Victor Davis Hanson: Ukraine Is Becoming Another Verdun

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.  

The war in Ukraine has gone on for four years—4.7 years. Feb. 24 of next year, it’ll be five years. It’s longer than World War I. It’s longer than the American Civil War. It’s longer than the U.S. Pacific War. There are about 2.5 million combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties. 

I mean by that, of course, dead, wounded, missing and captured. Russia does not have the economy or the military to absorb all of Ukraine. And Ukraine, with one-fifth the population of Russia, one-tenth the GDP and one-twentieth of the area, cannot force Vladimir Putin out of either Crimea or the occupied Donbas territory. 

And that means the only way that this Verdun or this Somme can be solved is for one side or the other to win, and it doesn’t seem like either can, or for a new power to join one of the two sides, or for them to agree to a ceasefire. 

There’s another issue. In World War II, Winston Churchill held an election right after the German surrender, but right at the height of the Pacific War, and he was voted out of office. FDR had an election in 1944, right during some of the worst of the island-hopping and Pacific campaigns. 

So I’d like to make two initial points. I think it would behoove Mr. [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and Ukraine in general, because they’re very angry that Donald Trump said they need a new president. I don’t think that was the right articulation, but what I think he meant was that Israel has an election coming up. It’s basically in a state of war. 

It has a mixed or wartime cabinet. It would help Zelenskyy to restore habeas corpus, a free press and opposition parties, and have an election. And then we’ll see to what degree new people or new ideas in a campaign agree with Zelenskyy, sort of agree or reject him, or maybe the other participants will have a new idea. 

The second thing is everybody just says, “[Vladimir] Putin’s awful.” I agree. “Ukraine should win.” I agree. But they never tell us how they’re going to achieve that after four and a half years. They criticize everything that Donald Trump has said, but there’s one constant. If you want to call all of his ideas crazy, whatever you want to do, there’s one common theme. 

He doesn’t like all these people killing each other for no apparent purpose. There’s no change, really, in the momentum of the battlefield, and none of his critics and I’ve read a lot of them this week—say, “Donald Trump is wrong. This is what we must do to help Ukraine win the war and restore its territory.” 

Nobody will take that leap. What’s the latest melodrama? The latest melodrama is that Donald Trump is less than three weeks from the election. Diesel is higher than gas. Diesel is the blood that makes the American economy flow. It’s up to way over $4.22. The average gas price is averaging about $5 to $5.50. 

Here in California, it’s almost $8 in some places. So obviously, he wants calm in the Strait. He wants to resolve the Iran war. He wants more refineries, and he wants Russia to start selling diesel and refined fuel on the world market. Even though it’s a small percentage, it’s psychological, and the world went crazy. 

He was blasted as Putin’s puppet. The Europeans said he sold them out. The Canadians say he’s on Putin’s side. Zelenskyy said he was disappointed. But let me just remind everybody: We have given $140 billion to Ukraine. We are the ultimate guarantor of the safety of all the European countries that are talking about more aggressive action. 

They should take more aggressive action, and maybe they should. But if they get in a jam with Russia, who are they going to call? Us. 

More importantly, what has Europe been doing in the last four and a half years? It’s the greatest purchaser of Russian natural gas. 

In other words, they are criticizing Trump for trying to put more diesel fuel on the global market from Russia, which will help Russia at a time when it’s attacking Ukraine, unfortunately. But they’re saying to Ukraine, “Do not hit refineries,” and the world is angry. 

But Mr. Zelenskyy and the Europeans are not talking about the greatest source of Russian income right now: Europe’s massive purchases of natural gas. 

So you’ve got to stop. You don’t move—you’ve got to move it. Let me keep going. 

Europe says that Russia is an existential threat. OK, it may be. It’s got 6,000 nuclear weapons. But right now, it is an existential threat to Ukraine and to Europe. We believe that the Iranian regime is more unhinged than Putin and not subject to the same degree of deterrence as China or Russia. It was on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon and had been supplying the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah, which are the primary sources of tension in the entire Middle East. 

So we were trying to tell the Europeans, “OK, we’re going to give $140 billion to help you stop Putin. But all we want in return in our effort to denuclearize Iran is just your airspace. Can we land at a base or two so we can save transportation costs and probably save lives?” 

And what happened? 

The U.K. said, “No. In fact, there was an Iranian-inspired terrorist threat here against your bombers. We caught the guys, but guess what? They’re out on bail. We can’t protect you.” 

So we went home. Italy can’t let us land at that base in Sicily that’s a dual-use NATO base. Spain said, “Don’t use our NATO base, and don’t fly in our airspace.” 

France said, “Do not use any French airspace.” I could go on. Diego Garcia—the U.K. said, “Don’t use it.” 

So just stop a minute and take a breath. What are they saying to us? They are saying, basically, “We are going to be beneficiaries of a denuclearized Iran, but we don’t want to participate.” 

Fine, we didn’t ask you. “But we want to thwart your efforts to denuclearize by not allowing you to use NATO bases for the common good. 

“But at the same time, we want you to intervene with us to help save Ukraine and all of NATO because Ukraine is an existential threat to us, and we don’t think Iran is an existential threat to you.” 

And so that’s the problem. 

And the ultimate cause of all of these problems, I’ll be blunt, is that European GDP is flat. 

European unemployment is skyrocketing. European borders are destroyed. European unassimilated and unintegrated Islamic minorities are gaining traction, and they make up 16% to 30% of the population. They’re voting, and they have control over the destiny of Europe. Europe is still basically disarmed. It’s trying to rearm, but very slowly. 

Europe has a socialist economy like Canada, which has a very low fertility rate and very low GDP. Europe has 100 million more people than we do. It’s a $10 trillion smaller economy.  

Europe, especially the U.K. and Germany, shut down coal, natural gas and nuclear plants and invested in very costly wind and solar, and they’re uncompetitive. 

So you add a Europe in crisis that is weakening, with its notions of grandeur from the past, when it had enormous military, political and economic power and influence and leverage, and they don’t match. 

So they are telling us all these things that we have to do, what we can’t do, and how awful we are, and we say, “If that’s true, you must be very, very powerful, but you’re not. 

“You’re not. You’re like Canada.” 

And so what’s the result? We all want Ukraine to win. We all don’t trust Putin. But until—it’s easy to give criticism, but somebody should stand up and say, “I have a plan to stop Putin, and this is what we’re going to do: A, B, C, D, E, F.” 

What have we heard? Crickets.  

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