I have been talking about Ukraine for a while, but then it was almost a year ago that Russia invaded Ukraine. First, they took Crimea. Then they started helping rebels (or started a rebellion themselves) in eastern Ukraine. In July, a Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down by Ukrainian rebels, using weapons provided by Russia, killing 299 people. A supposed ceasefire was agreed to in September, but it collapsed at the end of January (if it was ever really in effect). Now, the fighting has resumed on a large scale. Russia’s invasion continues.
I understand Vladimir Putin claims Russia forces are not in Ukraine, but it’s not true. Last week Ukrainian armed forces captured a Russian T-72 tank. The rebels could not have gotten this tank from the Ukrainian army because the Ukrainian army does not have T-72 tanks. The tank came from Russia.
Similarly, in October of last year, a Financial Times reporter wrote about encountering Russian servicemen in Lugansk, in Ukraine. The reporter quoted one of the troops as saying, “They gave us an order: who wants to go volunteer.” In other words, Vladimir Putin is lying about Russian involvement in Ukraine. The sooner we accept that, the better off we will be.
We need to provide arms to Ukraine now – for at least two reasons. First, we need to help the Ukrainians defend themselves. It is unlikely the Ukrainians will be able to defeat the rebels and push the Russians out. There will probably need to be some kind of negotiated settlement, but if the Ukrainians can hold their own in the fighting, they can negotiate a better deal. If Ukraine can’t effectively defend itself, why would President Putin negotiate with them? Why wouldn’t he just keep going to see how much he could get? The only way for Ukraine to negotiate any kind of reasonable settlement is by being able to fight.
Tied in with this, as sort of a reason 1-A, in 1994 the United States agreed, along with Russia and the United Kingdom, to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine agreeing to give up the nuclear weapons that were stationed in Ukraine when the Soviet Union split up. I have seldom seen anybody mention this agreement (certainly not the Obama administration), but it’s there, and we agreed. I’m not saying we should send troops (more on that below), but we should send weapons.
Second, I understand that Ukraine is not a member of NATO and that, therefore, we have no treaty commitment to defend it. Still, Ukraine borders four NATO members. President Obama spoke forcefully on our obligations to fellow members of NATO when he stopped in Tallinn, Estonia, on his way to the NATO summit last September:
“So I’ve come here, first and foremost, to reaffirm the commitment of the United States to the security of Estonia. As NATO Allies, we have Article 5 duties to our collective defense. That is a commitment that is unbreakable. It is unwavering. It is eternal. And Estonia will never stand alone.”
But words are one thing; actions are another. While we now have several hundred troops rotating through the Baltic countries on a regular basis, we still have not established bases in the new NATO members in central Europe. We can’t do that, we are told. It would violate a 1997 agreement we have with Russia not to establish permanent bases in the new members of NATO. Let me see if I understand. Russia has invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, provided weapons that were used to shoot down a civilian airliner, and we’re the ones who would be violating an agreement?
One of the major problems we have today is a lack of credibility in our foreign policy. We led from behind in the Libya. We ignored our own redline with respect to Syrian chemical weapons. First, President Obama threatened to attack Syria. Then he said he had to get Congressional approval. Finally, he backed off entirely when Syria, after getting the benefits it needed from using chemical weapons, said it would get rid of the weapons it no longer needed (assuming it even did that).
We have put ourselves in the most dangerous situation possible. We have a commitment, under NATO, to defend our fellow members if they are attacked. While I very much hope we would follow through on that commitment, I am not sure it is clear we would do so, at least effectively. And, I am afraid, it is especially unclear whether Vladimir Putin thinks we (i.e., President Obama) would follow through on that commitment. We have hesitated or failed to act in other situations. Does President Putin think we might do the same if Russia went after one or more of Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania? Is he willing to take a chance to see?
As I said, this is the most dangerous situation possible. We may wind up having our commitment to our NATO obligations tested because we have given other countries the impression, as a result of what we have done or not done elsewhere, that we might not follow through on those commitments.
What we need to do now is to start convincing Vladimir Putin that we will keep our commitments to our fellow NATO members. We need to make sure he doesn’t try to rest us in the Baltics, or elsewhere, because he mistakenly thinks we may back off. We need to re-establish our foreign policy credibility.
Among the ways we can start doing that is to supply defensive arms to Ukraine. Obviously, there will be limits on what we will do, and we must make those limits very clear to the Ukrainian leaders. We do not want to mislead them. We especially do not want them to do something or take some course of action in the expectation of help we won’t deliver. But we can do that privately. We don’t need to tell the other side what we are going to do and what we are not going to do.
We are told, however, that, if we provide aid to Ukraine, Vladimir Putin will use our aid to rally support among the Russian people. However, he is already claiming we are helping Ukraine. In fact, President Putin has said NATO is supplying armed forces to Ukraine. How is it going to make things worse if we actually do some part of what he is already saying we are doing?
The bottom line is that Russia is invading Ukraine. Who knows who might next? While most people would say it is unthinkable, even now, that Russia would attack a NATO member, a year ago they would have thought it was unthinkable that Russia would invade Ukraine or annex Crimea. We need to keep it unthinkable that Russia would attack a NATO member, and we need to make sure Russia knows that we will meet our NATO obligations if they do. One of the ways we can do that is to start, finally, to provide military supplies to Ukraine, so that Ukraine can defend itself and so that Vladimir Putin knows we will act to oppose his aggression.
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