The guidelines for a sensible Ukraine policy are outlined by Katrina vanden Heuvel of all people in her Washington Post column. After a bit of boilerplate about the global pandemic and climate change, she gets to the point:
The United States has no significant national security interest in Ukraine. A civil war has been internationalized into a geopolitical struggle. Ukraine’s people are divided, with millions speaking Russian and looking to the East. The poverty rate is over 50 percent. We’re not about to spend the money and energy needed to bolster the country internally.
The esteemed diplomat George Kennan correctly predicted in 1998 that Russia would “react quite adversely†if NATO expanded to the East. “I think it is a tragic mistake,†he said. “This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.†Since then, NATO has added 11 member countries that were once either Soviet republics or a part of the Warsaw Pact. NATO expansion has, unsurprisingly, driven Russia and China closer together, a strategic debacle that no U.S. president should encourage.
If he’d taken stock early, a sensible Biden might have decided to defuse tensions with Russia so we can focus on real security concerns. Extending the New START arms-control pact, as Biden did, would be only a first step.
Instead of ramping up military aid to Ukraine and allowing loose talk about Ukraine joining NATO, Biden could call for a joint guarantee of Ukraine’s independence and neutrality. The United States and NATO would agree not to station troops or offensive weapons in former Soviet republics; the Russians would guarantee not to threaten them with military force. Both would pledge not to interfere with those countries’ internal political affairs.
If the U. S. has “no significant national security interest in Ukraine”, whose interest is being promoted? It’s not France’s, Germany’s, or Italy’s. The only answer I’ve been able to come up with on that is anti-Russian Poles and Ukrainians who, for reasons I have been unable to discern, have an outsize influence on our foreign policy.
I’ll post a little later on the risks posed by Russia’s hypersonic missile capability but I do want to add that the time to have considered all of these issues was before our second round of NATO expansion, the one to George Kennan was speaking about above. Now our position is much weaker than it was then.
My reading of those who support the US supporting Ukraine boils down to the argument that we are still in a unipolar world, and the US has an obligation to stand up to bullies. Such people don’t seem to understand it’s not the 1990’s anymore.
Or said a bit differently than Andy. The rationale is that if we don’t stand up here, we won’t stand up in Taiwan etc etc. And the bullies will run wild. The national interest isn’t the local issues in Ukraine, but stability globally; there are bad guys in the world.
I’m not saying that’s correct, but that should be the debate. Not the observation that Ukraine is a mess – their mess – in its own right.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting that comment, Drew, but it sounds to me like you’re saying that since confronting Russia militarily is a sunk cost we should just do it now.
The problem, as Andy said, is that it’s not the 1990s. We might well lose in a military confrontation with Russia. And the likelihood that such a thing would escalate into a nuclear exchange is simply too high.
Dave
No, not at all. I’m saying that some make the argument that we lose credibility by being a paper tiger. That’s their argument, not that there are crucial strategic interests in Ukraine per se. They would argue that Ukraine may be a lost cause; but don’t skulk off tail between the legs. Put up some type of resistance. Speaking of risks, a certain O bin Ladeen viewed us as a paper tiger and that cost us a lot.
I would be making totally different arguments. We have allowed ourselves to become vulnerable over the last 30-40 years by ceding the manufacturing base to foreign countries, the raw materials base to foreign countries, and bleeding ourselves dry financially. Regaining military strength involves the process of regaining financial strength and minimizing vulnerabilities. You won’t find that attitude in Washington, certainly not with the current crew. Too many air headed green new deals to do, student loans to forgive, BLM phonies to placate, authoritarian policies to pursue for a basically unstoppable virus and so on.
Only the armchair general types would be calling for vigorous action in Ukraine if we had our house in order. Everyone else wouldn’t give a damn. Making chips here and refining rare earths would be a good start.
I’m in material agreement only I would add that in addition to “ceding our manufacturing base” we have been squandering our resources on escapades only marginally in our interest.
No argument here, Dave.
I’m no foreign policy guru. But I would suggest that the issues I cite are key. Further, the dumbing down and misdirection of our education system is, I believe, a travesty and strategic mistake. (But its government, so…..) I cannot forgive the public education system for it. They, and the politicians, did it for personal gain. May they rot in hell. I learn more about it every day from a daughter who has the best intentions, but whose eyes are opening wider as well.
In my business we of course have winners and losers, like any endeavor. In venture capital you can swing for the fences, bat .100, and stay in business. In mature LBO’s you need to hit doubles and bat .800. VC’s look at their strikeouts and abandon them. I’ve never been comfortable with that. But its their business model. In my business, on those investments looking like strikeouts you can a) punt – bad, b) look for quick and elegant solutions – heh, go get’m sparky, or c) persevere and slog it out on the long haul. No fun at all. Not glorious – trench warfare. But responsible most of the time, and if you know what you are doing – it tends to work.
There is a point to this. In our economic situation we need to slog it out. A ten year time frame. Its not a glorious and elegant solution. But this is directionally where Trump was going. But he had to be destroyed because Washington today created the strikeout for Everyman, profited from it, and can’t afford to be exposed.
Its just as wicked as it seems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fpNKAvvkj0
OBL was wrong because he misread the US. We are almost always too eager to take military action. In general we shouldn’t be worried about failing to stand up but rather going too far. That is our history. we have plenty of military strength we just use it incorrectly and too often with no clear goals or end game strategy. Most of the cost incurred in the response to OBL was the cost of invading Iraq for which there was not a good reason and then spending years trying to turn Afghanistan into Sweden.
Some verbal posturing is OK. Probably OK to send some military gear and maybe even weapons. I cant see how our interests would be served to get into a real shooting conflict.
Out of curiosity are the hypersonic missiles really that accurate yet? My understanding was that Russia was looking at them mostly as delivery vehicles for nukes so accuracy wasn’t that important. I thought they are mostly doing glide missiles.
Steve
In my experience it is rare that non-Americans “read” the U. S. at all correctly–they make the fatally bad assumption that the American news media and American television in general accurately depict us. The more skewed our news media become in one direction or another the worse that becomes.
WRT hypersonics I don’t believe they’re as much of a “game-changer” as the linked article and, presumably, the Russians seem to think. And, as I previously noted, that raises a substantial risk.