveuamap.com.  The red items indicate events recorded earlier in the day along the southeastern front. 

Zooming in on the southeast we get this image:

One can see the Severodonetsk/Lysychansk salient forming at the eastern end of the front.  Rail lines and waterways run through that point.  The Ukrainians have been holding off blowing up bridges in and around that point, but even today they have destroyed some passages across some of the waterways.

Zooming in again:

As of earlier today, the gap at the narrowest point was about 12 miles/20 kilometers wide.  There are only a few bridges that link Severodonetsk to Lysychansk at the eastern end of the salient.  One can only imagine that getting out of Severodonetsk on the east side of the river and through the gap—if that is what it comes to—could make for a fraught affair.

I exchanged some email with some Ukrainian contacts this afternoon.  We have a joint book project in the works.  And it is still in the works.  This may not be like researchers doing their work in the libraries of a besieged Leningrad in 1942, but not everyone is tied up in the Severodonetsk/Lysychansk salient.  Not everyone is being sacrificed to secure the faint hope of electoral advantage for certain American elites.