It happens that during the most momentous American foreign policy challenge since 9/11, a number of personal circumstances, many of them delightful – we welcomed our first granddaughter; an unexpectedly heavy (but welcome) time commitment to a volunteer opportunity – have prevented (and for a period into the future, may well prevent) much contribution to this site.  I am confident that no one following these pages has felt the loss very keenly; there has been enough commentary about the Ukrainians’ struggle to repel the Russian malefactors to suit any appetite.  I had a number of notions about Part II of this note when Part I was published; given the lapse of time, it has been recast.  A few current impressions:

President Joe Biden and his team have thus far done a masterful job.  While I agree with those who cringed when Mr. Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal and later uttered his declaration that Mr. Putin should not remain in power, these are relative nits; the President simply said out loud what all can see:  there will be no European stability nor Russian vitality while Mr. Putin remains in power.  On the important matters, Mr. Biden has rallied formerly squabbling and diverse NATO allies, mostly maintained the support of an otherwise sharply-divided American public, kept China largely on the sidelines, and (so far) avoided a nuclear conflict while slowly degrading (by facilitating Ukrainian resistance) Russia’s and Mr. Putin’s standing on the world stage.  In Part I, I asserted that America and its NATO allies should ship the Ukrainians all materiel they wanted short of nuclear weapons; much has been done; I join those that assert more can and should be done.  While I did and do disagree with Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, I can’t think of another major American politician on either side of the aisle who could have achieved in the Ukrainian crisis what he has through his manner, experience, and relationships.  He’s been close to spot-on.

The magnificent resistance of the Ukrainian people and their President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to Russia’s malign invasion has shown the world how a free people will fight to retain their freedom.  From the geopolitical perspective, the invasion to this point has clearly been a Russian military humiliation and a strategic debacle.  Credible reports indicate that Russian President Vladimir Putin is isolated and perhaps misinformed.  At the same time, while all who saw President Zelenskyy’s speech to the U.S. Congress found it compelling, I thought Mr. Zelenskyy also sounded desperate.  He is obviously acutely aware that despite his bravado, his people’s bravery, and Western aid, each day his people are dying, and his country is being pulverized by Russian missiles.  Mariupol is rubble.   The possibility that Mr. Putin is becoming unstable is a terrifying prospect given the nuclear and chemical weapons at his disposal.  At the time this is typed, negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are in progress.  While most NATO observers understandably doubt Russian good will, and there is a tendency, from across the ocean, to urge Ukraine to keep the fight going, to press home its seeming current advantage, it is the Ukrainians – not us — who are suffering and it is their country that is being destroyed.  I wouldn’t like it, but I would understand Mr. Zelenskyy’s acceptance of peace terms that included a confirmation of Ukrainian neutrality and Russian acquiescence to a robust defense pact between Ukraine and a U.S. – European consortium in exchange for Ukraine’s formal cessation to Russia of Crimea and the parts of the Donbas and Luhansk regions (not the entire regions) that were already under Russian separatist control when the conflict began.  (Realities being what they are, such concessions by Mr. Zelenskyy would, borrowing a phrase from former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, simply be giving Mr. Putin the sleeves from Mr. Zelenskyy’s vest.)  Even so:  this is not the time for the Ukrainians or NATO to ease up, even in the unlikely event that the Russians are serious.  They must continue to apply all military, economic, and other means to tighten the international vise on Russia until any settlement is achieved. 

There is a delicate word that at least I have yet to see raised anywhere – a word that I would suggest is even more explosive and challenging to prospects of peace than declaring Mr. Putin a war criminal or seeking his removal from power:  reparations.  Mariupol is the easiest example:  Who is going to rebuild it?  With what?  How about other severely damaged Ukrainian cities?  If a peace settlement is reached, who is going to remove the remains of destroyed Russian materiel strewn across Ukraine?  With what?  How is provision going to be made for Ukrainian families who have lost bread winners?  I have heard reported that $300 billion of Mr. Putin’s supposed war chest has actually been frozen by the West (not great planning on his part).  Do western democracies simply confiscate the sums they have frozen and provide them to the Ukrainians to rebuild?  A related issue:  What Russian agreements will be sufficient for the relaxation of Western sanctions?  These are sensitive issues.  If Russia is willing to pull back – a prospect truly to be doubted at this point – negotiators will need to address recompense for Ukrainian losses while being mindful that demands too punitive upon Russia, while warranted and even if accepted on paper, may – as the severe peace terms imposed on Germany by the Allied Powers at the end of World War I – simply breed future conflict.

As noted above, U.S. and NATO sources have publicly stated this week that Mr. Putin may not know the truth about the extent of the reverses Russia has absorbed and the losses it has sustained because his advisers fear for their own safety if they tell him the truth.  The New York Times has reported that Mr. Putin seemed “genuinely unaware” that Russian conscripts are being killed in Ukraine.  I view these statements and reports from two perspectives:  while they may, as some commentators claim, “play with Mr. Putin’s head” and might cause him to reconsider any unrealistic expectations about the invasion’s success that he may still hold, I fear that they also may also expose and endanger the source(s) which the U.S. has clearly placed very close to Mr. Putin.  It’s a calculated gamble as to whether the potential benefits of these statements and reports outweigh the risk to and of losing such a valuable intelligence source(s).  

Mr. Putin has made clear that he views Ukraine as part of Russia and Ukrainians as Russians.  All biographies of Mr. Putin establish that he is an avid reader of Russian history.  He has undoubtedly thrilled to the accounts of the manner in which Russians, due to sheer toughness and love of their Motherland, persevered through unspeakable hardship to ultimately repel France’s Grande Armee in 1812 and Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht in 1942.  Mr. Putin’s greatest miscalculation in launching his malign offensive may ultimately prove to be his failure to understand that while the Ukrainians have Russian grit and tenacity, they do not consider Russia their nation.  They see Ukraine as their homeland.  Perhaps, prior to the invasion, Mr. Putin should have conducted a séance to hear from M. Bonaparte and Hr. Hitler how well an attacking force fares against a people with Russian spirit and pain threshold when they are defending their Motherland.

As the war continues, I would submit that the Biden Administration’s foreign policy opportunities are likely to expand at the same time that its domestic challenges may mount.  More on these as time allows.

This just came across my Twitter feed.  Simply retweeting seemed insufficient.

https://t.co/6gyVRhgpFV

[Note:  hopefully, those following these pages won’t find this merely a rehash.  While I have watched media accounts of the Russian invasion over the last week, other life pursuits have precluded a close reading of the accounts of credible newspapers, which I consider an American citizen’s definitive sources.  Unless directly attributed, what follows – whether useful or misguided — occurred to me without outside prompting.]

“No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.”

• Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, 1871.

The conflict in Ukraine has thus far been much a war of miscalculation.  Russian President Vladimir Putin has, at least to this point, seemingly miscalculated strategically the most woefully, apparently believing as he ordered Russia’s invasion:  that the bulk of Ukrainians wished to be reunited under Russian rule; that any Ukrainian resistance his forces met during their invasion would be minimal and readily dispensed; that Russian conventional forces were highly competent; that the NATO alliance would be unable to sustain itself in the face of a direct challenge; and, probably most crucially, that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lacked the resolve and inspirational qualities required to lead his people against a Russian onslaught.  Given its pointed efforts to shore up NATO borders and defenses in the months before the invasion, it would appear that prior to the assault, the Biden Administration had similar misconceptions regarding the Ukrainians’ resolve and military effectiveness, Russian conventional military competence, and Mr. Zelenskyy’s leadership capabilities.  I would venture that both sides believed that if Russia chose to endure the international condemnation that would accompany its attack, it would be a quick conflict in which Russia would secure Ukraine, establishing Russian control over a key part of the former USSR — which was its strategic objective; while the United States, after making all the gestures it could before the invasion to dissuade the advances of the Russian bear, viewed any Russian conquest of Ukraine as a sacrifice on the chessboard of Europe that would so terrify the rest of the continent that it would result in an energized, unified, and financially-committed NATO alliance – which was its strategic objective.

Mr. Zelenskyy’s leadership, his people’s grit, and the savage nature of the Russian assault have changed all that.  I would submit that the conflict now provides the United States strategic global opportunities not imaginable before the invasion if it acts wisely — and decisively.    

Before going there:  the courage and heroism of the Ukrainian people cannot be overstated.  I tend to look at foreign policy problems from the “Realpolitik” perspective I absorbed in my imprinting days from the works of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.  There is nothing wrong with this perspective – in a world run by humans and not saints, a great power does its citizens a disservice if it does not objectively determine and protect its own best interests – but such a viewpoint, alone, overlooks the terror and suffering Ukrainians are enduring right this minute to preserve their freedom and culture.  Hopefully, their struggle is searing into our national and personal psyches how precious freedom is and how it must be cherished — not diddled away wrangling over absurdities such as vaccine mandates and whether one should have the right to own military assault weapons.

150 years ago, Herr von Moltke was suggesting that victory in any struggle will go to the side that best adapts to changed circumstances.  I would submit that the Biden Administration should recognize that at this point, with all the destruction and ignominy that Mr. Putin has brought upon himself and his nation, he cannot and will not go back.  Even if he ultimately physically conquers Ukraine, he has lost strategically.  The personal and national respect he craves is gone.  His enemies are united and determined.  In the larger sense, this has become a struggle not for Ukraine but for Russia’s and Mr. Putin’s own future.  As long as Mr. Putin leads Russia, it will be viewed as a rogue nation – feared for its nuclear might, loathed for its barbarism, compared to Nazis.  That said, while the media has made much of the Russian people’s protests and the influence that Russian oligarchs allegedly have with Mr. Putin, I entirely discount these internal Russian factors; Mr. Putin can do as he wishes with each.  On the other hand, any dictator’s influence relies on military support and I suspect that Mr. Putin’s top military command has come to the uneasy realization that Russia will be an economically-hobbled pariah as long as Mr. Putin remains at the helm – an unease that, ominously, a man as aggrieved and paranoid as Mr. Putin is undoubtedly monitoring. 

The Administration – although President Joe Biden cannot say so out loud; such a statement itself could trigger a nuclear war – should set the stage for Russian regime change while the opportunity presents itself.  If counseling Mr. Biden, I would advise that the Administration proceed on three fronts:

Militarily:  We should ensure that we are taking every step to get the Ukrainians, either directly or indirectly, as much materiel as they want of whatever kind that they want, short of nuclear weaponry.  In other words:  “Every weapon system on the planet, that we can send to Ukraine,” as asserted by former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.  (Mr. McFaul has gained credibility with me by being critical of the Obama Administration’s reticence to confront prior Russian aggressions, since he was part of the Obama Administration.)  Last week, the U.S. rejected a Polish plan to provide Ukraine MiG-29 fighter jets that Ukraine has requested.  There is reportedly bipartisan Senate support for providing the planes.  Our reluctance is incomprehensible.  I have no way to judge what the logistical challenges are, or whether the Ukrainians can actually make effective use of the aircraft; but we should let the Ukrainians decide what they need and can use.  Any fear we have of “provoking” the Russians is nonsense.  I am confident that Mr. Putin already considers himself at war with NATO; Russians have now begun shelling sites in western Ukraine where NATO is providing materiel to Ukraine.  Our purpose should be to help keep Russia back on its heels.  I would suggest that those talking heads chortling over the last couple of weeks about Russian military ineptitude have been whistling past the graveyard.  Even from incomplete reports, the conflict has seemed to me akin to a bout between a lumbering heavyweight boxer and a skilled lightweight.  Through skill and determination, the lightweight has done much better than expected in the early rounds; but the fact remains that if the heavyweight is able to land a decisive punch or two, the overt military conflict will be over.  If Russian forces are advancing – and they are – Ukraine is losing.

A related point:  the safety of President Zelenskyy.  By dint of bravado and determination, he is the Ukrainian resistance.  He has been compared to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  Inspirationally, I agree; but I would actually give him more credit when it comes to raw courage.  Throughout WWII, Mr. Churchill was mostly in a bunker deep underground, with the British Navy and the English Channel between him and the Nazi Wehrmacht; in Kyiv, Mr. Zelenskyy has a relatively few miles and some amateur soldiers between him and the Russian army.  The Russians presumably consider killing or capturing Mr. Zelenskyy the single most devastating morale blow they can land on the Ukrainians.  Mr. Zelenskyy, who has rallied the world through his own derring-do, cannot be seen to have abandoned his post, while Ukraine cannot afford to lose him.  It is extremely dangerous.  This is the one area in which I would clandestinely insert American soldiers into Ukraine if such was necessary to safely transport Mr. Zelenskyy to western Ukraine (if and when he was willing to go).

To make at least a mild attempt to hold these notes to manageable length, the other two “fronts” that I would advise Mr. Biden to consider as the Russian invasion continues will be held for the remainder of this note.

As this is typed, Russian troops are advancing across Ukraine at the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  I don’t speak Russian, but from reports understand that Russia, the world’s second-mightiest nuclear power, has claimed both that it is acting because it feared an attack by underpowered Ukraine, and that its invasion is necessary to “de-Nazify” a Ukrainian government led by President Volodymyr Zelensky — who is Jewish.  It is obviously the most naked violation of another nation’s sovereignty that Europe has seen since 1940.  I doubt Mr. Putin believes his own lies.  It is cruelly ironic that his pretext for Russia’s advance actually echoes Nazi Germany’s usurpation of other sovereign nations’ territories and freedoms prior to World War II in the name of Lebensraum (“Living Space”).  There are those, including me in a December post, who wanted the Administration to be more forthright in signaling America’s resolve to deter Russian warmongering.  I concede that any such overtures, had they been undertaken, would probably have been fruitless.  It now seems apparent that Mr. Putin is obsessed by a visceral need to answer the insults and to rectify the injustices he perceives to have been visited upon Russian sovereignty by the Western powers at the fall of the Soviet Union – compulsions ominously reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s obsessions and railings at the Western powers for the insults and injustices he considered to have been visited upon Germany at the conclusion of World War I. 

In President Joe Biden’s Thursday speech in response to the invasion, he was as firm in tone as he is capable of being (it is not within him to radiate the menace from the podium that Ronald Reagan could).  I don’t know much about international financial systems, but the financial sanctions that will be imposed on Russia sounded harsh.  That said, they don’t sound like much of a deterrent, but rather like measures that Mr. Putin has foreseen would be imposed if Russia commenced the invasion.  Perhaps more importantly, it does appear that the Administration has forged cohesion among a lot of disparate nations to stand against the Russian aggression, which was seemingly its overarching strategic goal (more on this below).  At the same time, I was disappointed in three aspects of Mr. Biden’s speech.  First, he made no mention of shipping Ukraine additional military aid.  Although Ukraine’s need for humanitarian aid will come, right now its people need all materiel we are willing to send them to check Russia’s advance.  Second, I would offer that Mr. Biden wasn’t very effective at making this foreign policy challenge real for Americans, certainly not for those with isolationist tendencies (we’ve had isolationists wishing to ignore what was going on “over there” as long as we’ve been a nation).  I would have liked to see him “bring home” the Ukrainians’ endangered freedom by observing, “How would we like it if Canada had the military strength to simply grab Alaska and take away Alaskans’ freedom merely because it borders Canada?  That is what Putin is doing.”  Finally, I found the President’s attempts to assure Americans about their gas prices too apologetic; he impliedly took responsibility to keep gas prices down.  I submit that what he should have said – what former President Donald Trump, given his COVID track record, undoubtedly would have said – is that gas prices and some other prices were probably going to go even higher due to the Ukrainian conflict, and that increased prices were Vladimir Putin’s fault (with such point to be hammered home with every Administration communication in the coming months).  If a majority of Americans accepted that higher prices were exacerbated by Vladimir Putin’s unjust invasion and our attempts to aid Ukrainian freedom, the Administration would be in good stead politically on inflation, at least for a while.  Mr. Biden entirely whiffed on the opportunity.   

So what is our strategic posture at this point?  A passing remark by a pundit during the week before the invasion has nagged at me ever since: 

Ukraine [in and of itself] is of no strategic importance to the United States.

While some of us chafed at the Biden Administration’s seemingly slow response to the Russian buildup at the Ukrainian border, there is no question that Mr. Biden and his team used the evidence and duration of the Russian buildup to forge a much higher level of unity, consensus, and resolve among NATO and European Union members against Russia than at least I would have considered achievable last Thanksgiving.  The NATO allies, clearly alarmed, have cooperated to reinforce each other’s borders vulnerable to a Russian advance.  At the same time, aside from providing materiel to the Ukrainians – with whom they have no mutual defense pact – they have appeared to be conceding Ukraine to Mr. Putin, like a square on the chess board, if he wanted to take it. If Ukraine’s primary significance to the United States is to occupy a hunk of land serving as a buffer between Russia and our NATO allies, and otherwise has little value to the United States (as contrasted, for example, with our vital concern in keeping Cuba free of enemy nuclear weapons in the 1960s and ensuring the flow of Middle East oil in the 1970s), at this point, what is our overarching strategic interest?  (If Ukraine has a greater objective strategic value than I’ve indicated here, I’m hoping that someone reading this note will enlighten me via comment; but let’s assume the negative for the moment.)

I’ve been writing a post on and off for months about a comprehensive foreign policy framework that I believe that we should employ, but will give away the punchline here:  we can’t go on as we have since 1945.  We can no longer be everywhere and do everything; even aside from our internal partisan divisions, our burgeoning domestic obligations mean we can’t afford it.  We need emotionally and financially committed regional allies across the globe to withstand hostile and able autocracies.  Mr. Biden, by his rhetoric and actions during this crisis, is evidencing that he sees this.  He doesn’t want the Ukrainians to lose their nation, and have their freedoms extinguished by Russia, to the point that to deter Russia he perhaps to some extent compromised the secrecy of some of our intelligence apparatus, sources and methods to leak as much as the Administration had about Russian intentions; but what he seemingly believes that we primarily need to achieve out of this confrontation is an awakened, energized, and unified NATO to stand as a European bulwark against further Russian incursions.  If so, he has succeeded.

If Ukrainian freedom is our primary objective, we (hopefully as part of a NATO force) should deploy troops to Ukraine.  If it is the strengthening of the NATO alliance itself, we probably shouldn’t.

So what is our overarching interest?  Again, assuming arguendo that Ukraine has little objective realpolitik value to us, is maintaining its people’s freedom against a malign aggressor, in and of itself, a strategic interest for a nation that calls itself the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?”  In June, 1963, President John F. Kennedy stood in West Berlin and declared, “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”  In West Berlin, in June, 1987, President Ronald Reagan spoke of freedom and famously called on Russian General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev:  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  Yet neither man risked nuclear war and American casualties by sending troops to free the subjugated.  Mr. Putin, who, perhaps most unnervingly, now seems not only consumed with grievance but a bit unbalanced, has alluded to his willingness to use nuclear weapons if confronted too aggressively.  How Chinese President Xi Jinping and his cabinet might integrate their interpretation of our response into any initiative they might be considering against Taiwan must also be factored in.  Eisenhower Administration Secretary of State John Foster Dulles once observed in connection with America’s policy of Soviet deterrence, “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.  If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war.  If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.”   

Television accounts and my tiny Twitter feed are overflowing with declarations lauding the Ukranians’ courage and expressions of support.  Mr. Biden said in his address yesterday that “America stands up to bullies. We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.” Yet, Mr. Zelensky said from an undisclosed location last night that he has asked all 27 NATO members why Ukraine can’t be a member of NATO, and has gotten no response. I haven’t seen anybody advocating for the deployment of either NATO or American forces into Ukraine.  Absent that, all this talk … is just talk.

If I was advising Mr. Biden and there was general consensus among the foreign policy team that the Russian aggression had enabled the Administration to unexpectedly strengthen the strategic NATO alliance against Russian manipulation and that Ukraine itself had no value other than as a buffer between Russia and NATO, would I advise that he commit American troops to protect Ukrainians’ freedom – perhaps risking the threat of a nuclear escalation, and inevitably resulting in the death of American soldiers?

The President isn’t the Pope, concerned with the protection of all humankind; s/he works for the American people.  Yet – with the exception of the period from January, 2017, through January, 2021 — the President of the United States has since 1941 been the leader of the Free World.  Viewing clips of Messrs. Kennedy’s and Reagan’s Berlin speeches (linked below) lean me in one direction.  Even putting aside the risk of nuclear escalation, the thought of Americans attending funerals of their husbands and wives, their fathers and mothers, their sons and daughters, as a result of a conflict over land arguably without strategic value – as we have too frequently in the last 60 years — leans me in the other.

In this situation, where is the “brink” Mr. Dulles referred to? When push came to shove — as it has — I’d probably counsel Mr. Biden to maintain the policy he has adopted, perhaps with more aggressive provision of materiel to Ukraine.  I’d move – as he is – to reinforce our NATO allies’ borders with a marked influx of American soldiers and materiel.  (I’d also make sufficient movements in Asia to let Mr. Xi know that we haven’t forgotten about him.)  Otherwise, I’d sit tight, waiting for the inevitable denouement in Ukraine. 

All the same:  these echoes from the past probably wouldn’t let me sleep.