Here I would like to discuss Counterpunch's unprovoked publication of a piece by "Glenn Alcalay" (credited in other articles as being a professor of anthropology in New Jersey -- such a qualification!) about Ukraine, titled "No Gray Area: How Putin Wins," filled with all sorts of irrelevant, yet neoconservative, talking points. Perhaps the editors of Counterpunch despair of dissidence and are looking for CFR membership at this time.

Let's start with the first sentence of this piece:

Although everybody wants peace, Ukraine rightly resists the current terms of a “peace” settlement with the Russians which would cede one-fifth of it’s territory to Russia.

The claim that "everybody wants peace" is patently false. War would not continue if large numbers of people did not want it to do so, and you'd think a Professor of Anthropology would not be confused on this point. Also, the claim that "Ukraine rightly resists" Russian occupation of the Donbas and of Crimea is made without reference to what Ukraine is in fact _doing_. What Ukraine is in fact doing is more rightly called _sacrifice_ -- you can't really call "counter-offensives" conducted without air support "resistance." You'd think a Professor of Anthropology would know the difference.

From there I am going to touch briefly upon "Alcalay's" neocon talking points. The statement about

the unprovoked attack on Ukraine by Russia on February 24th, 2022

is history-free, but, hey, if the West doesn't want to discuss security guarantees with Putin, I guess that's okay.

Putin’s call for the “de-nazification” of Ukraine as his casus belli is laughable with Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president, a Jew,

laughs without reference to discussions of the composition of the Ukrainian armed forces. The Banderites are all-Jewish, right?

The author's point about "shock therapy" is nonsensical. The author fails to mention that the point of "shock therapy" is so that the plutocrats who control the United States can also control other places, notably Russia. In this regard, if anyone is resisting "shock therapy," it's Putin.

Later the author complains that

if the current 'peace' plans are implemented, Russia will have stolen 20% of Ukraine’s territory. Those 'anti-war' advocates who propose an immediate peace settlement are allowing Russia to steal a fifth of Ukrainian land.

What we are being told, here, is that fault lies with the advocates of peace as regards "allowing Russia" to do what Putin wants to do. In the real world, Putin does what he does without "counter-offensives" stopping him, and peace advocates simply don't want to entice him into further acts of destruction, such as are now being enabled by the continuance of the war and the war's consequent boost to Putin's currently enormous popularity in Russia.

And then we have this winner:

To bravely defend one’s country – against Putin’s reputed wish of Ukrainian genocide and the erasure of the Ukrainian people – is the highest calling one can imagine.

The claims of planned genocide are unsubstantiated, and moreover it's not really "defending one's country" to participate in "counter-offensives" in which the ratio of casualties is eight Ukrainians for every Russian and in which no territory is gained.

The self-contradiction in neoconservative logic was always its simultaneous acceptance and rejection of political realism. Neoconservatism started from the realist premise that morality didn't really matter in the world and that it was what nation-states actually did that mattered. Such a premise marks neoconservatism as a type of realism. Neoconservatism then proceeded, however, to make the United States into a paragon of moral virtue, which it isn't, and then to assume that the US was going to impose its moral order upon the rest of the world through brute force.

In reality, if you want a moral order in the world, you have to promote it through moral means, which do not include what are currently called "Ukrainian counter-offensives." And if you are a political realist and you think it's what nation-states do that matters in the world, you need nation-states that pursue their goals smartly, and the fact of the matter is that Putin has pursued his goals smartly (if brutally), whereas the neoconservatives of the Biden team do not display the same caliber of strategic intelligence.