It's More Than Sabre Rattling Now
A few weeks ago, in the China-Taiwan thread, I mentioned we should not take our eyes off the Ukraine-Russian border. At the time, I think Russia had 20,000 troops on the border.
Tonight, CBS News reported there are 174,000 troops on the border--the equivalent of 12 divisions. While it is the beginning of winter, it seems like things are getting a little hot there.
Biden is to have a video call with Putin on Tuesday. He has told Ukraine we will make sure Ukraine can defend itself.
I understand Ukraine is purchasing a couple of naval ships from Britain. Is it true, Britain is helping to construct two naval bases in Ukraine? I have also seen it reported Ukraine has made some adjustments to accommodate American warships at some of its bases.
So the question is: how far do you think this is going to go before someone blinks?
Should Ukraine be allowed to enter NATO?
Tonight, CBS News reported there are 174,000 troops on the border--the equivalent of 12 divisions. While it is the beginning of winter, it seems like things are getting a little hot there.
Biden is to have a video call with Putin on Tuesday. He has told Ukraine we will make sure Ukraine can defend itself.
I understand Ukraine is purchasing a couple of naval ships from Britain. Is it true, Britain is helping to construct two naval bases in Ukraine? I have also seen it reported Ukraine has made some adjustments to accommodate American warships at some of its bases.
So the question is: how far do you think this is going to go before someone blinks?
Should Ukraine be allowed to enter NATO?
Comments
Not saying you're wrong, but this sounds a lot like a game of chicken.
It is, except it's a Schwinn bicycle playing chicken with a tank.
My view is that Putin has runs on the board as a bully who will use direct military action to further Russian interests as he sees them. He wants Russian control of Ukraine, directly or indirectly. He will go to war if he thinks he can avoid NATO intervention.
NATO should ask Ukraine for permission to station troops there, and should move troops and military hardware in ways that show the Russians that they are in a position to defend Ukraine militarily within a very short timeframe - measured in minutes, not hours.
Every diplomatic contact from now should say, "We will attack you if...". This might well be happening already. I hope so. The public messaging needs to be different, because a great many people are fundamentally wrong about what it takes to maintain peace in an anarchic international order.
A rules-based international order is a pipedream in my lifetime. In my lifetime, liberal democracy is playing defence, domestically and internationally. The structures of the UN and other international umpires are there. They can be strengthened and built upon in better days.
The ultimate, very long term and possibly also unachievable goal in my lifetime is the integration of Russia into the West to replace England as the third major force in the EU. The German/French tug-of-war needs an internal umpire.
The important question is: is Putin? If he is then we only have two choices - try to stop him or let him do whatever he wants.
As Tolkien wrote, those who do not bear swords can still die on them.
Additionally, as well as having significant oil and gas reserves of its own Ukraine is also a (if not the) major transit route for Russian gas to Europe, which presumably costs Russia quite a lot of roubles in transit costs. That’s a pretty significant secondary benefit.
The above is irony, of course.
I did say I was being ironic...
As far as it's possible to tell from the outside, Putin's foreign policy positions are fairly popular ones within Russia, with even the most oppositional of opposition figures taking similarly nationalistic stances.
They may move into Ukraine again of course, but the Russian Army is very much set up to prevent another Barbarossa rather than being a mobile annexing machine.
And there would be no consequences? Ukraine rolls over, the West does nothing at all as it needs the gas, and there's be no guerrilla warfare? Against 2000 miles of pipeline to the West?
And there's that long coastline to the Black Sea, more than 3 times the length of Russsia's.
Its much like the old Middle East proverb: If a camel gets its nose into tent, it will be impossible to prevent the rest of if from entering.
Who's we?
I read *we* as NATO forces, though I'm open to correction.
Worked for Tharcher
My point exactly.
I'm not sure if this is an actual strategy - on the 'divide and rule' principle - or if he genuinely doesn't know how to finish things that he's started. (I do get the impression he's a master of reacting to whatever happens as though it's part of some dastardly long game, and not just the random consequences of a bunch of unstable gangsters being let loose with Kalashnikovs.)
@Bishops Finger are you saying that if Russia invades Ukraine (again) NATO should make no military intervention (again)?
I'm not quite sure what I meant, except to express fear and horror at the prospect of the UK being embroiled in war yet again.
I do take the point that membership of NATO carries obligations with it, but I loathe the thought of the jingoism from the Meeja, and the gleeful war-cries Johnson and his cronies would utter, if push comes to shove.
There are a number of reasons why - to Russia - Crimea may be an anomalous case. Crimea was transferred to the then Ukraine SSR by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet when the USSR was still in existence, and plenty of Russians view it as part of Russia. Similarly there were plenty of people in the east of the country who think of themselves as Russia and the 2004 election results are very good at illustrating the issue (okay - you can invoke ballot stuffing, but that only goes some way to explaining the split).
Yes, and even if it doesn't lead to all-out World War III, it won't be the bloody politicians who get slaughtered...
'Little'?
This.
And this. Khrushchev's meaningless gesture.
Does any other alternative include just letting Putin annex Ukraine?
It does have a certain Czechoslovakia feel to it, doesn't it? I say this as someone very uneasy about war, but I'm aware it's easy to be anti-war when you're not the one losing out as a result. At the same time my feeling is that Putin doesn't want to annex Ukraine any more than the US wants to annex Cuba. He wants safe, compliant buffer states on all of Russia's borders, but particularly in the west. I don't know how to begin to figure out if slaughtering Russian teenagers and risking nuclear confrontation is better than Ukraine's people putting up with a Putin-adjacent government and all the Belarus-style brutality that may accompany it.
Alternatives might include: espionage, targeted assassination, bribery, effective sabre rattling, effective diplomacy, understanding what need taking over Ukraine actually meets for Russia and trying to find another way of meeting that.
One argument I’ve seen is that Russian aggression has been a response to NATO expansion because they feel surrounded.
I do get the impression that the deadlock in Donetsk and Luhansk is not solely on the Russian separatist side; that is, there is a bloc of far-right opinion in Ukraine that sees any concession towards Russian-speakers as equivalent to sacrificing one's firstborn child to Stalin, and this limits the degree to which the Ukrainian government is able to implement the Minsk Accords without massive blowback. IOW, just because the Russian government are in the wrong, it doesn't automatically follow that the Ukrainian government are in the right.
True. In the past I've seen a few tankie types (don't ask me why they support Putin; I think their understanding of geopolitics got wedged in place circa 1955) shouting very loudly about the neo-Nazis cheering on the current Ukrainian government. While in that case it's whataboutery, I think your point is well made. We've got to consider that a Ukraine without Russian interference will look an awful lot more like Poland or Hungary than it does Sweden or Germany, and weigh that into considering the impact of intervention.
It goes a little bit further than that, insofar as there are a swastika wielding paramilitaries (many of whom believe that Putin is a Jew) working alongside the official Ukrainian forces.
It may look more like Hungarian^squared in terms of its treatment of minorities.
Agree, except insofar as the choice would seem to be more that we can either have a Ukraine that looks like Poland or Hungary; or a Ukraine that looks like Russia or Belarus. Sweden and Germanyalikes aren't near (let alone on) the table.
I've got no idea how you choose tbh.
And as for the Ukrainians?
Not just to Russia, to anyone who's studied 19th century European history. After fussing about a warm water port for all those years (and fighting a war in the 1850s) the oddest part of the whole story is the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet allowing Ukraine ever to have the Crimea. I presume the Presidium thought they would always have effective control of Ukraine as a whole. Nothing else makes any sense.
They feel surrounded by Western capitalism. They know the West is no military threat whatsoever. Western capitalism is a threat to Russian self image.
I assume they thought the USSR would last for a lot longer than it did.
There are leaks to that effect - I believe I read of one in the NYT, but I'm glad nobody is playing it up.
Make no mistake: nobody in the West (the "we" Martin asked about above) wants war in UKR. Nobody. It is too bloody dangerous. But given our failure in the past to get in Putin's face over the course of the Trump, Obama and George the Shorter administrations, we have to be prepared to go further than usual to drive the message home. It will be a staged thing though. Actual shooting will be down the list. Hitting a Russian base with a missile barrage will be down the list. Moving military hardware will be an early step.
At each stage, Russia will be presented with decision points. Do they continue, do they pull back. That is how you keep the young ones from being slaughtered. This is peacemaking in volatile situations.
People are right, above, when they say that Russia has every right to influence Ukraine. They are right when they say that Russians tend to view Ukraine as Russian territory. People are right to say that dangling the prospect of EU/NATO membership to UKR without just freaking doing it when Russia was weak and internally focused was, in hindsight, batshit crazy. UKR can't be in NATO or the EU now, until Russia is in NATO or the EU. Same with Belarus. But the Baltic States are in, just like Finland. One of us. One of us. One of us (bangs beer mug).
As I posted above, Putin must understand that the best way to achieve his desired outcome (puppet state status for Ukraine and Belarus) is to make the EU comfortable with that outcome. The EU (not Britain, the US or anywhere else) should drive policy here, and the question is when to swear off Ukraine. Because until they do, the Eastern border will be a flashpoint for them, and the rest of us.