Perhaps I shouldn’t have been but I was surprised by yesterday’s developments between Russia and Ukraine. I hadn’t credited how much the way NATO treated Serbia had galled Putin. I should have. After all, the Serbs are Orthodox Slavs. Remember that hierarchy of values I’ve explained?
The Donetsk oblast and the Luhansk oblast, which have ethnic Russian majorities, are each half again the size of Kosovo. You may recall that at the time I mused over what the unit of measure of sovereignty was, understanding the risks of recognizing tiny ethnic enclaves as states of their own.
Now Russia has recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, following the precedent already established. Donetsk and Luhansk will presumably invite the Russians in, which the Russians will undoubtedly construe as not violating the UN Charter even though Russia be the only country that recognizes the two mini-states.
Don’t let it escape us the risks this move raises for Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, which have ethnic Russian minorities of their own, the product of spurts of Russianization that have taken place over the last 200 years. I’m sure the Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians understand them.
Now there’s a major snafu in which a botched U. S. foreign policy over the last 30 years plays a significant role. If we send troops to support the Ukrainians on the grounds that the Kyiv government is the internationally recognized government of the entire territory of the Ukraine, we are behaving hypocritically, essentially doing the opposite of what we did in Yugoslavia and Syria. If we don’t, we’re putting NATO member states at risk.
Update
Does Germany’s move to suspend certifying the Nord Stream pipeline remind anyone else of that scene in Blazing Saddles in which Cleavon Little puts a gun to his own head and threatens to blow his own head off? Germany has put itself into its present circumstances by underspending on its own defense and making itself dependent on Russia for energy. It will be interesting to see how or, indeed, whether it extricates itself from the situation.
One problem is that in the region of the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine, Russia has absolute conventional military supremacy. They likely have absolute conventional supremacy all the way across Poland and into Germany. In any war there, we are crushed.
Another problem is Russian economic autarky. Russia has the most self-sufficient economy of any country in the world. Sanctions are a nuisance, but they do not have any significant effect on the operation of the Russian economy. In fact, they are simply a spur to yet more self-sufficiency.
Germany has suspended NS 2 licensing, which only hurts Germany. Europe is still heavily dependent on Russian fuels. If the coming sanctions irritate Russia enough, Europe will lose all access to Russian fuel.
By the way, we import diesel and some grades of raw petroleum from Russia.
I note that no one in the MSM or government spox predicted recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk. But in retrospect it should have been the obvious move. It gives Putin endless room to maneuver. Chess not checkers.
More importantly, Putin has revealed his goal: the complete absorption of all of Ukraine into Russia. That is the meaning of his long speech on Ukrainian and Russian joint history as a unitary state and on the brotherhood of Ukrainians and Russians. In the main he is right, except for Galicia.
More telling is his promise to prosecute the fascist Ukrainians who burned to death some 40 odd ethnic Russians in Odessa. He claims to know who they are. That prosecution will require the actual occupation of Odessa.
So we have gone from the Russians do not have a troop build up*, to the Russians are not invading** and this is all made up by the US, to finding justifications for why they invaded***.
*This ranged from the absolute claim they had no build up to the wishy washy who really knows?
**This ranged from claims that the US was the one going to invade to ourintelligemce services are saying it will happen so it must be wrong.
Its Europe. You can always find historical justifications for anything. The focus should really be on current stuff. Seems like nearly every invader has been able to dredge through history to find some justification.
Steve
Putin had a lot of nationalist claptrap among his list of grievances and reasons, but he also had valid strategic reasons, which are what I’ve continually focused on.
For example, Putin stated that a Ukraine aligned with NATO – even if it’s not a member of NATO – is a knife to Russia’s throat. And he’s not wrong about that. Russia’s strategic interest in securing its southern flank and access to the Black Sea goes back centuries.
And if we’re going to talk about history, people in the west like to take of Russian “paranoia,” but that didn’t spring from nowhere. Russia has been invaded by foreign powers many times. They see NATO encroachment as rhyming with the past in this regard.
I continue to believe that strategic realities are driving the bus here, not the pundit class notions of Putin being “crazy” in his supposed desire to remake the USSR (which is obviously wrong). The reality is that Russia will not allow Ukraine to be a hostile power and will not allow it to align or join a hostile military or economic alliance. The result is the more the west pushes to “protect” Ukraine, the greater the likelihood that Russia will conquer Ukraine.
Another problem with our response is that we refuse to recognize that Russia has national security interests and that it will defend them. The pundit class and the “blob” still act as if the US and NATO are inherently benign and that no country could possibly have legitimate cause to oppose NATO expansion. Which is both stupid and one of the worst examples of American exceptionalism.
Paranoia is one of the qualities the U. S. and Russia have in common and that differentiates us from other countries. Another one is the idea of a frontier.
The very foundations of the Russian state stem from having been invaded—by the Mongols.
It goes back to Peter the Great.