The Daily Escape:
Dawn sky, North Shore of Lake Superior – November 2021 photo by Ken Harmon
Biden and Putin had their heads-of-state version of a Zoom call yesterday. It lasted more than two hours. From the WaPo:
“In an email readout of the call, the White House said that…Biden voiced the deep concerns of the United States and our European Allies about Russia’s escalation of forces surrounding Ukraine and made clear that the US and our Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of military escalation.”
It seems that the two leaders simply assigned their respective teams to follow up. The White House said Biden and Putin also discussed ransomware attacks and the Iran nuclear negotiations.
Wrongo doubts that Russia intends to invade Ukraine. There are too many downsides to a full-scale invasion for both sides. It would be costly militarily. Ukraine’s military would not be a match for Russia. But it’s in much better shape than it was in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, and entered Ukraine’s Donbas region. With help from the West over the past seven years, Ukraine’s regular units and reserves have come a long way.
It’s difficult to imagine why NATO would respond militarily to support Ukraine. Germany certainly doesn’t want a war with Russia. Rather, they want Russia’s Nordstream 2 gas pipeline to begin supplying energy to them. It’s even unclear whether a war in Ukraine would be supported strongly by the Russian people.
Understandably, Putin doesn’t want Ukraine to join NATO. And so far, it doesn’t look like NATO wants Ukraine in NATO, either. It’s doubtful that Biden would insist that NATO ask Ukraine to join it. OTOH, Ukraine has leaned toward the EU and NATO since its independence in 1991.
Putin has observed that if Ukraine joined NATO, then NATO would be closer to Moscow than the USSR was to the US when they placed missiles in Cuba. Putin’s thinking that a nuclear warhead launched from Ukraine would have about a 5 minute flight time to Moscow.
That should be a threat Americans understand. If NATO had cruise or ballistic missiles in Ukraine or the Balkans it would be a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis. And we should understand that Putin would react as JFK did in 1962.
It’s ancient history, but when Wrongo ran a nuclear missile unit in Germany, our role was a total defense strategy against a potential invasion from the Soviet Union. It seems logical to Wrongo that national defense in Ukraine and the Balkans is similar, a poison pill to deter Russian aggression.
A way out for Biden is to promise Putin that he won’t supply Ukraine with offensive weapons. The definition of what constitutes an offensive weapon has been clear for some time. It’s unlikely that Putin would be happy if Ukraine received state-of-the-art air defense weapons from NATO, but that crumb from Biden may have to be sufficient.
We in America should understand that NATO Chief Stoltenberg has been pushing to admit Ukraine into NATO. He’s also parroted what Biden has said about Russia paying a high price if it made a move against Ukraine. What about the US strategy for Ukraine? Reuters reported last week that Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried said that:
“As you can appreciate, all options are on the table and there’s a toolkit that includes a whole range of options…”
Donfried knows that there’s no “all options on the table” plan for the US. If Russia decided to invade, the US has neither forces nor resources in Europe to do much to stop it, unless NATO was to unleash a European-wide war.
Neither side wants that, because it wouldn’t necessarily be limited to Europe. There is something in the military called “Escalation Dominance”. That implies that when escalation begins, it can remain limited only if your side has a dominant nuclear capability. No one who looks at the US and Russia believes there’s any way to guarantee that an escalation will remain limited between these two powers.
There are no easy answers on how to avoid that. As long as we view this as primarily a military problem, we will see only military solutions. But if Ukraine falls to Russia, it would be a catastrophic reputational loss for the US, one that demonstrates our weakness in power and influence across our post-WWII empire.
Nobody knows what will happen, but we should expect Biden will do whatever he can to prevent direct confrontation. Russia has been deploying troops along its border with Ukraine, particularly around the Donbas region, where they have been carrying on a small war with Ukraine since late 2014.
In the middle of a pandemic in which millions have died, with no end in sight, Â it would be a hell of a time to start a war.
Our support for the Ukraine was, for me, a mistake for 2 reasons. For one, the Ukraine is simply not a place we can protect. Something similar happened with Georgia – despite our rhetoric, we could not intervene. But the other is that the Ukraine has a long association with Russia – and is as much a part of Russia and Wales if part of England. It is perfectly reasonable for Putin to feel offended that the Ukraine did not want to stay in Russia and we should have left this unfortunate part of the globe alone. What we did instead was create a situation the was always going to be an annoyance to Russia. A comparison would be Russian intervention in the Caribbean. And like with the Ukraine and Russia, we control the Carribbean.
I don’t say this out lack of sympathy for the Ukrainians. My maternal grandparents came to the US on a Russian passport in 1912 (my mother was born here). They were Catholics and ethnic Poles and chafed under Russian rule.
It is too late now. But we need to be far more realistic. And Senators thinking we can turn Russia with sanctions are fools. They have oil, gas, farmland and so forth. They can survive anything.