Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
“The Case Against Western Military Assistance to Ukraine”
A superb essay (link below) that constitutes a valuable contribution to this matter. The author painstakingly (and, in my view, compellingly) lays his out arguments for the following propositions:
- It’s extremely unlikely that, had the West not helped Ukraine, Russia would have attacked a NATO member next
- Western military assistance to Ukraine makes proliferation more, not less, likely
- Providing military assistance to Ukraine is not cheap once you take into account the indirect costs
- The argument that committing to Ukraine’s defense was necessary to deter wars of aggression is flawed
- The argument from credibility is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a recipe for the sunk cost fallacy
Link:
https://philippelemoine.substack.com/p/the-case-against-western-military
Published in General
I guess that also depends on whether Biden’s preferred path – where he’s always wrong – would have been of American interests, or of Biden interests.
It’s entirely possible he’s been pushed/forced in this situation, to act in American interests – which may also be shared with much of the rest of the world, and so what if they are? – rather than Biden interests. Perhaps because the stakes are higher and more immediate?
Hillary Clinton selling uranium rights to Russia in return for “donations” to the Clinton Foundation doesn’t seem like such an immediate problem as does Ukraine trying to defend itself, even if it later comes back to bite HARD.
That aid is going to be under pressure with the debt ceiling fight and he expiration of a bunch of Covid handouts ($200 B in Medicare, extra food stamps, loan payments deferred,…) Every dollar is going to be fought over this spring.
It was Putin who put the kebosh on it- via the atrocities at Bucha. After that no Ukrainian administration could negotiate until it had victory- to do so would be political suicide (not to mention bad policy- no one trusts any agreement with Putin).
A very inaccurate picture- some of those “bases” are just a few men- like the recent scaremongering here on Ricochet by the anti-Ukraine crowd-the US triples troops in Taiwan- right from 70 to 200- a massive increase!
In order to blame the US for everything, you have to first imagine it can affect everything & has enormous power-therefore every evil occurs b/c of either active American actions or its acquiescence. It is a very fashionable view in the left wing academia (especially critical X studies) and crazed RT interviewees”.
Churchill said you could always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’d tried everything else.
Not to mention he fails to cite the relevant events-which are quite unlike the events leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the 3 actual interventions by US troops he cites- 2 were authorized by competent legal authorities and the 3rd was motivated by ending a criminal enterprise (Noriega’s involvement with the drug cartels).
-Obviously, since by GPent’s view America is always evil- when we oppose Soviet & Cuban backed operations, America is the one “invading” (like Nicaragua & El Salvador). Our aid was stared after left wing revolutionaries, aided by the USSR and Cuba, began insurrections.
—in Grenada, the proper authorities requested US intervention -Governer General Paul Scoon & the OAS- after a military coup replaced the legitimate government of Grenada & executed Prime Minister Bishop.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/world/americas/paul-scoon-who-invited-grenada-invaders-dies-at-78.html
-the US intervention in Panama was primarily due to Noriega’s involvement in the drug cartels [ironically exposed by the blame America 1st crowds favorite Sy Hersh!]
– the Haiti operation wasn’t a U.S. invasion it was a UN operation- UN Security Council Resolution 940- Russia voted in favor of it.
No, dear smearer.
I simply don’t subscribe to the sophomoric morality-play view, in which our country’s “sphere of influence” claims are considered perfectly legitimate, but those of other countries are dismissed/ignored as invalid.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that. Never has, never will. Ignoring that reality leads to mistakes that, quite often, create more problems than they solve, with detrimental effects upon our country’s geopolitical position. We’re already seeing some of those effects (e.g. certain realignments in trade flows and currency payments in what’s called the “Global South” away from the US and toward China, Russia, and India). Etc.
It would not have been. He tends toward the Obama doctrine in foreign policy i.e. “be nice to your enemies and mean toward your friends.” He also follows the typical democrat foreign policy nostrum of “Speak loudly and don’t carry any stick.” The one exception he makes, out of convenience for domestic political concerns is to be hard on Russia, because democrats blame Russia for Trump. If this were not the case there would be no democratic support for Ukraine.
He is being pushed into American interests because inadvertently and momentarily he is reestablishing a kind of deterrence. That is pretty fragile actually. It is deterrent until it is not. Meaning that if it is viewed as exhausting America’s stockpiles or in my view it gets to a point where we withdraw our support capriciously we will lose the deterrent effect of these actions. Also things could worsen on the ground to a point where we lose the deterrent effect without a major escalation. It isn’t necessarily to a point where we need to pushing a negotiated settlement, but it is approaching that point.
Almost always a corrupt act like Hillary’s or possibly even Biden’s in Ukraine weaken the US.
I support the current Ukrainian policy because I believe we needed to reestablish deterrence and this has allowed us to do that in some measure. I think it runs counter to Biden’s natural instincts. My problem is this requires someone with a lot more skill to accomplish than I feel Biden has. I would have preferred that the American people had not put so much faith in this decrepit old has been. Alas that was not the case.
So you are saying that a country using its power in a way that reduces its future power, might be a mistake. That seems like pretty advanced thinking. That is certainly more Tony Stark than Hulk smash. How many people can even achieve that level of thinking?
One such person who readily comes to mind is George Kennan:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180819114733/https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html
Another is Daniel Patrick Moynihan:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220203181936/https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/20/world/iron-ring-around-russia-comment-provokes-outburst.html
There have been others.
Has-been? More like never-was, despite all his bluster.
Well put. better than I stated it.
While I may agree with both sentiments in the time in which they were written as I have said elsewhere you can’t unscramble eggs. Also if the Baltics weren’t in NATO would they still be free or would they too have been gobbled up by a revanchist Russia? It would appear that from their perspective NATO membership was exactly what they wanted, and probably needed, to guarantee their sovereignty. It may not have been a wise move for the expansion at the time, but that has happened already.
I was basically just responding to DonG’s general question of “How many people can even achieve that level of thinking?” by providing a couple of examples.
However, let me now turn to addressing your question above:”[I]f the Baltics weren’t in NATO would they still be free or would they too have been gobbled up by a revanchist Russia?”.
Yes, they would still be free. Putin has never expressed any “revanchist” intentions toward the Baltic states, and there has never been any Russian public support to speak of for bringing them back into the Russian “fold”.
They (or Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, etc.) were never the “red line” in regards to NATO expansion that Ukraine has always been, a point that he has made repeatedly over the years. The US/NATO kept dismissing/ignoring him, in “WhatchaGonnaDoAboutIt, GuyInChargeOfAGasStationMasqueradingAsACountry?” fashion. On February 24 of last year, we got the answer to that question.
Ugh.
Can you prove that the publicly-expressed attitudes regarding the Baltics would have been the same if they hadn’t already become NATO members?
I am a little more skeptical than you on this point although it is unfair for me to ask you to speculate on it when I have already pointed out that the facts on the ground were set. I see what happened in Georgia, Chechnya and now Ukraine and come to a different conclusion. It seems like Nato membership protected the Baltics while the lack of such an alliance has lead to other Russian responses elsewhere. In the end we can’t know because they have been NATO members all along. We can’t know if Putin resigned the himself to the fact they were off limits or if he would have been on better behavior absent the NATO expansion. I will even grant that some believe all of the issues have to do with the NATO expansion, but I don’t think that is provable and believe that what ever the desires of the Russian people Putin sees himself as an instrument for expanding/ reassembling a Russian imperial sphere.
NATO charter forbids accepting members with active territorial disputes. What if Russia and Ukraine maintain a low-level skirmish in the Donbas for 20 years. What does mean for Ukraine’s NATO ambitions? I don’t think this is likely, but I there has been a skirmish for 9 years already.
There are strong indications that he did indeed so resign himself. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from a transcript of testimony (page 5 of the PDF) given to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2003 (the year before the Baltics ascended into NATO) by Stephen Larabee (“a known quantity on everything related to NATO, an intellectual architect of NATO’s post-Cold War transformation”; link at bottom):
“IMPACT OF BALTIC MEMBERSHIP ON RUSSIA-NATO RELATIONS
For a long time Russia strongly opposed Baltic membership in NATO, arguing that Baltic membership in the Alliance would cross a “red line” and lead to a serious deterioration of Russian-NATO relations. At the Helsinki summit in March 1997, President Yeltsin tried to get a private oral agreement from President Clinton — a “gentleman’s agreement that would not be made public — not to admit the Baltic states into the Alliance. President Clinton flatly refused to make such a commitment. President Putin, however, played down the Baltic issue. While opposing NATO enlargement in principle, he seemed to recognize that Russia had over-reacted to the first round of enlargement and appeared intent on not allowing the Baltic issue to disrupt his effort to deepen cooperation with NATO. In addition, the closer US-Russian cooperation on terrorism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks helped to defuse the impact of the Baltic issue on NATO-Russian relations. Some Western observers have expressed fears that Baltic membership in NATO could seriously complicate NATO’s relations with Russia. However, this seems unlikely. As noted, Putin played down the Baltic issue in the run-up to the Prague summit. His main goal is to try to improve ties to NATO. Thus he is unlikely to make Baltic membership a major issue in relations with NATO.”
Link: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/2005/CT204.pdf
Stephen Larabee related link:
https://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2005/s050525b.htm
Following up on my previous post in response to you, “Raxxalan”, here is an excerpt from a 2001 Brookings report that echoes the previously cited USSCFR testimony:
“Russia’s reaction to the new momentum behind NATO enlargement has not been as hostile as many expected. Indeed, just 24 hours after the Bush speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin warmly embraced the American president at a summit in Bled, Slovenia, strongly implying that he did not intend to let enlargement undermine the potential for U.S.-Russia cooperation. Later in the summer, Putin took a further step toward acknowledging the inevitability of enlargement by expressing the view that Russia might itself want to join NATO, as an alternative to his preferred option of seeing NATO disappear. Putin went even further in October 2001, as Russian-American cooperation on terrorism was moving forward, saying that if NATO were to continue “becoming more political than military” Russia might reconsider its opposition to enlargement. This was hardly an expression of Russian support for enlargement, but it was the strongest signal yet that Moscow wants to find a way to accommodate a development that it does not like but knows it cannot stop. At their November 2001 summit in Crawford, Texas, Putin did not press Bush on the issue.
In this context, the question of whether NATO will enlarge next year seems to have been answered. …”
https://www.brookings.edu/research/nato-enlargement-moving-forward-expanding-the-alliance-and-completing-europes-integration/
That is interesting it certainly weighs in on your side of the argument with respect to the Baltics. Interesting how much things change in 20 or so odd years.
It sure is.
So many missed/frittered away/slapped away opportunities. With just the right set of carefully tuned and timed and coordinated adjustments to our and Russia’s foreign policy that allowed both to escape the gravitational pull of Cold War Paradigm inertia, we would be looking at a Russia that would be increasingly more aligned with us against China right now. Especially given the long-standing and strong relationship between Russia and … India.
Instead, …
Sigh.
Could, maybe.
Unless that’s just not what Putin wants.
I’m mostly convinced that there was a window when this would have been possible, 2000-2002. Clinton, who bombed Serbia, had left office just about as Putin was coming to power. Putin was sympathetic after 9/11; he has quite a restive Muslim population of his own and recognized that for once, America’s immediate grievances had nothing much to do with east-west rivalry. I have to say, Bush blew it. I liked Bush’s administration better than I liked Obama’s, but I have to be honest: a lot of what went wrong with the US and Russia happened under Republicans, not just Democrats.
Yes, but, even if Putin had been agreeable then, doesn’t mean he would have remained agreeable. Especially not if his actual life goal is to “get the band back together.”
That’s true. But extrapolate. Minimising US influence and power is the first thing people do when they’re trying to argue that the US isn’t responsible for any negative outcomes for other people. Grown ups, perhaps, might take a more nuanced view.
Wow. You gotta mirror?
Ukraine gets to decide which sphere it lies in, & with any luck will soon be outside of the greatly diminished, Russian sphere of intimidation.
Putin has placed Russia on a trajectory to be a failed state or largely closed society & authoritarian state (ie like North Korea). This will only lead to great suffering for its people-not that Putin cares. It will take a combination of luck and rare leadership to alter the course-but Russia has not been lucky on such matters- the powerful leaders, in times of crisis, have always enlarge the state at the expense of civil society.