A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Lose

Has Robert D. Kaplan lost his ever-loving mind? In a Wall Street Journal op-ed he proposes escalating the incipient conflict between Russia and the United States by inserting U. S. troops into the countries of the Baltic:

For example, just as Western military intervention in Syria risks a Russian response in Europe, a robust movement of American forces permanently back to Europe may cause Mr. Putin to be more reasonable in Syria. This may offer a way out of the sterile Syria debate, in which all the options—from establishing safe zones to toppling Bashar Assad’s regime—are problematic and offer no end to the war. By seriously pressuring Russia in Eastern and Central Europe, the U.S. can create conditions for a meaningful negotiation whereby Moscow might have an incentive to shape the behavior of its Syrian client in a better direction.

For the last twenty-five years the U. S. has been engaging in aggressive, provocative actions with respect to Russia. Clinton Administration officials used to brag about it. Not the least of these actions was expanding NATO to include the Baltic countries, a move which did not improve U. S. security one whit.

To understand why the Russians might consider that aggressive, imagine that the U. S. were to reconstitute SEATO with the same “an attack against one is an attack against all” provision. It then expands the reformed organization to include South Korea and starts moving military assets, possibly including nuclear weapons, into South Korea. Do you think the Chinese would find that aggressive and provocative? I think it’s obvious that they would.

An analogy has been drawn between Russia’s nervousness about the Baltic countries and the Cuban missile crisis. That’s right. Except that we’re playing the role of the bullying, aggressive Soviet Union.

If we’re truly interested in defusing the tensions with Russia, a good place to start would be to refocus our efforts in Syria away from regime change and maintain focus on the area in which we and the Russians have a mutual interest: eliminating terrorism. We don’t have to like or support Assad but we could just stop talking about regime change until after we and the Russians have destroyed DAESH.

There’s an old Henny Youngman wisecrack that goes like this. A guy says to his doctor, “Doctor, it hurts when I do that.” (making some contorted gesture) The doctor responds, “Stop doing that.” If we want to defuse tensions with Russia, we might stop doing “that”.