Ukraine is on its Own

You have to ask yourself, in spite of all the tough talk around the world against Russia and Vladimir Putin, why is it that no other country, most particularly those of the NATO alliance, is committing its own military forces to help defend Ukraine?

In 1990 more than 35 countries came together quickly and went “all-in” to defend Kuwait from an invasion by neighboring Iraq. What is so dramatically different about the situation in Ukraine that is preventing a similar coalition from forming now?

Is it because President Biden lacks the political skill and ability to form such a coalition as President George H. W. Bush was able to do in 1990?

Or because this time the enemy has nuclear weapons? We’ve been down this road before with Russia, then as the Soviet Union. Through strategic planning, investment, and unwavering resolve, we established a position of strength in the nuclear arms race from which we could not be intimidated by anyone. If our posture on Ukraine (staying out of the conflict) has been determined by the fact that the aggressor has nuclear weapons, it means we have been intimidated and have now lost that hard-won position of strength.

Or is it just that this time around in the grand scheme of things, Ukraine doesn’t have enough strategic value to the US or any other western country that would warrant an expensive and risky commitment of military assistance?

A combination of all the above?

Whatever the case, the Biden Administration and the media now find themselves in a very odd circumstance regarding Ukraine. They are desperately trying to sound compassionate and helpful toward Ukraine while at the same time sounding tough and threatening toward Russia. But neither of these affirmations has any real substance behind the words.

You may have noticed that the term “sanctions” has recently taken on a much more dramatic meaning than usual. It’s almost as if when that word is spoken by the President it has the same impact as the word “nuclear”. In this context, “sanctions” have become the working replacement for tanks, troops, and missiles. President Biden now speaks of sanctions against Russia as if they carry the same commitment, risk, and weight as a pledge of those actual physical forces to defend Ukraine. The media gleefully backs him up on this distortion and further promotes the narrative with phrases like “the brutal effect of sanctions”.

This is absurd on several levels. Vladimir Putin may be accurately described as a tyrant and a dictator, but he is not so consumed with blind ambition as to be completely unprepared for economic sanctions resulting from his actions. Nor is it at all certain that Putin’s value system is similar to ours when it comes to being concerned about the potential hardship forced upon the citizenry of Russia by way of sanctions. From what we can tell thus far, he appears not to care one bit.

So, while Ukraine itself is in the middle of a very real and destructive physical invasion, we are witnessing a carefully measured and choreographed non-physical limited response from the US and other western nations. This response has included a fair amount of exaggerated/fake news reports about Ukrainian successes against the Russians, as well as Russian mishaps, that have later proven to be false. Just days ago, all of the news media were franticly reporting that Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant was on fire and elevated radiation levels were measured outside the plant. Both these reports turned out to be false – in actual fact, radiation levels were normal, and the fire was in a nearby training center (not in the nuclear reactor facility itself) and was soon put out. Our non-defense of Ukraine seems to also include a heavy dose of propaganda designed to try and make us see a different reality.

What would have been the right thing to do in this situation? While it can be great sport for Republicans (including Donald Trump) to bash President Biden for projecting weakness in this scenario, and being a puppet that Putin can easily control, we doubt any Republican leader (including Donald Trump) would have done anything substantively different.

The reason is the very difficult and pragmatic assessment of value when it comes to Ukraine. No politician wants to say out loud that the cost of physically helping Ukraine to defeat the Russian army and repel the invasion is simply too big. Unfortunately for Ukraine, that is the cold hard truth. If we had a Republican President at this moment, the wording and timing of our response may have been different, but we strongly suspect the actions would have been mostly the same.

If Donald Trump were President, it’s possible Russia might not have invaded in the first place. Among present day US politicians, both Democrat and Republican, Trump is uniquely and genuinely unpredictable. That trait alone causes his adversaries to pause when they would otherwise act. Detestable as his unpredictability is to many in this country, it can serve as a strength in certain crucial circumstances such as the current one. The evidence supporting this conclusion is that the last two Russian incursions into Ukraine’s sovereign territory occurred just before and just after Trump’s four years as President (Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and Ukraine in 2022).

Under different and more capable US leadership, it might have been possible for an American President to negotiate a compromise between Russia and Ukraine that could have avoided war. We’ll never know. In any such negotiation, Russia would’ve held most of the cards because of their vastly superior forces. Much of the compromise would have to have been born by Ukraine. Whether or not Ukraine would have submitted to that is anyone’s guess. While we are heaping long distance compassion and moral support on Ukraine and cheerleading for them at every opportunity, there is a real reason why our military, the finest and most well-equipped fighting force in the world, is sitting this one out. Ditto for the militaries of all our allies. It would be nice if we were simply told the truth about why.