Ukraine War, One Month In

My responses to those who feel a successful Ukrainian resistance is impossible. The objections of the doom sayers are in quotes. Long live freedom, and long live Ukraine.

"We cannot help the Ukrainians." Here are some places to help the Ukrainians.

Four things you can do for Ukraine

Four things you can do for Ukraine Robert Reich Small but practical steps

"This boycott of Russian everything is...useless..." Rather than assuming the worst, just imagine for a moment that there is hope. If there is hope, then anything, large or small, that can be done to improve the situation will contribute to the potential for a better outcome. In that case, it is not useless to stop sending money that aggrandizes the resources of the tyrannical aggressor, but an obvious thing to do. Is the aggressor stronger with more money and weaker with less? There is an obvious answer to that question. Then we try not to contribute to his resources. 

Does this aggressor or any aggressor calculate the costs and benefits of prospective aggressions? If so, then the prospect of weakening economic retaliations for aggression will factor into the calculus and act as a deterrent. 

Economic pain, especially during and as a result of war in which there are battlefield reversals, can energize a society and contribute to the organization of plots and coups, or even successful popular insurrections. Just ask the Romanovs, the Bourbons, or the Mussolinis. 

"they will soon (probably in the same time it took Hitler to take Poland) take Ukraine. Period."

Tomorrow, March 24, will mark the end of four weeks of war. That was the same time period after which Warsaw surrendered and organized Polish resistance ended. The Ukrainians are nowhere near surrender or collapse, so that prediction is already wrong. 

"The Russians are bombing the utter shit out of them..they will resist with our weapons that we gingerly push into the arena on long sticks to keep our hands from the fires they are burning alive in."

Yes, because they want to. It seems they would rather be free than alive, if that's the choice. That's how our own country was born. And sometimes the unexpected happens. Few thought the Americans could win their independence against the foremost world empire of the time. Few thought Britain could resist Hitler and Mussolini once France had fallen and Stalin was still on Hitler's side. Few expected the nascent Israelis could withstand the invasion of seven Arab nations, outnumbered 10-1. Few would have bet on North Vietnam and the Viet Cong to outlast South Vietnam and the United States in that war. Truman won the 1948 election. The Mets won the 1969 World Series. Usually the expected happens. But often enough, the underdog prevails, often enough to fire the dedication of freedom-loving people everywhere. 

Russia under Putin is not a happy, prosperous, and well-adjusted society or polity. Maybe, with enough losses, enough time, enough increasing economic privation, enough military and national humiliation, the oligarchs, the army, and/or the people will rise up there as they have four times in the past 117 years and rid themselves of an overweening despotism.

 

Of course maybe not, in this instance. But we don't know, and nobody knows. The only things that will absolutely insure Ukrainian defeat are if they themselves lose their will to fight or if no one gives them the weapons they need to give them a chance. They show no signs of losing their will to fight as of today. And the democratic world still stands united in giving them the tools they need to fight because it is the right thing to do. Do we stand up for our beliefs or do we abandon them when the going gets hard? Do we tell tyrants and thugs fine, go ahead, you can act with impunity or do we show them their depredations will cost them more than they can afford to pay? Do we help people fighting for their freedom or do we tell them we think they are better off slaves?

I deeply admire the Ukrainians and am proud that the US and so many other countries are supporting them however they can, be the support military, humanitarian, monetary, political, demonstrating in the streets to show support for their government's efforts on Ukraine's behalf, or sanctioning and boycotting Russian sources of income. Long live freedom, and long live Ukraine.

 

Ukraine: How We Got Here and What We do Next

1. Yes, Putin was emboldened by previous moves at little international cost. The sanctions after Crimea at least became consequential, but they are not disabling.

2. No, World War III has not started already. One country is battling another. No other combatants are directly involved. That is not a World War. Whether it becomes a world war depends on what we, Putin, and others do next.

3. Yes, we and our allies must continue to arm Ukraine. It ends the policy of appeasement and makes clear from now on that the price of aggression will be high. It signals to countries facing Russian or other intimidation that we will help them, and makes it more likely they will stand up to coercion. It multiplies the cost to Putin and makes him the aggressor if he goes beyond the boundaries of Ukraine to try to staunch the replenishment by widening the war into Poland or Romania. By not immediately intervening to take out these deliveries it is Putin who has emboldened us to continue supplying Ukraine, just as we emboldened him by weak responses to his earlier aggressions. Now if he retaliates directly against us or our NATO allies on NATO territory he would be the one escalating, and would initiate World War III. He's already having trouble bludgeoning Ukraine into line, so imagine his problems if he added Germany, Poland, Romania, the USA and the rest of the NATO Treaty signatories to his active enemies. That's why he hasn't done it. He believes the NATO Charter would be followed by its member nations. He knows that's a fight he can't win. The only way he could stop us all would be nuclear. But he knows if he uses that, he dies too. Again, he indicates he is a rational actor because he has not activated the NATO Alliance, which would insure his conventional defeat, or used nuclear weapons, which would be suicidal. 

4. No, we do not need to send ground troops into Ukraine or send our air forces over their skies to "enforce a no-fly zone." If we do that we become active belligerents, and we start World War III. A no-fly zone means our planes are there to shoot down the planes of any other power that enters that airspace. That means direct aerial combat with the Russian Air Force, because they are already there. It's an unmistakable act of war. No country currently engaged in combat could ever permit the withdrawal of air support for their ground forces currently engaged in life and death combat. The logic of operations would necessitate their striking NATO air bases in NATO territory and we then striking Russian air bases inside Russia. The air defenses of their ground forces would strike at our planes overhead to defend their planes, and our planes in turn would have to target Russian ground forces shooting at them. Before you know it, every American is shooting at every Russian, and vice versa, and it's World War III.

5. Yes, we ought to embargo Russian oil. We should let them know through confidential channels before hand that it's coming (which they can already see by watching the Western news) and let them know it ends when they withdraw. We should also let them know we will play that card any time they invade anybody, including neutrals such as Finland and Sweden. This is yet another case, in addition to the intensifying climate crisis, which clearly demonstrates the urgent need to direct our energy consumption away from oil and other fossil fuels as rapidly as possible.

6. It may well be that China stands as the likely diplomatic key to ending the Russia-Ukraine War. That's probably not what the USA wants to happen though, as doing so would greatly raise China's profile and prestige in the world. But as long as Putin feels he has Chinese support he may be willing to keep paying the costs to pursue his dream of reconstituting the glories of the Russian Empire, pouring more men and material into what looks to be Russia's equivalent of Vietnam. But if the Chinese were to let him know they could not continue to back his folly, he might have to realize the game was up and accept their mediation and some at least implicitly face-saving diplomatic solution. In this case, one wonders what price China would extract from both Russia and the West for their good offices.

Prospect for Ukraine

I write this on Day 5 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians are inspiring the world with their much stronger than expected resistance to the Russian onslaught. It is absolutely certain that Putin will not countenance defeat or withdrawal. He's put his chips in and can never be seen to back down. I foresee continuing stiffening Ukrainian resistance as more of our wondrous precision weaponry reaches them, leading to heavier and heavier Russian losses such as the burning columns of T-72s and APCs we have already seen on video. This will multiply Putin's rage and the Russian Army's humiliation such that their campaign will become ever more brutal. 

We've already seen this model before with Putin in Chechnya and Syria. Cities that successfully resist will be heavily struck, then as frustration grows, leveled. Expect Kharkiv and Kiev to be turned fairly soon into piles of rubble. As the Germans discovered at Stalingrad, however, bombed out urban landscapes are extremely perilous places for offensive operations, with roads blocked and innumerable places for defenders to hide and ambush. Russian losses will swell. Still, their preponderance is great, and they will grind forward, and at length, conquer the whole of a devastated Ukraine. 

From what I've seen thus far, that will not be the end of the war. Ukrainian spirit is strong. The Russian occupiers will become bogged down in a widespread and effective insurgency. The resistance will be very well-supplied. Even neutral Sweden has pledged to send lethal weaponry. Think of that. Russian losses will be quite heavy on an ongoing basis. A steady stream of hundreds and thousands of body bags will be brought home for funerals attended by grieving relatives and friends. All the while, sanctions will be sapping the Russian economy. Videos will show dead children. Its pariah status will grow. Boycotts will dry up its exports. The ruble is already crashing. The cost of occupying the ruined Ukraine and fighting the insurgency will not be offset by the seizure of the Ukrainian economy, since much of it will be in ruins. 

The Russian economy, about 8% the size of America's, will crack under the strain. As privation and war weariness grow, anti-Putin demonstrations in Russia will become larger and increasingly more defiant. I wouldn't be surprised to see the denouement to this classic Shakespearean tragedy end with footage of Putin's blood-spattered carcass sprawled across the marbled floor of one of the Kremlin's ornately appointed halls, the victim of a coup engineered by an alliance of disaffected oligarchs and the top army brass, the former's fortunes and the latter's pride having been drastically depleted by Putin's grand overreach. 

Ukrainian Situation: What Next?

The situation in Ukraine has preoccupied the world's attention for the past several weeks,  First there was the popular uprising against President Yanukovich for his decision to spurn the European Union in favor of closer ties to Russia.  When his police forces turned on the people with deadly force he lost all credibility and support.  He fled the country and surfaced later in--where else--Russia.

Next the Ukrainian Parliament declared him to have abandoned his post and selected a successor.  This was quickly followed by the intervention of thinly-disguised Russian troops into the southern province of Crimea, where Russia still maintains a major naval base, leased from Ukraine.  The Crimean regional parliament was "dismissed" by Russian troops and replaced by pro-Moscow politicians who have now called for elections in 10 days to allow the people to decide whether Crimea should remain part of Ukraine or become part of Russia.

The US and EU have responded with calls for support for Ukraine.  Today the U.S. House of Representatives voted to support President Obama's offer of $1 billion in aid for Ukraine's government.  He said that economic sanctions on Russia will not be far behind.  The EU is considering aid and economic sanctions on Russia as well.  For their part, Russia has countered by withdrawing offers to support Ukraine with $15 billion in aid and provide them hefty discounts on natural gas.  What's next?

Well, in truth, Crimea should probably have been part of Russia all along.  The people who live there are not Ukrainian.  It's about 60% ethnic Russian and was added to Ukraine by Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev in 1954 simply as part of an administrative reorganization.  That doesn't make Russia's thuggish tactics, clearly orchestrated under the direction of its President, Vladimir Putin, right.  But with a majority Russian population and as the home base of the Russian Black Sea fleet it is clearly considered a vital interest to the Kremlin.  And the majority of its people probably actually do want to be part of Russia.  

Putin and Obama had a 90-minute phone conversation last week reportedly had another 60-minute talk today.  That augurs well for a diplomatic solution.  The West can do a great deal of harm to the Russian economy if push comes to shove.  There will not be a Russian-American war over this.  Look for some form of arrangement whereby the Ukrainian Parliament agrees to allow the sovereignty election, which would make it legal.  In exchange, Russia will agree to lay off the Eastern part of Ukraine, such as the city of Kharkiv, where Russians are also numerous, and let Ukraine cozy up to the EU.