Several thoughts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Actually, I should say Russia’s “renewed” invasion of Ukraine, since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and Russian troops were involved in the supposed rebel outbreaks in the Donbas, etc.1
First, before the renewed invasion, I listened to podcasts with diplomats, reporters, etc., talking about the situation in Ukraine. Since the invasion, I have found those discussions less useful. The best people to listen to now are military people. I have learned a lot from the comments of Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges (ret.) in this program at the Atlantic Council and of former National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (ret.) in the “Goodfellows” programs at the Hoover Institution. This is, after all, a war. To understand what is happening and what our options are, among the best people to listen to are the generals. If you don’t know the military situation and the military options, you can’t make good decisions. The military doesn’t make the decisions, but they give some of the most important information to those who do.
Which gets to my third point. In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead said:
“There are two mistakes we can make about figures like Mr. Putin. One is to underestimate their talent for troublemaking if they don’t get what they want. The other is to believe that by giving in to their demands we can quiet them down. The West has made both mistakes with Mr. Putin in the past. We must try to do better now.”
What the United States needs now is a president who has the strength and the credibility to deal with somebody like President Putin. Barack Obama didn’t have them. Neither did Donald Trump. The latter was so unpredictable and his decisions were so random, that I wonder if anybody had any real respect for him.
Thinking of prior presidents, you can see that Ronald Reagan had them. President Reagan, with Secretary of State George Schulz at his side, had strength and credibility. George H.W. Bush, with Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, had them. In both cases, you can see their strength and credibility in the results of what they accomplished. Richard Nixon had them, too.
The question for us today is whether President Biden has that kind of strength and credibility. For the sake of the United States – and the world, I would like to think he does. But I worry.
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1 Among others, see here.
UPDATE (3/13/22 11:40 am): A couple of posts that I wrote in March of 2014 about the first part of Russia's invasion of Ukraine are still relevant. In this one, “A President Uninterested in Foreign Policy Faces a Real Foreign Policy Crisis,” I talked about President Obama’s unwillingness to sell arms to Ukraine for fear of provoking Russia (sigh) and our unwillingness to increase up our own energy production. The comments of former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in this one, “Russia, Ukraine, the Baltics, and NATO,” are still very relevant. It’s sad. We knew what to do eight years ago, if not more, and we did not do it.
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