George Friedman writes about “Europe’s strategic moment”. This is the passage that caught my eye:
The wars on Russia prosecuted by Napoleon and Hitler were foiled by the great distances the invaders had to travel to reach Moscow – and by no small amount of Russian blood. That distance exhausted the attackers, breaking them by the time they reached the Russian heartland. The events of 2022 to me were no different: The war was intended to put more miles between Moscow and the West, especially NATO. Russia’s suspicion owes to the Maidan uprising in Ukraine in 2014, which toppled a pro-Russian leader and installed a pro-Western government and for which Moscow believes Washington was responsible.
In my opinion, America’s intentions were not to launch an eventual invasion of Russia, though it did have a small interest in limiting Russian influence. Russian intelligence is competent, and it is unlikely that the Kremlin received reports of American invasion plans ahead of the war in Ukraine. But in statecraft, intention is simply the quacking of ducks. Intentions can change in minutes. What Russia paid more heed to was capabilities. Whatever their intentions, the U.S. and NATO were in no position to invade Russia. Yet Russia feared that their intentions could change, as could their capabilities. A war should begin when the enemy has no intention to fight and has limited capability.
This calculation led Russia to invade Ukraine and thus acquire a vast buffer against American incursion if the U.S. changed its stance.
I think that’s a mixture of the actual thinking and imagination or, more accurately, lack of imagination. I agree that Russia seeks a buffer between itself and its neighbors. That’s rooted in Russia’s historical experience going all the way back to the 13th century. Russia has few natural boundaries other than “great distances”. What I think is being neglected is the interests of Russia’s neighbors. All of Russia’s neighbors have border disputes with Russia. Poland’s pre-1772 borders have been a political issue for the Poles for 250 years, cf. the Polish-Soviet War. It might well be the case that the U. S. has no plans to invade Russia but our NATO allies would very much like to whittle away at Russia to reduce its power and influence. Could we be drawn into such a conflict? Note that I’m not justifying Russia’s attack on Ukraine. I’m just pointing out that it’s not entirely baseless.
I don’t think that any consideration of “Europe’s strategic moment” is complete without considering the recent statements by the presidents of France and Slovakia about the need for NATO troops to enter the war in Ukraine. Here are France’s military expenditures as a percentage of GDP since 1960:
Do you see a ramping up of France’s military spending in reaction to the war in Ukraine? If there is any it has been slight. That pushes me to the conclusion that France and Slovakia are playing a very dangerous game, namely “Let’s You and Him Fight”. Do they actually have any intention of sending their own troops to fight in Ukraine? What’s holding them back? Or do they want the United States to be an active belligerent in the war between Russia and Ukraine?
One nit : Slovakia’s PM is considered “pro-Russian” – his statement was more of a leak – “look what insane thing these other leaders are considering” rather then a plea for NATO troops in Ukraine.
But it seems there is something very serious being considered. Look at this story from AFP (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/macron-breaks-taboo-western-troops-152532401.html), here are choice quotes.
“A European military source said that European allies had been studying the plan for several weeks and the United States supported the idea” and ” the idea did not foresee French troops directly fighting against Russian forces in Ukraine.”
Reading the lines; apparently there is powerful support for the idea behind closed doors; and it seems to imply some type of force defending the rear areas of Ukraine; perhaps to free up Ukrainians in the rear to fight in the Frontline.
I guess we will know more soon; it feels a little bit like the F16 mania last year.
Why dont people look at maps? With the Baltics already in NATO how exactly do they make a buffer? Then there is the timing. Ukraine has explored joining NATO since the 1990s, actually working with NATO in the mid 1990s, yet Putin attacks in 2022 with no recent changes.
Steve
I presume you don’t actually want an answer. You have just provided the argument for why we should have blocked NATO membership for the Baltic countries.
At this point we should publicly take the position that the Baltic countries CANNOT be ethnic states and that their borders are sacrosanct IN BOTH DIRECTIONS.
All of the European leaders have repudiated the idea that European troops should go to Ukraine. The most recent polling shows that 75% of Frenchmen rejected the idea. Macron is simply being nutty Macron, as usual.
Evidently, the Russian victory at Avdeyevka has changed the tactical situation enough that some degree of panic has set in among Western leaders.
By the way, there are several hundred or a few thousand US/NATO troops already in Ukraine is disguise as “volunteers.” They are operating most of the high tech US/NATO equipment that has been sent to Ukraine, and they will fly the F-16’s, if they ever get there. The pilot training program is a cover story.
steve: Why dont people look at maps?
If you look at a map of the Great European Plain (which stretches from France through Germany deep into Russia) you will see that if Russia controls Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic, then western armies would have to pass through a rather narrow corridor on the frontier of Poland. The rest of the border is largely protected by the Carpathian Mountains. If western armies can preposition troops in Ukraine or the Baltic, then Russia’s border to the west is much longer and harder to defend, as well as constituting a much shorter distance to the Russian heartland for western invaders.
Dave- The Baltics joined NATO in 2004. It’s done and in the past. Nothing happened to Russia and they didnt respond. Ukraine first worked with NATO in 1995 and has talked about joining since then. Putin doesnt invade until 2022 unless you want to start the invasion process in 2014. This just doesnt have that much to do about NATO. Some, yes, but it’s mostly about keeping Putin in power and about economics. Russia needs its vassal states not for military protection but to have people who must buy their stuff and maintain economic influence. Last thing they need is for Ukraine to leave their influence and show marked economic improvement like the Baltics and Poland.
Steve
“All of the European leaders have repudiated the idea that European troops should go to Ukraine”
That’s what they had to say today.
Read the AFP story — the details it lists, whom its from, and that other media outlets reported the same gist but from wildly different angles (ie. Slovakian PM’s comments) say the idea has staying power and it isn’t going away. It even said the US supported the idea… I really wish whatever document the leaders were reviewing was leaked so we knew.
“It’s done and in the past”
The Russians would throw the same thing about every action NATO took since German reunification. If Russia wasn’t an enemy and NATO was an defense alliance against something that was gone; why did it keep expanding east? Unless the past is never dead and never done with.
“Nothing happened to Russia and they didn’t respond”
The Russians did respond, they made their opinions pretty clear — they just didn’t engage in kinetic action until 2008 because they were weak.
Faulkner’s famous observation:
I don’t take the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine very seriously, except in limited numbers as advisers and liaisons, which is normal in most conflicts.
Europe is already behind on arms deliveries.
This is a case where actions speak louder than words. European leaders have been saying a lot of things over the last two years – what actions are actually happening is what matters.
steve,
Russia has complained – loudly – about NATO expansion every step of the way. As Curious says, they were too weak to do anything.
Part of the problem is that we in the West – particularly the US – got too accustomed to just not caring at all about Russia’s interests, and we could do that because they were weak.
I’ve quoted Strobe Talbott’s book before, but he talks about a convo with Pres. Clinton where Clinton said: “We keep telling ol’ Boris [Yeltsin], ‘O.K., now, here’s what you’ve got to do next—here’s some more shit for your face.'” in reference to how asymmetrical it had become.
And Talbott himself was of the view that we won, Russia lost, and Russia, “must move toward us, toward our way of doing things” and if they didn’t like it, “well tough. That’s us; that’s the U.S. We are exceptional.”
That paved the way for two decades of the US basically never passing an opportunity to take a dump on Russian interests at Russia’s expense. And we could do that, because Russia was weak, we were at the end of history, we were the sole superpower, and the globe is our sphere of influence. That’s why they “didn’t respond.”
But boy, were they pissed, and they understood that we exploited their weakness despite the post-Cold War promises that we wouldn’t do that, including expanding NATO. That anger simmered and grew. There’s a reason Gorbachev and Yeltsin are not well remembered in Russia today compared to Putin.
And just to be clear, as a US patriot, I have no problem taking advantage of Russia’s weak position to further our own interests. But we need to understand that’s what we are doing, and what the consequences are, and consider that Russia won’t be weak forever, and consider the tradeoffs and cost-benefit both long and short term. Which, of course, we didn’t do. And that was the real US policymaker failure – the assumption that we could continue to dump on Russia’s interests forever.
That kind of national humiliation can be pretty powerful. Germany’s resurgence in the 1930’s had much to do with that. China today is very obsessed with historic humiliations by foreign powers when it was weak, which is a strong cultural and social driver of its current nationalist, racist, and authoritarian policies.
It was and is stupid to expect that anything would be different with Russia. It was and is stupid to expect that they would never push back, and push back hard, especially over Ukraine. It was and is stupid to keep repeating the mantra that so many in the US repeated – that NATO is/was no threat to Russia, so expansion should only be viewed as a benign development by Russia. And it’s those same people who keep insisting that NATO has nothing and has had nothing to do with Russia’s foreign policy. It’s such a clearly bullshit assertion.
This isn’t a mistake we made with Taiwan and our Pacific alliances.
And then we could get into all the historical and cultural context Dave already mentioned, borne out of geography that has historically made Russia easy to invade. Russians aren’t crazy for thinking a hostile military alliance on their border in lands they controlled for centuries would be a threat and to insist otherwise is foolish at best.
I think the question is whether an angry, fearful, resentful Russia is in the U. S. interest. As you point out above, clearly the Clinton Administration thought it was. I disagreed. It’s one of the reasons I thought the Clinton Administration’s foreign policy was so lousy.
@Andy
Nice write up. I may not always agree with you, but your comments are always well thought out.
I would suggest banging your head on the wall. You will achieve the same result, but quicker.
Dave,
I voted for GWB pretty much solely based on his promise for a more “humble” foreign policy compared to Clinton. That obviously didn’t turn out so well.
“I think the question is whether an angry, fearful, resentful Russia is in the U. S. interest.”
I’ve been saying for a very long time that our policies have been misguided WRT to Russia.
To be more specific about the part you quoted, I have no problem with the US pressing advantages, but you’ve got to be clear-eyed about the tradeoffs and consequences. TANSTAAFL.
That’s why I’m a realist – at least in terms of my analytical mindset – because I’ve seen firsthand decades of policy that is based on shallow moral calculus that just happens to align with whatever policymakers want to do. It’s easy to be lazy in foreign policy when your choices don’t have domestic political consequences – or consequences that won’t be realized for many years.
Tasty – thanks for the comment.
I “retired” from government service in 2016. I could have continued a successful career in the US foreign policy/intelligence machine, or had an especially lucrative career in contracting, but I got tired of banging my head on many different kinds of walls.
I’m completely in agreement with Andy,
but given that, what now?
Is it possible for NATO to ratchet up force to cow the Russians? Not without serious risk.
Is it possible to backpedal diplomatically?
To negotiate a deal with Moscow that allows Putin to save face and Zelensky to cut his losses?
Peace in our time?
This is not 1938, and Putin is not Hitler.
I think it’s possible, and I think Biden will come around to that necessity.
I think Andy’s observations on Clinton overplaying the hand is spot on. Opportunities lost….,
It should be possible to bolster Ukrainians defenses, the Russians dig trenches and lay minefields, NATO could surely fund that strategy times ten.
What’s lost is lost, for now.
Make Ukraine Russia’s Afghanistan.
and should that happen the same Americans pledging eternal support for Ukraine will suddenly change their views. Or even more likely they’ll change their definition of “support”.
Andy- Fair points but I still think it is being missed that we didnt force the Baltics to join NATO. They wanted to join since they knew that sooner or later Russia was going to try to re-establish the empire. We can academically discuss this but they live with the Russians. They understand them better than we do. They saw the level of brutality engaged in When Russia was in Afghanistan. We kept expanding east because those countries asked for protection. Maybe you can make the case that we should have abandoned them but I dont think there is any doubt that they would be facing the same invasions Ukraine is facing. And dont forget Poland. The Russians believe half of that should belong to them.
Would the claims about Nazis be believable in the Baltics? Maybe Putin could claim the Baltics were full of fairies devil worshipers.
Steve
They also wanted ethnic states and to achieve that they needed to “de-Russify” themselves which they were pretty sure Russia would object to. They all also have territorial disputes with Russia. Being NATO members lowers the stakes for their pursuing those national interests.
Evidence, please.
To the contrary I think that a lot of Poles still think that parts of European Russia (+Belarus+Ukraine) actually belong to Poland.
“Fair points but I still think it is being missed that we didnt force the Baltics to join NATO. ”
We didn’t, and it’s completely understandable why they would want to join NATO. Membership by the Baltics is certainly advantageous for them, but for the rest of NATO, those countries contribute practically nothing to the common defense but present an enduring strategic liability.
I bet there are a lot of countries around the world that would like to join NATO for similar reasons. I bet Taiwan would join NATO if it could, or at least have a formal military defensive alliance if it could instead of the pinky promise one that exists now.
But NATO isn’t Costco, where anyone can join.
But the Baltics are in, that ship has sailed. I’m not at all sorry that they are in, but I think people need to understand how one-sided the commitment to their defense is and we really need to be careful to ensure we don’t let the tail wag the dog.
This is also where – I hate to say it – Trump has a point – and not just Trump, but every President going back through at least Bush who has complained about Europe’s underinvestment in defense. And we see the effects of that now with Ukraine, whose defense is currently dependent on US aid because we’ve had several decades of Europe free-riding on the US military’s global capabilities. And they are still behind the ball, having overpromised and underdelivered.
Anyway, just like the Baltics, it’s perfectly understandable why Ukraine wants to join NATO and why it wants to join right now. But for reasons that should be obvious, that would be foolish and given that NATO ascension works on unanimity, there’s no chance NATO would be unanimous in accepting Ukraine. A downstream consequence of making NATO bigger is that it was never designed to be bigger and grow like this, and the foundations, like the unanimity requirement, create problems the bigger NATO gets.
But at this point, talk of Ukraine joining is a counterproductive fantasy – there is simply no way it will happen without some kind of wholesale reordering of the strategic situation in Europe following a conclusion of the current war, which is not readily apparent.
“I don’t take the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine very seriously, except in limited numbers as advisers and liaisons, which is normal in most conflicts.”
Take it seriously. Reported in the Toronto Star Canada willing to send troops to Ukraine in noncombat role, Defence Minister Bill Blair says
Its non-combat until the troops get bombed by Russians and they have to fight back…. And if Canadian troops are fighting in self defense against the Russians, doesn’t Article 5 apply?
Curious,
So, there are a ton of caveats applied to that. Canada is “open” to the idea “under the right conditions.” Will those conditions happen, and will that openness to the idea become an actual deployment?
I’ll believe it when I see it.
And my understanding is that Article 5 would not apply here because Article 6 restricts what qualifies as an attack:
Ukraine is not a NATO member, nor is Ukraine an “area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force.”
About 4% of Canada’s population are ethnic Ukrainians.
“They also wanted ethnic states and to achieve that they needed to “de-Russify” themselves which they were pretty sure Russia would object to. ”
The Baltics, like Ukraine, are another area where Russia killed and deported a bunch of the natives then repopulated with Russians. Maybe they do want ethnic states but they also want to get rid of the people who killed them and stole their lands.
Steve
steve, your appetite for ethnic cleansing is clearly greater than mine. I think that the U. S. interest is for the Baltics and Ukraine to remain multi-ethnic states because the U. S. should remain a multi-racial, multi-ethnic state. I don’t think we should insert ourselves into other people’s ethnic squabbles other than to deplore them.
However, since we have inserted the U. S. into the squabbles of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia with Russia, we should have a clearer notion of what that implies. Russia began the project of the “Russification” of the Baltics under the Tsar. No living ethnic Russians were involved in that. The last instance of forced settlement of ethnic Russians in the Baltics was under Stalin, a Georgian. I doubt that most of the ethnic Russians presently living in the Baltics were born in Russia proper—most are the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren and beyond of Russians born in Russia.
Consequently, support for “de-Russification”, particularly by ethnic cleansing, is harming innocents for things done by their ancestors (or, more accurately, by their ancestors’ rulers of whatever ethnicity). You, apparently, consider that just. I don’t.
Do you also support “white Christian nationalism” here in the U. S.? I don’t. If you do not, why not?
Derussification doesn’t mean ethnic cleansing. It refers to undoing Russification, that is, the generations of forced assimilation of ethnic groups into the Russia culture, including language. In the Baltics, it means making the local language the official language of government, schools, and business. Russia considers Derussification to be oppression, which is rich considering it’s a reaction to Russification.