More Russian useful idiocy of the lefty variety, about which I've written a how to refutation guide: https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/how-to-guide-to-russian-useful-idiot-disinformation-demolition-dc79617fce89.
But here's a point by point evidence-based vivisection of this one:
"I don’t worry about being invaded."--Ah, the unique luxury of being walled off by two oceans. Neither did "don't fight the Jews' war" Lindbergh and Father Coughlin and the "don't fight the imperialist war" CPUSA. But remember Trotsky's aphorism, "you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
"Soledar": Mr. Dunn has bought into every short term bubble in Russian military fortunes--in Severodonetsk in June and July, in Bakhmut in August, while ignoring Kharkiv and Kherson, Ukraine's Moskva sinking that promoted Russia's Black Sea flagship to submarine, the Saki air base bombing, the Kerch Strait bridge bombing, the Engels airfield bombing. If I could securitize his military forecasts and short them with put options, I'd be a multi-millionaire. Mr. Dunn, of course, never takes responsibility for prior errant forecasts.
Putin has been firing and hiring commanders faster than Hitler on the eastern front in 1943–45. Russia’s hypercentralized top-down military has a fatal structural defect:
- If commanders concentrate troops to keep an eye on them and keep them from dying of hypothermia and they’re vulnerable to HIMARS strikes that killed 400+ in Makiivka.
- Disperse mobiki to prevent such strikes and they’ll lie to commanders and report they’ve followed orders while doing nothing or deserting.
"If Ukraine is winning, why are we sending them tanks?": To win and finish the war sooner. Why did we put the USAF over Germany? To keep the Luftwaffe off the eastern front, where 7/8 German troops were killed. Why did we aid China? Every Japanese soldier fighting in China instead of Saipan or Tarawa was good for the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. As Tim Snyder has pointed out, Ukraine’s unexpectedly strong resistance to genocidal Russian aggression, contrary to Dunn’s, Milley’s and Macron’s forecasts, has immensely enhanced western security and weakened Russia, for the equivalent of a single digit rounding error in the Pentagon budget. Ukraine is the best return on western geopolitical investment in post WWII history.
"The venom for Russia is hard to miss in social media and in the news": --Here's where the venom is--in Russia's genocidal exterminationist rhetoric, plans and practice that this genocide apologist is forever silent about: https://www.justsecurity.org/81789/russias-eliminationist-rhetoric-against-ukraine-a-collection/
Belief in Ukrainian victory is not Russophobic venom. Believing that confidence in Ukrainian victory is Russophobic venom is Russian imperial propaganda. Mr. Dunn is a full participant in Russia's collective narcissist grievance-driven victimhood campaign that projects Russia's failures onto its adversaries.
"Maybe America won’t or can’t send enough or more powerful enough weapons so that Ukraine can win"--South Korea alone could fill Zaluzhny's equipment wish list, as is clear here. I've provided this data expert Australian defense economist Perun before, but useful idiots like Mr. Dunn ignore data, preferring confirmation bias speculation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deK98IeTjfY
"The same report also says that only 33% of Republicans agreed with “prolonged support”, meaning, “indefinite support” while 61% of Democrats and 48% of independents agreed with the continued support of Ukraine, “whatever it takes”--And Dunn is with MTG, Gosar & Boebert; all you need to know.
"I’m not on either side of this war. I’m only on the side of peace....Russia pleading for negotiations"--Mr. Dunn is ready to buy Lavrov the Liar's Brooklyn Bridge to peace, whose premise is that Ukraine cease "senseless resistance" and accept Russia's annexations. Otherwise, no talks.
"Ukrainian agency...taking direction from America and the UK....I doubt they have agency"--Pure neo-imperial, neo-colonial prejudice about Ukraine of the kind that says the Maidan Revolution was a CIA coup. Inherited from the Tsarist and Bolshevik Russians and the Kaiser's and the Nazi Germans, as Tim Snyder made clear in his Yale course, The Making of Modern Ukraine (free! no tuition to go to Yale! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLfFmYWjHtc).
Colonizing Ukraine and contemptuous dismissal of Ukrainians as peasant "Little Russians" was central to the WWI and WWII Germans and Russians. Mr. Dunn is, of course, unaware of his own intellectual inheritance.
The key point about negotiations as war fought with other means is lost on Mr. Dunn:
The blame NATO negotiate unconditionally crowd on the left repeatedly invokes Russia’s tactical nuclear threat if the West crosses Russia’s “red lines,” as if these lines were fixed in place with a nuclear trigger or tripwire. Here’s why this is delusional: there isn’t a single Russian war aim, tactic or escalation measure that western restraint has changed. The negotiate unconditionally Code Pinkos and the carpe diem negotiation advocates like French President Emmanuel Macron and US Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley share a conceptual error about Russia’s red lines being fixed.
https://twitter.com/dpatrikarakos/status/1546598977331777537
Here’s a quick summary that the West’s Axis of Prudence (Macron, Scholz, Milley, Biden) has not prevented:
Flattening Ukrainian cities (Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Lyzychansk, Bakhmut)
Mass murder of civilians
Mass bombing of civilian energy infrastructure
Openly proclaiming genocidal war aims
Annexation of four Ukrainian regions as non-negotiable war aims
Mass deportations of Ukrainians, including 11000 children
Rape deployed as a weapon of war
Mass plunder and theft of Ukrainian assets — from grain to washing machines.
No war crime due to western restraint has remained uncommitted. No Russian war aim has changed. Yet the negotiate and ceasefire frozen conflict crowd concludes that the current apparent winter pause means that an undersupplied Ukraine can’t win and it’s time for the US to negotiate directly with Russia over Ukraine’s head, as the UK did with Germany in 1938. This is like blaming the rape victim after refusing to supply her with a gun, mace or pepper spray to defend against the rapist.
Listen to Valery Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces:
“I know that I can beat this enemy. But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600–700 ifvs, 500 Howitzers. Then, I think it is completely realistic to get to the lines of February 23rd. But I can’t do it with two brigades. I get what I get, but it is less than what I need. It is not yet time to appeal to Ukrainian soldiers in the way that Mannerheim appealed to Finnish soldiers. We can and should take a lot more territory.”
Translation: During the Winter War Finnish president and commander in chief Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim knew that the end of General Winter’s aid to the Finns with March 1940’s melting snow marked the peak of Finland’s defense. It made negotiating a territorial compromise peace sensible since that compromise would not turn Finland into a failed almost landlocked state. Zaluzhny “more territory” means enough to guarantee that Russia can’t freeze the war with Ukraine as an almost landlocked economically failed state so that their children fight round two.
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/negotiation-is-war-fought-by-other-means-e23a810753a0
