I'm old enough to remember the end of the Vietnam War, and the obsession of the Pentagon to achieving "Peace, with Honor." The original idea of South Vietnam, had been that Ho Chi Minh would be satisfied with the North, and would leave the South alone. By the early nineteen-sixties, it was quite clear that this was not the case, and the U.S. was becoming more and more involved, ultimately having more than half a million troops trying to hold the line in South Vietnam. They were able to do it, but, at terrific, and unsustainable cost. So, by the 1970's, the agenda had shifted somewhat. Instead of expecting the South to manage on their own, the hope was that expensive U.S. weapons and regular bombings of North Vietnam would be sufficient to control the situation, without the need for U.S. troops on the ground. This would be "Peace, with Honor." Of course, that didn't work either, and in April 1975 we saw the helicopters jammed with refugees taking off from the U.S. Embassy, as the South Vietnamese troops were routed by the Viet Cong.

I've been comparing the U.S. intervention in South Vietnam, with the current U.S. intervention in Ukraine, for a couple of years now. And, again, as in South Vietnam, there have been stages and changes in the U.S. attitude. At first, the U.S. thought the Russians would be perfectly happy with the Ukrainians joining NATO, or, in any case, couldn't do anything about it. Then, when the Russians invaded, basically to defend their own space in the world, the U.S. thought they could overwhelm the Russians with their "superior" NATO weapons. This stage culminated last year, in 2023, when over 100 billion dollars were provided to Ukraine, much of it in the form of so-called "advanced", that is, incredibly expensive, offensive NATO weapons, like state of the art tanks. The idea was that these superb, invincible NATO tanks would quickly crash though the inferior Russian defenses, and rush to the Black Sea in a Blitzkrieg that would make the Crimea indefensible, and would force the Russians to realize that they were no match for the brilliant NATO scientists and engineers who designed them.

Of course, we now know what actually happened. The NATO tanks were all scrap within weeks, hundreds of them, untold Ukrainians died for nothing, and the Ukrainians scarcely advanced an inch. In response to this abysmal failure, there has now been a major "paradigm shift", in terms of the American approach in Ukraine. Instead of seeking victory over the Russians, the entire theme, instead, is to emphasize that the Ukrainians are in immediate danger of being overwhelmingly defeated, and the U.S. must provide the Ukrainians the means to avert this supposed disaster -- again, as in the early 1970's, the U.S. is seeking "Peace, with Honor". There are no offensive weapons as part of the current 60 billion dollar support package to Ukraine -- just artillery, ammunition, training, intelligence and missiles. The Ukrainians cannot advance, and, indeed, they aren't even attempting to do so, anymore. Rather, supposedly, this should, at the very least, "slow the Russians down".

What for, exactly? Well, quite frankly, I don't think anyone really knows. In a very general sense, the U.S. seems to want to stay involved to a significant degree, even if the only effect, as it has been so far, is to make the Russian military and the Russian economy much stronger, and to kill enormous numbers of Ukrainians. The U.S. just wants to keep its hand in, because, that's what the U.S. does!