We need to listen to the strategic and tactical wisdom of Lawrence Wilkerson, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Colin Powell.
Let Putin fall of his own weight. The downside risk (World War III) of too-provocative NATO responses in the region to Putin’s outrageous invasion is tremendous. He will fall of his own weight if allowed to do so for many reasons, not the least of which are the long-term unsustainability of an occupation or imposition of a puppet government.
Wilkerson calls it “strategic patience”.
Wilkerson is so wise. I am very concerned about the warlike tone being expressed by too many pro-democracy intellectuals. Their outrage and moral indignation is understandable. In fact, I share it. But to get directly involved in the war, or to squeeze Putin with a true death grip, is strategically foolish, and dangerous.
It is strategically foolish because it is ultimately unnecessary.
It is dangerous because it could undermine a likely long-term victory as Putin falls of his own weight either by getting bogged down in an impossible to sustain occupation or by the gradual diminution of the already anemic Russian economy under sanctions. More frighteningly, we should have learned by now that European wars have simple beginnings, but too often complex developments, and disastrous and unpredictable endings.
I’ve been thinking along exactly these lines.
I love the phrase “strategic patience”.
It is worth remembering that the Iron Curtain did not fall as a result of military action. If anything, Ronald Reagan’s bellicosity delayed the collapse by providing an excuse for Gorbachev to rally Soviets against the “Yankee Invader”.
Strategic Patience is DEFINITELY the way to go.
A more colorful phrase was coined by Muhammad Ali — “Rope-a-dope”.
I’m all for getting ducks in a row. After all, it was 5 months from Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait to the commencement of Desert Storm. However, since ancient times those with an appetite for conquest have proven that such appetite is insatiable unless stopped.
It may not be possible at this point to get to a negotiated settlement, but that would be the best outcome.
I wouldn’t wish an Afghanistan type insurgency on Ukraine. I remember back in the ’80’s when people rubbing their hands together, looking forward to “Russia’s Vietnam.” It was a clever, but puerile idea that led to unspeakable suffering.
Still, strategic patience is an improvement over Christopher’s Desert Storm brinksmanship.
It appears to me that it will be difficult or impossible to avoid unspeakable suffering.
I agree that “Desert Storm” fantasies are ill-advised and dangerous. Saddam Hussein did not have the ability to wipe out many or all major US cities with a single word.
The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, fueled by the collective weakness of its economic, social, and political systems. Vladimir Putin has not addressed any of those fundamental weaknesses.
Even if Mr. Putin is able to seize power in the several nations that border Russia (on the west), there is no indication that the fledgling empire Mr. Putin hopes to assemble would be any more sustainable than the failed Soviet Union.
Strategic patience is far and away the most promising way to restore sustainable peace and civilized behavior to Russia and its immediate neighbors.
I really don’t understand patience at this point. Before the actual invasion maybe, but not now. Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939; in response the UK and France declared war on Germany on September 3rd. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and we declared war in response December 8th, followed very closely by our allies.
It is interesting to me that you have so little patience when it comes to plunging the world’s nuclear powers into an uncontrollable war, while calling for such extreme patience when it comes to prosecuting a group of people who have made much more direct threats and acts against America itself and the rule of law.
Russia of 2022 is not Germany of 1939. The world is a complete different place, and hopefully all of humanity has learned something in the intervening 90-odd years.
In particular, you seem to have forgotten the lesson the world learned on August 6, 1945.
You seem to assume this is going from zero to nuclear in 60 seconds – I don’t. If your reference is to January 6th those are crimes which are going through the legal system. What happened this week is an act of war. I just read this morning that US intelligence thinks Kyiv itself might fall to Russia within days.
My reference is to the US bombing of Hiroshima. The first use of a nuclear weapon in human history. Against a city that had no military significance.
It doesn’t matter whether it takes 60 seconds or four years. Vladimir Putin has already so much as stated that if Russia is attacked he will use nuclear weapons against his attackers.
You seem to assume that he is bluffing. I don’t.
I think it’s a near certainty that Kyiv will fall to Russia within days. Just like Bagdad “fell” to the US within a few days.
Perhaps Vladimir Putin will have his own “Mission Accomplished” moment.
I’m pretty sure your first paragraph was referring to January 6th rather than Hiroshima since you invoked my patience. On that day in the moment I would have liked tear gas to have been generously deployed against the protesters. I think we’ll avoid nukes for the same reason we avoided them throughout the Cold War – everyone knows how catastrophic that would be.
Everyone except Vladimir Putin — who has explicitly promised to used them.
He is testing us and the way to respond to a bully is by showing him you have the means to take him out. If he actually says give me Warsaw or I’ll nuke DC, a threat Stalin never even made, then we have to be prepared to go toe to toe. Otherwise he will keep betting that the West lacks the testicular fortitude to respond to his aggression with real threats. He gambled we’d do nothing over Georgia and he won, he gambled we’d do nothing over Crimea and he won, he gambled we’d do nothing over Ukraine and the verdict is still out. Make no mistake, any Russian forces crossing NATO territory should be met with the full weight of the US military. Their troops are already surrendering to Ukrainians and their helicopters and planes are getting picked off by a much smaller force. I am confident we know where their nukes are and can hit them before they hit us, if it comes to that. Jack Kennedy was willing to take us to the brink to keep Soviet missiles off our shores, I suspect Biden who matured during the Cold War is prepared to make the same call.
I do not want war with Russia and unfortunately Ukraine is not worth US ground troops, but our Article V Allies are worth going to war over. Along with Taiwan and South Korea, or else America truly is a paper Tiger.
This all boils down to “we’ve got to fight to show how tough we are.”
That sounds like Putin’s excuse, one that Trump would appreciate. On the other side “we” should fight because liberty in both senses of the word is worth fighting for.
Yes which is why the realist picks the baffles worth fighting for. Preserving a free Europe was worth fighting two world wars over and worth credibly threatening a third over. The point of the US being a democratic superpower is to check and balance the other superpowers that are not democratic.
I think you see everything through a black and white prism where war is always bad and American foreign policy is always immoral and wrong.
I will concede America is a flawed nation, I’m married to a Filipina and have no moral ground to stand on defending American exceptionalism when the US illegally and brutally occupied that country for almost 50 years and kept Marcos in power for 20 more. Marcos jailed my father in law and truly by the grace of God (then Col. Fidel Ramos the head of the military prison happened to be in the same denomination and had him freed, he’d later turn against Marcos and become the second democratically elected president).
Yet my wife’s grandfather fought under our flag to stop a far more brutal and barbaric Japanese occupation of his homeland. We eventually left and we eventually turned on Marcos. America is not always the morally righteous country we ought to be, but we try. In trying we sometimes fail, but at least we believe in human rights, the rule of law, and preserving liberty. Even our worst mistakes come out of sincere beliefs.
So we have an obligation to help our treaty bound allies with the full support of our military if need be. We have an obligation to arm the Ukranian people in their legitimate struggle against an invading and occupying force.
One of the reasons I think we are fortunate indeed to have Biden is that he cannot be shamed into hawkish behavior by being accused of making the United States a “paper tiger”. He is not afraid to stand up to such goding.
Where have I criticized Biden for being insufficiently hawkish? Where have I been hawkish? By insisting we uphold our military commitments to our allies abroad? It is Bob and the other neoisolationists on the far left and far right who insist as JD Vance did over the weekend that what happens 6,000 miles away has nothing to do with America. I profoundly disagree with that.
Liberal values are on the front lines in Kyiv right now and backing up our allies and building an effective anti-Russian coalition is a minor miracle and a triumph of Biden’s prudent foreign policy. You will not hear me argue otherwise.
Pretty sure Soviet leaders sabre-rattled from time to time too.
Also failing to fight up until this point has made Putin arrogant that the West will never call his bluff. He will be kicked out of SWIFT today and his economy will be knocked back to the stone age while his soldiers are getting killed outside Kyiv and his people are protesting in the streets across Russia begging him to end this war. He made a huge mistake. The West finally stood up and told him to stop.
Ukraine deserves every ounce of American support short of boots on the ground. The time to place American troops unfortunately passed and both Obama and Trump squandered the window of opportunity to do something about it. Biden is playing his best cards with the hand he’s been dealt by his predecessors who were feckless when it came to managing Russia, at least back to W Bush. I give Clinton a ton of credit for expanding NATO, even if the Russophiles and realists questions that choice. Otherwise we’d be seeing Russian tanks in Vilnius and not just Ukraine.
But we should be crystal clear that any aggression against a NATO power will be met with the full weight of the US military. I think sending Americans to those other border states is the right call. I’d give Poland anything it wants militarily at this point. Maybe an Iron Dome equivalent or at least a THAAD deployment.
Kyiv is still standing. Turns out the bear wasn’t as mighty as he appeared to be.
If someone breaks into your house and starts stealing stuff do you say let’s negotiate what the burglar can keep or do you call the police, press charges, and fight to get all your stuff back? An invasion means negotiations are over as far as I’m concerned. The ethnic Russians living in eastern Ukraine don’t even support the invasion.
Vladimir Putin can’t hold these nations even if he is able to take military control of them for a few years. Your analogy doesn’t work — there are no police and there is no court in which to press charges.
This invasion means that Vladimir Putin is getting desperate. It is a death spasm of the old Soviet Union.
The nations we’re talking about have been independent less than 40 years. The world lived with the boundaries of the old Soviet Union for decades.
Even if there is an ebb and flow of democracy over the next decade or two, that is not worth starting WWIII over.
There are in fact international organizations that can serve as the equivalent of law enforcement, though I fear the Security Council will be pretty toothless given a Russian veto. IMO democracy is always worth fighting to defend.
Ah — you mean like the ICC (International Criminal Court). You know, the one that America steadfastly refuses to join. The one that would have prosecuted George W. Bush and Richard Cheney for their many brazen war crimes.
In my view, any fight to defend democracy should begin at home.
I reject the thesis that we should “fight to defend democracy” in former Soviet Union members while we refuse to join international organizations that might bring a pretense of legitimacy to such fights and while we do absolutely nothing to stop authoritarian fascism spreading like wildfire in America.
Your fight to “defend democracy” sounds like old-fashioned cold-war domino thinking to me.
I think it is foolishness to contemplate entering WWIII to “defend democracy” in Belarus or Latvia while steadfastly ignoring brazen and flagrant sedition and insurrection by a former president.
The best strategy for this situation is “Strategic Patience”.
I know we aren’t perfect, but there is an emergency right now in Ukraine and this is no time to be conflating things and arguing false equivalencies. I absolutely fear that if Ukraine falls someone else will be next. History has consistently shown that to be the case from ancient times to the 20th century.
You’re both right. I agree with Tom, Bob, and Terry that strategic patience will work. Let’s hit them with the nuclear option of sanctions and then arm the Ukrainians to the teeth and hope their forces can make Putin pay for his wanton aggression. Let’s also arm our NATO allies and make it crystal clear attacking them provokes a full US military response. The illegal Russian incursion into Ukraine will be a costly quagmire for the Putin regime. There’s no need to directly involve the American military if the Ukrainians can make the cost of occupation higher than the reward of capitulation. Their fighting spirit is indomitable, from the 13 martyrs in the Black Sea island who told the Russian warship to f itself to the men and women fighting in the streets of Kyiv as we speak. The world is watching, and nobody is on Putin’s side. Not even the Russian people.
I’ve been heartened by what I have heard today about the capacity and willingness of Ukrainians to defend themselves. I may have come across in other comments as more militant than I intended. I’m not suggesting American boots on Ukrainian soil tomorrow. I’m just leery of absolutely ruling it out and I would prefer to at least start with helping to arm the Ukrainians.
If someone breaks into your house and starts stealing stuff
You shoot them.
I thought of that, but I did not want to come across as a Rambo/NRA type.
“. . . I did not want to come across as a Rambo/NRA type.”
Don’t worry.
Except that nobody has broken into your house.
Ukraine isn’t our house. Neither is Belarus, nor Latvia.
Speaking of “your house”, Florida is much closer to home than any of this. Florida — home of “stand your ground”, the policy that has caused so many innocent black men to be murdered for the crime of breathing while black.
Florida in 2022 exemplifies the evils that threaten representative democracy in America FAR more directly than anything Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine.
If anybody has broken into any houses in or near America, it is a Russian agent who lives in Mar-A-Lago.
The only people doing any shooting right now are people who like red MAGA hats — too many of them wearing blue uniforms from states like Florida.
Now is not the time to be isolationist. We can and should walk and chew gum at the same time. Also, standing up for sovereignty and democracy everywhere IS part and parcel to cleaning our own house and restoring our place as the leader of the free world.
We’re not talking about walking and chewing gum. You’re proposing to enter WWIII in the time and place chosen by Vladimir Putin.
I think that’s bad strategy and will lead to bad outcome.
There is every indication that the Russian military — and Vladimir Putin himself — will be MUCH weaker 5-10 years from now.
Making strategic choices about how to attain long-term goals is not being isolationist.
I disagree. We are not “cleaning up our own house” if we are showing the world that the rule of law does not apply to those Americans who choose to ignore it.
The Ukrainians will be able to
hold onto their territory with substantial assistance from the West. There is no need for American ground forces. What is needed is clarity to Putin that expanding this war to any NATO member will result in the full response of the entire alliance, including the US. I think Biden is playing his hand deftly. Sending Americans to shore up Poland and Eastern Europe will deter Putin from going further than Ukraine, sending lethal aid to the Ukrainians will make Russia pay. Sanctioning the heck out of them will crater their already crappy economy and then his people against him. Biden has herded cats to get us to this point and deserves a lot of credit. He’s the best president vis a vis Russia in my lifetime.
So far the war is playing out exactly as CSIS predicted. Putin is meeting much stiffer resistance than he expected, it’ll cost a tremendous number of lives for him to achieve his goals and he is already retreating to the negotiating table.
I’m not calling for WWIII and the Ukrainians don’t have 5-10 years. We ARE methodically applying the rule of law here at home. Trump damaged what we stand for both internationally and domestically. We can and must repair both.
I am honestly not sure what you or Terry are arguing with us about here. I think all of us, with maybe the exception of Bob, and I respect the consistency of his position even if I disagree with it, support what the Biden administration is doing vis a vis sanctioning Russia and helping arm the Ukranian resistance.
I think Christopher is arguing that further aggression from Putin i.e invading a NATO state will require a more direct American military response. Which would be Putin choosing WWIII at a time and place of his choosing. But what other choice would we have at that point?
Allow NATO to collapse and Putin to destroy it? Give up the Baltic states? If he threatens to nuke DC unless we give him NY, should we? Appeasement only gets you so far. It has already gotten us to this point where Putin felt emboldened to invade Ukraine. I’m certainly heartened by the global response so far which seems to be isolating his regime to a few fellow travelers. Orban, Le Pen, and even Trump have all abandoned him. Even the Iranians are protesting this war.
I do worry about his end game and would be wise to give him some dignified off ramps and I’m hopeful the negotiations will lead to that.
I would not raise our nuclear alert to match his. Show the world the US will not match his nuclear brinkmanship with our own.
Latvia is a NATO member and is American territory for all intents and purposes. If they credibly invoke Article V than the US has to go to war. They went to war on our behalf after 9/11, we owe them the same faith and loyalty.
I hope we never have to cross that bridge.
I fear that Mr. Putin has realized that he is not immortal. He behaves as if he believes that he is on a mission from God to “restore” Russia to its “rightful place”.
I think the burning question is whether we can collectively stall long enough for Russia to literally run out of resources.
I have heard from some sources that he might have cancer, which is why he’s acting as if he is running out of time, but I don’t buy that rumor just yet.
I was answering Chris about a situation. Ukraine isn’t my house, I say let Europe handle Putin in this situation since Germany especially has been building up the bully by trading with them so much. Romney warned about this.
Again if someone breaks into my house they’re done.
But you apparently care not a whit if your neighbor is the one who is the victim of a home invasion.
It’s a terrible analogy, please don’t belabor it. Ukraine was, after all, a part of Russia for a very long time.
Let me to try to stretch the analogy — probably past its breaking point. Suppose siblings grew up in a house down the street. There is falling out within the family, and the eldest son is disinherited. The parents die and a much younger daughter inherits the property — promptly selling it to a college friend.
The unhappy eldest son — under increasing stress and an uncontrolled emotional disorder — cracks and enters the property, telling the new owner to vacate or be killed. He fills the house with high-explosives and natural gas, so that any attempt to kill him will destroy the entire densely populated neighborhood filled with women and children.
Is the first and best answer to send in a SWAT team with guns blazing, in full knowledge that everybody on that team and everybody in the neighborhood will likely be killed in the horrific explosions and firestorm that follow?
I remain convinced that the best answer — as it often is with hostage situations — is strategic patience.
Opening fire is arguably among the worst options.
I don’t know, I’ve often been tempted to sacrifice immediate lives to prove once and for all that hostage taking doesn’t work, though I would certainly evacuate the neighborhood before going in.
I think it’s a distraction to argue about sending American ground troops to Ukraine. It gives credence to the America First crowd on the fright and the Code Pink crowd on the left and whatever Tulsi Gabbard has turned into that they US is in any way shape or form an aggressor in this case. The US will continue to provide defensive aid to the Ukranian people so they can defend their land. At this point even an airlift is out of the question since it would require direct engagement with Russian air defenses and the ground convoys that are going to resupply the Ukrainians will put NATO personnel at risk since they will be entering a war zone. That said, I’m becoming more cautiously optimistic that the Ukrainians can hold the tide and that Russia lacks popular support for this action.
Is anyone actually proposing that? I support the same policies you do on this question. I think if Putin chooses to expand the war to a NATO ally it is a different question entirely.
The Ukrainians are fighting for the continuation of their secular liberal democratic nation. They are fighting for a right to join NATO and the E.U. on their own terms and their own timeline. They are already part of the West and share its enlightenment liberal values. This is a world of difference from the mujahideen and their Islamist ideology.
So far, Biden has remained rock solid in increasing strong sanctions at an “unprecedented” pace, according to sanctions expert Hagar Chemali.
Biden is increasing military assistance in a responsible but significant way, including providing crucial anti-aircraft weapons.
Finally, Biden is also remaining rock solid in resisting the appeal of emotion and resorting to moves that would be strategically perilous or unwise, such as the suggestion of a no-fly zone, which could easily bring US and Russian aircraft into direct conflict.
In response, the world continues to unite in opposition to Russia’s outrageous atrocity of an aggressive war.
In other words, Biden is largely choosing strategic patience.
Who here has argued otherwise? I’ll reiterate for the third time he is the best president dealing with Russia this century.
It’s working. No one is crediting Biden, but make no mistake, he is collaborating with, respecting, and bolstering the European alliance with the United States.
He’s too intelligent to use bravado and to insist moves come from the US rather than key European countries.
It’s working. Previously unthinkable moves from the Europeans are happening.