UPDATE August 31, 2023 See David French, “The Articulate Ignorance of Vivek Ramaswamy,” New York Times, August 31, 2023, (3:00 p.m. ET), *** Original text…
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We need to take a deep breath, step back, and ask ourselves, “How is the current Ukraine Crisis going to end?”
Upon reflection, it is clear that even if Vladimir Putin leaps into the abyss and launches an invasion of Ukraine he cannot achieve his crazy objectives, goals which only a madman or a dictator drunk on power could even imagine to be achievable.
He wants all of Europe and the Free World to agree to roll back the history of the last 77 years, since the end of World War II, the founding of the United Nations, and the adoption of the U.N. Charter in 1945 by all of the nations of the world, and to proceed as if international law did not exist.
It’s not going to happen.
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He may invade Ukraine and start a war that could cost tens of thousands of lives, but he cannot win.
In his mad megalomania, he cannot prevail.
His aggression can only succeed if the rest of the world agrees that international relations will no longer be governed by the U.N. Charter, that treaties are no longer to be viewed as binding, and in general that international law will no longer govern relations between states.
That is not going to happen, no matter what Putin does.
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One thing is certain: Putin cannot win. He cannot achieve his delusional goals by leaping into the abyss of war.
Indeed, he cannot know even how he might land.
Of course, if Putin misses the last exit ramp before war, there may be further exit ramps further down the road.
Whether there will be a further exit ramp he can take and still retain his power, is unknown, and essentially unknowable–even by him.
The bottom line
While a Russian invasion of Ukraine may not be “imminent”, and while Putin according to U.S. sources may not have made a decision to invade, Russian military forces are continuing their build-up along the Russian and Belarusian borders with Ukraine, in apparent preparation for an invasion which U,S, officials warn “could take place at any moment”.
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Update
February 5, 2022
9:34 p.m. EST
The information in the latest dispatch from the Washington Post is truly alarming.
The problem with a deterrence strategy that does not work is that it fails to deter the catastrophe it was designed to prevent.
The current deterrence strategy of the U.S. and NATO is a weak strategy, a “maybe it will work” strategy. It doesn’t look like it’s going to work.
There are no precedents that come to mind where the use of force was deterred in the face of such a massive military build-up by the threat of economic sanctions.
What can be done?
The answer is far from clear, particularly when the wheels of war have been engaged to such an extent on the Russian side, and the machinery of decision-making among the coalition that opposes Putin is so cumbersome.
It is now evident that the U.S. and NATO countries made a grave error when they announced that the use of force to counter Russian aggression against Ukraine was “off the table”. This is an error which has made Putin’s calculations simple compared to what they would be if there were uncertainty about the potential response by NATO and other countries to a potential Russian invasion.
Putin is a megalomaniac, who wants to remake the world through the threat and use of military power.
He is probably convinced that he can beat Biden in a nuclear showdown. That, indeed, may be the source of his supreme boldness and self-confidence.
We may be in the gravest military crisis since the allies faced Adolf Hitler’s armies during World War II.
How will it all end? It could all end in a flash, and if it does it will be the last flash you will ever see.
The U.S., NATO, and the rest of the world need to pull out all the stops to ensure that we never see that flash.
If we learned anything from Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Crimea and the Eastern Ukraine in 2014, it is that he is a tricky old KBG spymaster, who places a premium on feints and deceit–and deniability.
Deceit and distraction, and delight at fooling the West,, were at the heart of Putin’s strategy in 2014, and they may be now.
Another key dimension of Putin’s strategy and tactics is desensitization. By playing with the West in 2014, , e.g., “Are the white trucks in the “humanitarian aid” convoy carrying military supplies or food and water?”, or “Are they going to cross the Ukrainian border without inspection or authorization?”, for example, Putin desensitized his opponents to his norm violations.
Well, they crossed the border. Later, the realization that regular Russian forces crossed the border doesn’t seem like such a big deal. His earlier desensitization tactics seem to drain the emption from the reactions to later grave violations of international law.
He has played with the West to such an extent in the present crisis, threatening a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that this desensitization tactic may lead to a milder reaction if e.g., he only seizes a strip of land linking the Donbas to the Crimea.
Another key dimension of Putin’s strategy and tactics is desensitization. By playing with the West, e.g., “Are the white trucks in the “humanitarian aid” convoy carrying military supplies or food and water?”, or “Are they going to cross the Ukrainian border without inspection or authorization?”, for example, Putin desensitized his opponents to his norm violations.
Well, they crossed the border. Later, the realization that regular Russian forces crossed the border doesn’t seem like such a big deal. His earlier desensitization tactics seem to drain the emption from the reactions to later grave violations of international law.
He has played with the West to such an extent in the present crisis, threatening a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that this desensitization tactic may lead to a milder reaction if e.g., he only seizes a strip of land linking the Donbas to the Crimea.
Recent cyber attacks on oil shipping terminals and facilities in Northwest Europe could well foreshadow a move in the kind of hybrid warfare Putin could use in the present confrontation between Russia, on the one hand, and NATO, Ukraine, and other democracies, on the other.
An op-ed in the New York Times, by an expert in Vienna, points to the possibility that Putin may have something much bigger in mind than an attack on Ukraine with conventional forces.
We may soon be looking at a conflict bween Russia and NATO which involves a significant cyber component for the first time.
If this occurs, a key question will be how nimble the U.S. and its allies will be in responding to attacks of probable but less than certain origin.
Developing Because so much is being written about the Ukraine Crisis, we are providing links to the most important news dispatches and analyses, in particular…
The U.S. has called for an “open” meeting of the U.N. Security Council for Monday, January 31, the last possible day before Russia takes over the rotating Presidency of the Council for the month of February. It is not clear if this call was for an “Emergency Meeting” of the Security Council. If it wasn’t, it should have been.
The call for a meeting on Monday and not Friday reveals the total lack of urgency which seems to animate the Biden Administration’s actions.
Having not heard any serious international law arguments criticizing Russia’s actions and threats against Ukraine, one must assume that the call for a Security Council meeting is just a perfunctory gesture. Someone must have woken up and realized that the Russians were assuming the Presidency of the Council on Tuesday, which could make convening a meeting more difficult.
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John F. Kennedy read The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman in 1962. We should all be reading it now. And another of her books which which is highly relevant, The March of Folly (1984).
The Guns of August, which was published only months before the Cuban Missile crisis, appears to have had a deep impact on John F. Kennedy and his approach to decision-making during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Given how dicey that U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontation was, it could be that one reason we are all here is that he read that book.
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If you see international lawyers and diplomats on television talking about international law, there may be some hope for diplomacy.
If you see generals talking about military capabilities and deployments, we may be headed toward a major ground war in Europe, and the attendant risks of escalation to a limited nuclear conflict or to an all-out nuclear war.
In 1938, Adolf Hitler, with German troops massed to invade Czechoslovakia, challenged the world.
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The capitulation at Munich turned out to be the first step in the final collapse of the international legal order….
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Putin’s threat may be parochially perceived by some in Europe as a threat to the “European Security Order”, but in fact it is much more than that. It is a frontal attack on the international legal norms and institutions which safeguard the security from military attack of every country in the world, and every territory with an established international demarcation line, such as Taiwan.
The U.S., NATO members, and other countries in the region have not risen to effectively meet the threat, or are only belatedly beginning to do so.
If the threat is as great as that outlined above, how could it be sufficient to simply threaten economic sanctions and other non-military measures in the event Russia invades Ukraine?
If these deterrent threats do not appear to be working, as preparations for a Russian invasion continue while diplomatic negotiations show no promise, is not more required?
Once the evil of war is loosed upon the world, no one can predict what course it may take. One should recall the rosy predictions in August, 1914 of those who launched WWI, expecting six weeks of hostilities. It didn’t work out as that way.
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Germany should state clearly, immediately, and unequivocally, that it will support expulsion of Russia from the SWIFT international payments system if Russia invades Ukraine. Germany’s ambivalence on this point has greatly diluted the deterrent force of threats to adopt this measure.
Germany should also state unequivocally, and immediately, that if Putin invades Ukraine, it will kill the Nordstream II gas pipeline project and will never authorize it to operate in its territory.
Germany, which was responsible for the collapse of the international legal order beginning in 1938, owes the world at least these two measures.
Politically and financially, these steps will not be easy to take. Germany now stands at the center of the world stage, with a potentially decisive voice in Putin’s calculations. International law and international order require sacrifices. These, however, are minimal when compared to the sacrifices of war.
Politically and financially, these steps will not be easy to take. Germany now stands at the center of the world stage, with a potentially decisive voice in Putin’s calculations. International law and international order require sacrifices. These, however, are minimal when compared to the sacrifices of war.
Cuesta and Gómez quote Zbigniev Rau, the new President of the OSCE (and Polish foreign minister), as saying after the OSCE meeting in Vienna on Thursday, January 13, “The risk of war is the region in now greater than at any other moment in the last 30 years.”
Developments appear to confirm previous analyses that Putin is merely going through the motions of attempted diplomacy to bolster his case that he tried everything and had no alternative other than to invade Ukraine.
It now appears that he is doubling down on his threat and plans to invade Ukraine, in what may be in his mind a giant game of “chicken” with Joe Biden and the U.S.
In 1945, under the original scheme of the United Nations Charter, a country did not have to be a member of a collective self-defense or…
As far back as December 19, David Ignatius reported on a telltale fatal flaw in U.S. thinking about how it and NATO would respond to a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
He reported that American military advisors and policy makers were discussing how to provide assistance to Ukrainian “insurgents” or a Ukrainian “insurgency”. Ignatius on January 6 and David E. Sanger and Eric Schmittt on January 8 report that policymakers are still using the same terminology.
In doing so they have framed the question in a way which naively fails to take international law into account, much less to use it actively to achieve American deterrence goals, while employing a conceptual framework that assumes Ukrainian defeat. They are talking in terms of providing military assistance to “insurgents” after Russia has taken over Ukraine.
The conceptual framework assumes defeat, while completely ignoring international law and the U.N. Charter.
Story also availabe on Medium / James Rowles
See https://jamesrowles.medium.com/
January 7, 2022 See, 1) AFP, “Russia’s ‘mini-Nato’ intervenes in Kazakhstan Clashes reported in Almaty as govt buildings cleared of protesters,” 24newshd.tv January 7, 2022(7:43…
With the Americans and the Europeans firmly set in their demands that the Taliban provide guarantees for the respect of human rights before assets can be freed or aid can flow, the Afghan economy appears on the verge of collapse.
As winter is fast approaching, a humanitarian disaster of enormous proportions becomes more likely very day.
It is difficult to see either side yielding, while diplomacy is awkward and takes a lot of time.
In these circumstances, it seems likely that millions of Afghans will starve to death before the assistance they so desperately need reaches them.
