The Fate of Ukraine
Harrowing screams and blood-stained silence fill the cold air in cities and towns of Ukraine. As I’m writing this, Putin rains down ballistic hellfire destroying kindergartens and orphanages murdering countless, innumerable numbers of innocent civilians.
The current situation in Ukraine is an absolute tragedy. But the Ukrainian conflict isn’t important because it’s a tragedy–otherwise the media would have covered the many other conflicts that have been occuring around the globe these past few years with similar fervor. Ukraine is important because of the immense implications the outcome has on international politics.
Some are talking about the downfall of American hegemony and the rise of China, others are lamenting a new era of Cold War, and the most pessimistic among us are frantically screaming that World War III has started. Debates about how America should proceed rage all around us on T.V. sets, Wall Street Journal columns, and Twitter threads, influencing and shifting the various conversational threads.
Should NATO institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine? Should Europe immediately divest itself of Russian energy? Should we impose a wholesale economic embargo against Russia? Despite the myriad and differing answers that pundits propose to these political questions, the aim is largely the same. Namely, negotiating an immediate cease-fire and a de-escalation in tensions.
The question of Putin’s motivations are quite interesting as it’s likely many-fold. Some have pointed out that his political dream was to re-ignite, not the Soviet Union, but the Russian empire and to unify the Slavic people under a Russian banner. That he wants to usher in a new era of Russian Imperialism using the old Soviet playbook of bravado and hard power.
Others argue that the reasons were strategic and economic. Putin wanted to bypass Ukrainian tariffs on natural gas exports as nearly 85% of Russia’s natural gas pipelines flow through Ukraine. The recent discovery of massive natural gas reserves, nearly 2 trillion cubic tons worth in Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone, could have also been a major factor as the Russian petro state seeks to replenish its economic lifeblood.
Putin could have also wanted to prohibit the possibility of Ukraine and other formerly Soviet bloc nations from joining NATO. Ukraine would serve as a buffer state between Russia and NATO. The security concerns that Russia has are certainly real–the last time there was a real danger of nuclear war was during the Cuban Missile crisis which of course, resulted from a dispute on whether the Soviets could station nuclear missiles in Cuba.
That crisis was averted due to a back-room deal where the U.S. promised to remove nuclear missiles from Turkey and the Soviets agreed to remove them from Cuba. Quid pro quo. President Kennedy took a hard line against the Soviets at that time. President Biden should do the same.
The West likes to think that it can respond in such a way as to influence the mind of Vladimir Putin and force him to make a decision that is clearly beneficial for the West and detrimental for Russia. The unfortunate fact of the situation, the elephant in the room, is that Putin and Russia have a vast nuclear arsenal. They have a substantial enough missile stockpile to obliterate all of humanity or at the very least, cause ungodly catastrophic damage to the earth’s environment–rendering it wholly inhospitable.
Putin knows that he has the ultimate trump card. He knows that the West has an overwhelming fear of nuclear holocaust and he is using that fear to play a very particular kind of game. Russia’s recent incursions into Georgia and Crimea were simply tests. He wanted to probe our level of solidarity, our resolve, our tolerance for risk. The West’s non-response of meager economic sanctions and finger-wagging rhetoric emboldened Putin to eventually invade Ukraine.
Putin is a bully and he wants to bully the West into submission. And every time the West allows for Putin to advance without standing up to him, we tacitly enable his behavior. Putin knows that as long as he rattles his nuclear baton, he can frighten the West causing heads of states to all come rushing over to appease him. Why else does French President Emmanuel Macron keep on calling Putin?
This brings us to the most pressing question, which is the question of how the U.S. and her allies should respond. Nearly all the responses thus far from a variety of intellectuals and policy-makers, justify their answer by citing historical examples combined with some interpretation of Putin’s psychological state. I’m guilty of this as well, as it’s really the only way a discussion of this kind can be made.
For example, Bret Stephens of The New York Times writes, “Biden Must Not Allow Ukraine to Fall” urging the Biden administration to do everything in its power, save military escalation, to prevent a Russian victory over Ukraine. His reasoning is essentially just a variant of Domino Theory hypothesizing that the fall of Ukraine would lead to the domination of Taiwan by China and so on.
He analogizes Biden as Franklin Roosevelt and Zelensky as Winston Churchill, outright stating that Putin’s goal in Ukraine “isn’t merely to seize territory for Russia, [but] to crush its spirit”. As to how Stephen magically understands Putin’s motivations you’d have to ask him.
Bill Ackman, billionaire hedge fund investor, wrote “we need to reconsider a no fly-zone and further NATO military intervention” echoing Stephen’s sentiment that the fall of Ukraine would be tantamount to allowing future Russian aggression.
The truth is we really don’t know how Putin will respond. If NATO installed a no-fly zone over Ukraine would Putin stop his military campaign? Would he attempt to skirmish with NATO forces before capitulating to the overwhelming conventional firepower of the U.S. and her allies? Or would he pull the nuclear trigger annihilating NATO forces in eastern europe and subsequently threatening the population centers of NATO countries?
There are a myriad of reasonable, plausible counterfactuals that could be argued and none of which can be falsified. No one knows Putin’s psychological state or decision making framework–except for Vladimir Putin. And what’s worse–there could be intervening factors, “Black Swan” events, that fundamentally alter the causal timeline which brings about an alternate outcome.
The problem with history is that decisions made are judged by their immediate outcome and interpreted long-term outcome. What if the military coup that was nearly successful in 1945 Tokyo, whose aim was to remove Emperor Hirohito because he wanted to surrender to the Allies, was successful? What if the United States needed to continue to use its nuclear arsenal to pummel Japan into submission. What if Japan and its military leadership never surrendered? An outcome that is entirely plausible for a culture known for honor-ritual suicide and kamikaze attacks.
Would have dropping nuclear bombs on every single Japanese city been the “right” decision when the outcome could have been a nuclear genocide of nearly 75 million people and immense global environmental effects for centuries to come? Or would a conventional invasion of Allied forces have been the “right” decision in that scenario.
I’m not arguing that we should throw up our arms in resignation, saying we can’t make decisions at all. We can and we must. But “right” decisions do not exist, only “plausible” and “more plausible”. Analyses that are anchored by singular historical examples, interpretations of recent historical events alongside extractions of causal relations, and assessments of Putin’s psychological state are just theory-crafting. If we are going to take any lessons from history and any lessons from psychology, it is that diplomacy and persuasion is always the way to go and Putin is a somewhat rational actor.
The saying goes “the best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend”, I don’t believe that we can or would want to be friends with Putin–but we can certainly show him a way out. If we can persuade him, convince him to achieve his goals through other means, then that would be the best outcome.
The other thing I would advocate for is the drawing of hard red lines. There must be some things we are willing to risk nuclear war over. And it can’t just be that we are attacked first by a nuclear strike. An example of a bad red line would be: Russian military aggression against NATO countries.
First of all, there are a huge number of non-NATO-aligned countries. Should Putin be able to invade them all? Second, why are the lives of Americans and Western Europeans more important than the lives of Ukrainians and Austrians and Swedes? All of whom aren’t a part of the NATO alliance. What about if China attempts to take Taiwan? What do we do then?
This may be my youthful idealism talking but the hard red line should be military force of any kind. Any military campaign by aggressive actors should be met with proportional force and with only defense in mind. We should make it clear that the U.S. and NATO will never be the first actors to use a nuclear weapon in the event of war between major powers. But we will be uncompromising when it comes to peace and human rights.
The world is a mess right now. I’m praying for peace to a God I don’t believe in. The fact remains, the fate of the world hinges on the fate of Ukraine. Let us hope that diplomacy, dialogue, and de-escalation win the day.