The American case for supporting Ukraine
For me, the most important development of 2022 might have been Russia’s failure to conquer Ukraine and the loss of manpower, armaments, revenue, and prestige that Russia has incurred due to its invasion. I say “might” only because of the possibility that Putin, recognizing what a disaster his invasion has been so far, will reverse his defeats.
It’s clear that this is what Putin has in mind. He has amassed huge numbers of troops and his forces are now pushing back hard. Without strong U.S. support for Ukraine, there’s a good chance Putin’s latest offensive will succeed and that others will follow. In this case, the biggest story of 2023 might be Putin’s comeback .
Should the U.S. provide that support to Ukraine? Is it in our national interest?
I think it’s self-evidentially in our interest for an adversary with a large amount of power and superpower ambitions to suffer a clear and humiliating defeat when it seeks territorial expansion, where this can be accomplished without active U.S. military involvement and loss of American lives. But to many conservatives, my view is far from self-evident (and some apparently don’t consider Putin’s Russia an adversary, or blame the U.S. if it is).
Thus, it’s important to lay out the case for the U.S. supporting Ukraine, and to do so in terms of American interests. Sen. Tom Cotton does it in this Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Sen. Cotton begins by explaining how Joe Biden, unlike Donald Trump, failed to deter Putin’s Ukraine invasion. (For more on what Trump did to deter it, and what Biden didn’t do, see Mike Pompeo’s new book, Never Give an Inch). Biden’s failure in this regard is a very important point. It provides further evidence of both his incompetence and the left-liberal mindset. I’ll return to this point briefly below.
However, I want to focus on Cotton’s case for continuing to support Ukraine. He writes:
We should back Ukraine to the hilt, because the likeliest alternative isn’t peace, but rather another “frozen conflict” that favors Russia and harms our interests. Russia would retain key strategic terrain and much of Ukraine’s industry and agriculture. Food and energy prices would remain high, potentially starving many nations and exacerbating the migrant crisis in the West.
Meanwhile, Russia could rebuild its strength and seize the rest of Ukraine when the opportunity arises. Such an outcome would create millions more Ukrainian refugees, drive inflation higher and worsen supply-chain disruptions. Russia would also extend its border deep into Europe. Next on the chopping block could be Moldova, site of another frozen conflict. And after that, a NATO nation.
There’s also the matter of China:
Stopping Russia also will allow the U.S. to focus on the greater threat from China. A Russian victory would force us to divert more resources for a longer time to Europe to deter Russian expansionism, creating persistent threats on both fronts. But a Ukrainian victory and a durable peace will secure our European flank as we confront China.
The Chinese dictator, Xi Jinping, is closely watching the war in Ukraine. If the West falters, he will conclude that we will never fight to protect Taiwan. In the 1930s, the West tempted the Axis powers by appeasing naked aggression against small countries like Ethiopia and Czechoslovakia. Some Western politicians may have forgotten the lessons of history, but Mr. Xi hasn’t.
Furthermore:
Our support for Ukraine can also save American money and lives in the long run. A sizable portion of our outlays will be spent on replacing the older weapons and materiel we’ve sent to Ukraine with newer equipment for our troops. Along with lessons learned from the Ukrainian battlefield, our military can emerge better equipped, trained and prepared to defeat our adversaries.
For what it’s worth, I suspect that dollars spent to inflict harm on adversarial, expansionist Russia in Ukraine are of at least as much value to our interests as dollars we spend on our own military, and worth more than dollars we spend on many of our domestic programs.
But what about the possibility that, in helping Ukraine defeat Russia, we risk finding ourselves at war with the Russians? Cotton addresses this important concern:
History shows that we can oppose Russian aggression without sparking a wider war. We fought proxy wars against Soviet Russia across the world in the last century. We armed insurgents during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians not only armed our enemies in Korea and Vietnam, but also took part in the fighting, shooting down American pilots. These proxy wars were more provocative than anything we’ve done to support Ukraine. In no case did they lead to war between our two countries.
I agree. And as long as Putin has his hands full in Eastern Ukraine, the prospect of him starting a wider war seems highly remote.
As Cotton says, the bigger risk of wider warfare accrues if Russia extends its territory deeper into Europe and if the Chinese see the West falter in Ukraine.
This ties back to the point Cotton makes at the beginning of his op-ed: Biden’s signals of weakness early in his administration tempted Putin to try to reassemble the Russian Empire by conquering Ukraine. The consequences of showing weakness in Ukraine might well be worse.
Perpetually worrying about what our enemies might do, and then being paralyzed by it, is as sure a prescription for defeat as I can imagine. I mean, how hard is this to figure out? If our enemies will take risks and we won't, how is anything OTHER than defeat even possible?
While I agree with most of what Cotton said, I have several problems with the Ukraine cheerleader squad.
1. I have a problem with "to the hilt." Zellensky wants to retake Crimea and his cabinet members want to roll tanks into Red Square. Is that "to the hilt"? There is no visible US diplomatic effort to work in concert with military support. Just bellicose rhetoric.
2. I don't think we understand our enemy. At all. And therefore, we don't have a workable strategy for conducting a war or resolving it through diplomacy.
First, Ukraine war hawks deny any responsibility for provoking Russia with its aggressive NATO expansion, insisting that NATO is "no threat to Russia." Putin has made himself clear on this issue for years, and his position is consistent with all of his predecessors going back centuries. It is laughable for anyone to assert, especially after Victoria Nuland's Maidan Revolution of 2014, that the US has not been provocative in the region, or that keeping NATO out of Ukraine is NOT in Russia's security interest. Yet that is exactly what our policy-makers say. Perhaps if Russia had missile silos and divisions stationed in Mexico, we would feel differently. The Kennedys learned this lesson during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The issue of Crimea is another point. Do we really think that Russia is going to relinquish a warm water port which has been essential to their security for ages? They wouldn't do it in Syria and they certainly won't accept any outcome that cuts them off from the Black Sea. Those are legitimate security interests.
If you believe that's a valid goal, then your interest is not to defend Ukraine, it is to use the war in Ukraine to eliminate Russia's ability to fight a war, offensively or defensively. I think that's the real goal here, but no one is being honest about it.
Second, as a rationale for this war Ukraine hawks are reviving the old Domino Theory, which proved disastrous (and wrong) in Southeast Asia. If Ukraine falls, they argue, then Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova will be next, and Putin will re-unify the old USSR.
Yet there is no evidence to support that those are, in fact, his goals. Even if they were, how would a Russian army occupy any of those countries when it can barely hold the Donbas region?
3. War in Ukraine is not an isolated contest. It may (arguably is) re-arranging the triangulation of Russian/Chinese/American interests in the region. China's recent presentation of themselves as peacemakers is not a publicity stunt. China is Ukraine's major consumer of energy and produce; implicit in their insistence that Ukraine negotiate a settlement is a threat to cut them off and back Russia's war effort. If our efforts in Ukraine push Russia and China into a strategic alliance at a time when we know China is planning a conquest of Taiwan - a far more important strategic country to the west than Ukraine - the results would be catastrophic.
4. We are throwing money at the problem rather than developing effective tactics. Sending high tech tanks and planes that will require a year of training before they see a fight is not effective. Far more effective is what the Czech's are doing: refurbing Russian tanks with new navigation and communications systems that Ukrainians can put to work immediately.
Putin is prepared for a long war of attrition against the Ukraine to keep NATO out. If we "win" we will have a ruined Ukraine with half the population in refuge and a multi-trillion price tag for rebuilding it. We are burning money in Ukraine at a faster rate than we did in the recent Middle East wars, depleting munitions from our own arsenals and printing money to replenish them, feeding rampant inflation at home. This is totally ignored.
5. The public doesn't support a long war. Outside of DC, there is no appetite for getting America involved in a protected war that saps our resources, and even less supportive of involving American troops. We know how that ends.
In sum, US policy in this matter seems to me based on nothing but re-tread Cold War thinking, spreading democracy idealism, an intransigent refusal to acknowledge our failure to contain Putin's paranoia and ambitions, and perhaps a sinister interest in propping up a corrupt regime with whom US politicians and their friends could make bank.