At Project Syndicate Nina Lvovna Khrushcheva (great-granddaughter of Nikita) provides some sound commentary on the burgeoning crisis in Ukraine:
When Ukraine’s comedian-turned-president, Volodymyr Zelensky, dons fatigues and praises the military, or presses for a firm commitment on the country’s NATO membership, ordinary Russians get the message that there is a security threat on the border – and it is not the Russian troops now found there. Ukrainian politicians only reinforce this impression by proclaiming that the country must prepare to retake Crimea by force.
The US wants to prevent anything like a repeat of the events of 2014 in Ukraine. This seems like the fair thing to do. But geopolitics is a matter of cold calculation, not fairness. And while the “exceptional†US has long been able to act in its own strategic interest without, as one author put it, “the consequences that come with doing so,†the time may have come for it to account for new variables – namely, that Russians, too, view their country as exceptional.
Unless and until that changes, the cycle of crises will continue, with escalating, and potentially catastrophic, risks. “Such is the destructive potential of advanced modern weapons,†Kennan pointed out, “that another great conflict between any of the leading powers could well do irreparable damage to the entire structure of modern civilization.â€
I have no idea why Washington pundits do not heed Russian voices like that. Is it that they don’t like bad news?
There’s more at the link which you will find bears a more than passing resemblance to what I’ve been writing here. Possibly the most important is that Russia is not the Soviet Union but it does have security concerns of its own.
That’s an interesting piece you found. I was unaware that Ukraine had been behaving in a provocative manner. A direct possible answer to your query is that military, policy and pundit classes view her statement as an attempt to achieve by bluff what otherwise would need to be achieved with consequences. That’s pure speculation. But perhaps the most generous view.
But I am struck by one aspect of your query. You question the motives or policy insights of the punditry – or policy apparatus in general – in the case of this narrow foreign policy issue (and others). Yet you routinely chastise as anarchists or minarchists those who recognize that the very same types who would make these errors in judgment would also do so in the public health care realm, public education, environmental and other regulation social safety net issues, just to name a few top of mind.
At the government employment office there is no sign that says smart, rational and the pure minded go to public social policy…………dumb asses and the wickedly self interested go over here to foreign policy.
That’s an insightful correlation, Drew.
The hard part of the situation for NATO is the interests of the ex-Warsaw Pact (Poland/Slovakia/Hungary) and Baltic States with respect to Russia are significantly different from Germany and they don’t trust Germany or Russia. American interests of course are different from both Germany and Eastern Europe.
In the short term, the situation feels like a reverse Cuban Missile crisis.