I take your point about provoking the war in Ukraine, which means provoking Russia to invade Ukraine. I do. But I question whether that helps us decide whether it is in our national interests to pursue our policy, such as it is, in Ukraine now that we are in this mess. In other words, does the "provocation" constitute a national interest upon which to base policy?
There are some historical lessons:
Roosevelt arguably provoked Japan to wage war against the United States. Roosevelt had effectively cut off Japan's vital supply of oil without which it could not wage war nor could it effectively survive as an industrialized nation in 1941. Roosevelt was acting to discourage Japan's barbarous invasion of China but the record should also note that China was a nation at least as corrupt and probably a lot more corrupt than present day Ukraine, yet we imposed these sanctions on Japan fully aware that it would likely lead to war.
In 1938 Britain carefully avoided provoking Germany over the invasion of the Sudetenland and the subsequent overrunning of the rest of Czechoslovakia. That appeasement did not prevent the overrunning of Czechoslovakia nor the invasion of Poland in 1939. The lesson? Appeasement did not avoid World War II. Britain's about-face and warning to Germany that it would declare war if Germany invaded Poland, did not avoid war either.
Perhaps provocation and appeasement were not the triggers either way. Perhaps it was the Ribbentrop/Molotov pact that so rearranged the balance of power in Europe that Hitler, feeling free of the threat of a two front war, invaded Poland simply because he could.
Absence of provocation did not deter Hitler from invading the Soviet Union in 1941 even though he was receiving all of the food, fuel and raw materials he could wish for from the Soviets. I believe he invaded the Soviet Union not because he was provoked but because the Soviet's conciliatory actions were irrelevant to Hitler. He invaded the Soviet Union because he could and because he thought he would win.
So one turns to Putin's invasion of Ukraine and asks, why did he do so? Well, he has a history of invading other countries such as Georgia, Crimea as well as his war in Chechnya and his adventures in Syria. Was he provoked on these occasions?
People who find that Putin was provoked cite the encroachment by NATO ever closer to Russia's homeland. They say that his invasions were in response, seriatim, to individual accessions of Eastern European nations to NATO, contrary to express promises. This assertion is disputed as a matter of fact but let's accept it for the purposes of analysis.
We ask ourselves, is Putin's reaction reasonable? We live in an age of hypersonic missiles when the travel time from anywhere in Europe to Moscow is now down to single digit minutes. What difference does it make to Russia's national security if Ukraine east of the Donbos, but not west of the river, is under his control or NATO's?
Does the balance of power in the nuclear age really change? Does it change in the conventional military sense? Does it change enough to say that it constitutes a "provocation" justifying an invasion?
We might also ask, was the alleged "provocation" of moving NATO ever closer to Russia an actual Causes Belli or, given Putin's aggression and belligerence in places like Chechnya, was the provocation justified? After Putin's invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, was the provocation justified as one could argue that Roosevelt's provocation of Japan for it's invasion of China was justified?
Which is the higher value, or which value is it in the national interest of the United States to support, avoiding provocation because provocation is imprudent or upholding the principle that thou shalt not invade thy neighbor?
The real question here is to identify the national interest of the United States. I don't think provocation as the pivot gets us very far. On the one hand, good arguments can be made that the mess we are in an Ukraine is bleeding us white and exposing us to nuclear war but on the other hand one can argue persuasively that our international defense posture with our allies and neutrals depends on the principle of supporting sovereignty.
My point is that we will do almost anything except the excruciating work of actually identifying our national interest. And that more than the issue of provocation tells us why we are in the mess we are in.
