Posted on 01/22/2022 6:29:11 PM PST by TigerClaws
President Vladimir Putin is more likely than not to invade Ukraine again in the coming weeks. As someone who helped President Barack Obama manage the U.S. and international response to Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and our effort to keep Moscow from occupying the whole country into 2015, I am distressingly convinced of it.
Why? I see the scale and type of force arrayed by the Russian military, the ultimatums issued by Putin and his officials, the warlike rhetoric that has until recently saturated Russian airwaves, and the impatience with talks expressed by his foreign minister. Add to that the likely anxiety produced in Putin by the demonstrations last week in Kazakhstan—and Moscow’s success in tamping them down.
But the basic reason I think talks with Russia will fail is that the United States and its allies have nothing they can immediately offer Moscow in exchange for a de-escalation.
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The United States must do more than issue ultimatums about sanctions and economic penalties. U.S. leaders should be marshalling an international coalition of the willing, readying military forces to deter Putin and, if necessary, prepare for war.
If Russia prevails again, we will remain stuck in a crisis not just over Ukraine but about the future of the global order far beyond that country’s borders. Left unrestrained, Putin will move swiftly, grab some land, consolidate his gains, and set his sights on the next satellite state in his long game to restore all the pre-1991 borders: the sphere of geographical influence he deems was unjustly stripped from Great Russia.
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The world will watch our response. Any subsequent acceptance of Russian gains will spell the beginning of the end of the international order. If Europe, NATO, and its allies in Asia and elsewhere fail to defend the foundational United Nations principles of sanctity of borders and state sovereignty, no one will. Any appeasement will only beget future land grabs not only from Putin, but also from China in Taiwan and elsewhere. And if the world’s democracies lack the political will to stop them, the rules-based international order will collapse. The United Nations will go the way of the League of Nations. We will revert to spheres of global influence, unbridled military and economic competition, and ultimately, world war.
Yes, this is alarming, but it’s not alarmist. We should be alarmed. Nuclear Russia is a revisionist, revanchist power acting already as if there is no international order or United Nations, ignoring the Geneva Conventions, UN Charter, Helsinki Accords or any of the host of regional agreements Moscow has signed.
I believe Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is even more likely after watching Russian forces quell the current round of demonstrations in Kazakhstan. The demonstrations in Almaty and throughout the country likely only intensified Putin’s alarm for democratic uprisings, or what he calls “color revolutions,” and renewed his commitment to use armed forces against them throughout the region.
Today’s mustering of American and European forces in response to Russia’s military and political aggression must be described for what it is: a fight to preserve the international order and the United Nations established to protect it, including NATO. Remember, the Western alliance was established under the umbrella of the UN Charter, which recognizes a role for regional security organizations to help keep the peace. But lately those organizations and their member states have proven unable to stop Russian expansion.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago last month, the Russian Federation has fought gradually to maintain and regain dominance of the Soviet republics and the former East Bloc, especially after Putin came to power. Russia has established military bases in Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Moldova. Russia encouraged secessionists in Moldova and Georgia to create breakaway territories and in 2008 invaded Georgia, still occupying 20 percent of the state’s territory. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea, declared the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine henceforth revised through military force. This was the first time military force had been employed to change borders in Europe since Hitler’s invasions and occupations. It was an audacious rebuke of the world order established at the end of the World War II.
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The United Nations and international community condemned the 2014 landgrab, much as it did when Saddam Hussein invaded and attempted to annex Kuwait in 1990. In the latter case, the international community demanded Iraq’s immediate withdrawal—and didn’t stop there. Nations authorized the use of military force in the event that Iraq refused to withdraw by Jan. 15, 1991. The international community united in the defense of international borders and Kuwait’s sovereign rights.
By contrast, when Putin limited his landgrab to Crimea, much of the international community decided the immediate threat had been eliminated, or limited to Ukrainians. As a result, the Russian leader is now making larger demands. He wants two new treaties that would prevent NATO from accepting new members, stationing military forces in member states that joined after 1997, placing nuclear weapons in members’ territory, and embarking on any activity in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
We are now, as a former U.S. ambassador put it in a recently, “at a moment of truth.” If Putin refuses to negotiate about things that are negotiable, like arms controls, and insists on curtailing NATO membership and military basing and operations, we will be a diplomatic standstill. If that happens, our best bet is a new Cold War.
The only way to reassert the primacy of international law and sanctity of international borders, and contain Russia, may be to issue our own ultimatum. We must not only condemn Russia’s illegal occupations of Ukraine and Georgia, but we must demand a withdrawal from both countries by a certain date and organize coalition forces willing to take action to enforce it.
To be sure, nuclear-armed Russia is far more powerful than Saddam’s Iraq. But from my 96-year old father who witnessed world war, I learned si vis pacem, para bellum: he who wants peace must prepare for war. Only a balance of military power—a deterrent force and the political will to match—can keep war at bay and the military dynamic frozen.
The horrible possibility exists that Americans, with our European allies, must use our military to roll back Russians—even at risk of direct combat. But if we don’t now, Putin will force us to fight another day, likely to defend our Baltic or other Eastern European allies.
When this week’s talks end and Moscow moves its military forward, the United States and our allies around the world must take all of the steps the Biden administration has laid out including sanctions, export controls of technologies, and arming Ukraine. But that’s not enough. Biden should go to the United Nations immediately to rally the global community of nations. We must build a new coalition of the willing to enforce the state sovereignty enshrined in the UN Charter.
Dr. Evelyn N. Farkas served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia in the Obama administration, and as former senior advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander, NATO.
I'll trade LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Washington DC, Occupied Northern Virginia, Atlanta ITP, Broward County, Newark, Baltimore, the Williamette Valley. .....for a warm 6 pack. Of Schlitz.
Russia hasn't fired, or forced off the job, a single American for refusing these poison jabs.
Russia hasn't shut down a single American company or industry in response to this plandemic hoax.
Russia hasn't forced any filthy facemasks on our schoolchildren, or sent police to harass parents for speaking out against the Communist-Nazi tactics employed by our own Democrat scumbags, right here on American soil.
We have plenty of communist pizzants right here in the USA who need immediate attention, before we think about getting involved in any dust-up halfway around the world.
How about worry about our borders?
We have no business there.
Absolutely no way.
Stupid and they’re are trying to go back to endless wars.
“Russia is not a member of NATO.”
This is what I’ve found.
Relations between the NATO military alliance and the Russian Federation were established in 1991 within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. In 1994, Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program, and since that time, NATO and Russia have signed several important agreements on cooperation.
You are correct as they are legally not members of the UN but they prior to 2014 were actively working within the NATO fold and still are in some agreements.
Before that, on 27 May 1997, at the NATO Summit in Paris, France, was where NATO and Russia signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, a road map for would-be NATO-Russia cooperation.
It set up a new forum: the “NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council” (PJC) as a venue for consultations, cooperation and consensus building. There was no provision granting NATO or Russia any veto powers over the actions of the other. NATO said it had no plans to station nuclear weapons in the new member states or send in new permanent military forces. The parties stated they did not see each other as adversaries, and, “based on an enduring political commitment undertaken at the highest political level, will build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security”.
What caused Putin to push back many of their NATO comittments was the situation in the Ukraine even while they were moderately supportive in Afghanistan.
wy69
Many are not "Euroweenies." They are simply France First, or Italy First, or even Germany First. I respect them for it.
Indeed, many Europeans do not want the U.S. to enter another war in Europe. They'd rather we stay out, regardless of what their Euro Deep State leaders say.
As for those Euro Deep State "leaders," they take their talking points from US -- the American Empire, which pressures the entire world to accept Neocon Globo-Homo.
Think if we had sent all the stuff left in Afghanistan to the Ukraine.
>>>Another note is that both the US and the Ukraine are members of NATO<<<<
No, Ukraine is NOT a member of NATO. And no sane person thinks it should be.
>>>You are correct as they are legally not members of the UN<<<
Russia is a member of the UN. It is even one of Perm Five members of the UN Security Council, the only powerful body of that organization.
>>>Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program<<<<
The old Partnership for Peace program was a polite fiction concocted to lull the Russians when they (mostly) peacefully allowed former members of the old Soviet bloc to declare independence and go their own ways, only to become NATO members in time.
When the USSR fell, the Russian people were eager to join the West. Too bad for them that Russia is too big to join the EU (polite name for the German Empire), and not wanted in NATO. So they were left out in the cold.
The only hope for Ukraine, which is not a real country, but rather a cobbled-together chunk of map, was to remain a neutral buffer state. Despite its many faults and rampant corruption, this it managed to more-or-less do until we decided to instigate a fake color revolution culminating in an armed putsch ousting the democratically-elected head of state. Civil war naturally ensued, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Sorry the history of that region is not worth the US getting involved in it. If Russia wants the Ukraine it can have it.
Lot of this is Russian history going back 300 years which people do not know and have not studied it.
* Arm Ukraine - Yes
* Provide training and intelligence - Yes
* Support our allies who want to help - Yes
* Send Americans to die in another war - Hell No
My wife was talking with a friend from Ukraine (she lives in the USA now), and the friend said that the current leader of Ukraine is nuts and nobody likes him.
Either she knows what she is talking about, or she is a Ukrainian that liked it better under the USSR. (Well, she is young, so perhaps her parents liked it better back when.)
From the webs. Both parts of that sentence is disconcerting:
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is a Ukrainian actor, comedian and politician who is the 6th and current president of Ukraine since 20 May 2019.
This is what governments do when they have so screwed up their domestic policies that there is large scale discontent among the population. Look at the polls for Biden and the Democrats. Not only the Democrats, but also the establishment Republicans and the “permanent” government. They need to give the public a foreign enemy to focus their anger on, and before election time. Considering the level of corruption in the Ukraine, it would be the perfect place for a war. Just think of all the money the establishment could steal as Washington once again throws enormous sums of money at another problem they have created.
By all means sell or even give Ukraine weapons. But going to war with a nuclear Russia over Ukraine is insane. They aren’t a NATO country. We don’t owe them the lives of millions of Americans
Well Biden sure gave Putin enough cash by shutting down all the oil pipelines,today he can open all pipelines ,production and wells,drive down the price of oil and hurt Putin in the pocket book,Biden is the cause of all the wreckage
Other than Milwaukee (where some of my relatives live) I’m cool with your list. And if I can prod Putin to keep the yield down, then I’m cool with Milwaukee too, since they live about 20 miles out from the center.
I think Hunter Biden should go in on the first wave due to his familiarity with Ukraine,he knows where all the money is buried
“Never heard of a proxy war?”
Sure I have.
Imagine Mexico trying to take Arizona, or California for that matter, being flooded with Russian weapons and encouragement to go, go go, after a pro-American Mexican government had been overthrown and replaced with a pro-Russian one.
Would you consider that a “proxy war”?
Dear Evelyn N. Farkas, the answer is no! Go fark yourself.
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