America’s New Lost Cause by Michael Vlahos

The New York Times rewrites the history of the war in Ukraine.

They say that “History is written by the victors.” Fortunately, we know that that is not always true. History is written by those who can assert the most appealing narrative. Those who offer the most charismatic and beguiling story — even those defeated in battle — can emerge, if not as victors, then as winners: Revered as those who triumphed in battle after battle, only to be brought down at last by overwhelming odds.

After the American Civil War, a broken Confederacy embraced the narrative of the Lost Cause, suggesting that Southern spirit had transcended the physical outcome of battle, and stood tall and unbowed in defeat: “The South will rise again!” Indeed, in dismantling Reconstruction and asserting state self-rule, the former held onto both its cultural cohesion — the “Confederate Nation” — and the passionate identity it had forged in war. This represented, in the word of the day, a kind of “redemption”.

The Lost Cause thus became their “history” — a narrative so dominant that it defined Southern meaning and mission, creating a political cohesion strong enough to drive national politics. Moreover, the narrative captivated the American imagination and captured popular sympathy for a century, especially among novelists, screenwriters, and historians: Think of Douglas Southall Freeman’s magisterial Lee’s Lieutenants, or Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind.

In a kind of unconscious homage, The New York Times’ cinematic chronicle — “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine” — might be best approached as the first salvo of a new Lost Cause narrative. Adam Entous’s “reporting” is thus best understood as demarcating a pathway for Ukrainian transcendence in war — after defeat. Going further, it also intends to reshape how we think about America’s “hidden role.” The story he tells transforms American “aid and assistance” into a heroic partnership between Ukrainian and American general officers, who together fight shoulder-to-shoulder against relentless enemy darkness, as a “Band of Brothers” — The Fellowship of the Ukraine — holding back the Orc tide. Thus can Ukraine, and its American masterminds, can transcend defeat.

To smoke out why the New York Times has undertaken this effort, it is necessary to appreciate the true power of narrative in war. “Narrative” today is an overused term of art in marketing and political analysis, focused on teasing out what makes for brand or party loyalty: Where stories can have the power of persuasion. In contrast, war narrative is altogether different, in that it touches directly on the nature of collective meaning and identity in the context of death and sacrifice for the survival of the nation. After-the-war narratives become a testament of shared national struggle. Thus they witness not only what is existential, but also, what is sacred. If the war ends even in defeat, the history that is written can seize the future, and renew a nation’s very identity.

The success of the Lost Cause demonstrates the power of transcendental narrative. If the Confederacy could reclaim itself after bitter defeat, can the forces of BLUE do the same?

Certainly, the Biden Administration sold the US/NATO mission in Ukraine as a kind of crusade for Democracy, an anointed mission in the fight against evil (Autocracy). Yet after three years, America’s initial popular enthusiasm for proxy against Russia has flagged. To a degree, Team Biden's defeat in the presidential election of 2024 represents a rejection of US entanglement in the war. Moreover, Ukraine is losing the war, and is now close to losing catastrophically. Supporters of the war are blaming the Biden Administration for its hesitancy, while opponents of American involvement see the entire venture as a fiasco that has badly wounded America’s world standing and authority.

Everyone senses that the war has reached its final stage. Already, competing narratives of Biden Administration arrogance, fecklessness, and ultimate failure are congealing. Meanwhile, a victorious Team Trump — if it can follow through on its promise to end the war — is positioned to impose its own narrative: To write the History.

Hence, the New York Times has floated a story that bids fair to become the Democrat’s sacred take on the Ukraine War: Their very own, very valiant, very noble Lost Cause. Consider this highly manicured, massaged, and very long, piece as the “screen treatment” for the big blockbuster to come, BLUE’s very own Gone with the Wind.

The Times screen treatment lays bare the workings of a Lost Cause narrative strategy. It has four objectives, and is to be realized through expert rhetorical manipulation.

First, to present the US-Ukrainian Brotherhood of General Officers as a heroic stand by Democracy against evil, in the loftiest traditions of American altruism. Like a latter-day Plutarch, Enous sketches the generals of the Fellowship as larger-than-life, Homeric figures, full of passion, comradely commitment, and yes, even tears. The story ends with the SecDef, Lloyd Austin, “a solid and stoic block of a man … blinking back tears,” like Lee at Appomattox. Entous does not shy away from pulling “the tendons and nerves that brace the heart”.

Second, to show how close this “partnership” came to victory, wherein the sound military decision of American masters of war offered several ways to win. To make this proposition believable, Entous, the Times reporter, resorts to sly rhetorical cherry-picking: To paint the impact of US weapons as outsize and “game changing,” To suggest that US brother generals had a clear path to victory, and To create the impression that Russia was militarily weak and vulnerable.

Third, to confess that Ukrainian leaders, however stalwart and true, let the possibility of victory escape their grasp more than once, leading to defeat. For example, Ukrainian generals failed to heed American advice during the so-called “counteroffensive.” Americans blamed the devastating defeat on Ukrainian operational obduracy. The Fellowship was cracking: “... important relationships were maintained, but it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.” Here, Entous and the Times are setting up a Ukrainian fall guy. “Had they followed our guidance …” if only, indeed. Words like “broken trust and betrayals” are tossed about. Brave comrades, yes; yet Ukrainian brother-generals can still be fingered for their battlefield defeat.

Finally, the narrative seeks to lay the overarching cause of defeat at the feet of Republicans fearful of taking the very risks victory requires: First by hobbling the US-Ukrainian war effort, and then by preemptively conceding defeat while handing Russia the win. Thus the Times Lost Cause hopes to set in motion a BLUE history rewrite that leaves Team Trump holding the bag of defeat, while simultaneously showcasing the strategic mastery of Team Biden, albeit tragically sabotaged by heroic, yet parochially short-sighted Ukrainian leaders, and cynically stabbed in the back by venal RED politicians willing to do anything to bring down BLUE, even if it means bringing “The Democracies” and all Civilization crashing down in defeat.

Hence, the Lost Cause is intended in the future to be a stainless moral counterpoint to a shameful war outcome that can be blamed wholly on RED.

What evidence is there, however, to show that this is a deliberate narrative strategy? As a military analyst deep in the firmament of the “Intelligence Community” tells me: “Almost everything in this is Top Secret … yet 300 officials in EUCOM felt free enough to discuss this.” Make no mistake: The Times screen treatment is not simply deliberate: It was lovingly orchestrated.

However, in order to properly dazzle us with its flawless cinematography, “The Partnership” had to winnow and cull what is known as “ground truth.” While the narrative spins a daring tale of secrets revealed, this lifting of the veil only shows what it wants us to see. Every mention of “Russians” is accompanied by a scorn-word — “inept” “fear” “panic” “makeshift” “rotting” “complacent” “collapsing” “caught unawares” — and as for their losses, it is always Russian “casualties had spiked,” or “some of their heaviest casualties of the war,” or they were “losing vast numbers of soldiers.” Worse yet, Russian losses are subtly inflated by blurring the distinction between wounded and dead, so as to suggest that the casualty ratio massively favors Ukraine. The exact opposite is true, and has been true since the war began.

Casualties are the decisive factor in a war of attrition. Yet the New York Times and the power brokers behind this article have no other choice: They must lie, and lie big, if they are to have any hope of selling the narrative of the Lost Cause. To do otherwise would be to confess 1) That this war was lost before it began, 2) That the US suborned the corrupt regime in Kiev to fight a war to bring down Russia, not to save Ukraine, and 3) That the US cared only about knee-capping Moscow, even if it meant the very destruction of the Ukrainian people. Throughout the narrative, Entous quotes American heroes of the Fellowship pushing their Ukrainian brothers to “get your 18-year olds in the game” — in other words, to embrace the decimation of their entire adult male population to clinch the dream of Team Biden’s Imperial Court.

Yet when war ends, “truth will out”, and everything will change. Moreover, the original Lost Cause, as the afterlife of the Confederacy, defined the identity of a society of millions for more than a century. In stark contrast, the new Lost Cause, to use a phrase hallowed by Team Biden — and cited by Entous — “has all the classic hallmarks” of a PSYOP.

Michael Vlahos is a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy. He is the author of the book Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change. Over several decades, he has taught war and strategy at Johns Hopkins University, the Naval War College, and Centro de Estudios Superiores Navales (CDMX) and is a weekly contributor to The John Batchelor Show.

He has authored several books published by Johns Hopkins/SAIS and the U.S. State Department, and his commentary has appeared in Washington Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, National Review and the Times Literary Supplement.