The “End Game?”

My son is a pretty good chess player, and has been such for quite a while. Yes, of course, yours truly taught him how to play the game, but it did not take long for him to begin to consistently beat me. He regularly plays on line, and his online ranking score is very good. When he teaches his students the game, early on he transitions to what is called the “end game.” Put simply, he says that if you don’t master the chess end game, you cannot be a winner at chess.

In baseball, the end game involves the closer. In football it is the field goal kicker. Perhaps a rhetorical question, perhaps not … is there an end game  in war? More specifically is there an end game in the Russia-Ukraine War? And even more specific … is there an end game to the United States’ involvement in that war?

The war in Ukraine has been going on now for about seven months. Prior to the first shots being fired, President Biden appeared to be frozen while Putin amassed around 100,000 of his troops along the Ukraine border. Whereas J.B did not want to upset the Russian bear prior to his invasion, after the invasion he began giving armaments to Ukraine, and perhaps similar to an habitual drug user, it appears that he cannot or does not want to stop. According to the Wall Street Journal earlier this week:

“Senior U.S. officials visiting Ukraine and Germany announced $675 million in new military assistance to Ukraine and $2 billion in additional funding for that country and other nations in the region, as Kyiv launches offensives to try to retake territory captured by Russian troops this year. The military aid will include rockets for multiple-launch rocket systems, four 105 mm howitzers with 36,000 rounds, high-speed missiles to target enemy radar, 5,000 antitank missiles, 1,000 antitank mines, 100 Humvees, 1.5 million rounds of ammunition for small arms, 50 armored medical-treatment vehicles, night-vision equipment, small arms and grenade launchers, a State Department spokesman said.”

According to the Associated Press the White House has provided more than $15 billion to Ukraine since President Biden took office.

$15 billion is a lot … a real lot of money. This is what $15B looks like, $15,000,000,000 … a lot of zeroes! At some point do we need to ask about an end point? Have JB and his advisers discussed this? Is there one?

9/13/22

115 Replies to “The “End Game?””

  1. i can only hope that $15……..With all the zeros………is enough

    for Ukraine to get their country back before it is completely

    leveled and it is not worth getting back………

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