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Obama And Merkel Are Clueless About Putin: Yet It's So Simple

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This article is more than 9 years old.

Apparently a strategic consensus now emerges that Ukraine cannot win the struggle against Moscow, not even on its own territory.  The Russkies cannot be beat. Therefore Ukraine should receive no arms. That’s the logic. Obama, prodded by Merkel, largely agrees though makes noises about keeping ‘all options’ open. Theirs is a well-mooted position. For example, published in the National Interest we find a thoroughly sensible and well-argued report in that vein, deceptively so, beginning with the mollifying notion that true help would involve long-term support for Kiev’s armed forces and intelligence gathering, its economy and rule of law. Just not any armaments now.  Ukrainian forces couldn’t absorb them; they don’t know what they’re doing; they’re divided and uninformed and even if they succeeded in throwing out the separatists, Russians would bombard them from afar. In short, it’s a model of ultra-cogent thinking in favor of appeasement.

I say appeasement not pejoratively, not with a prejudice for Atlanticist triumphalism, nor with any illusions about EU utopias, about Nato competence or the automatic benefits of arms transfers. I use the term with a clear sense of cause and effect. If we don’t stop Putin in Ukraine, he will become unstoppable. The article above argues, not uniquely, that Moscow has no intention of expanding further in Ukraine or elsewhere and therefore caving to Putin now won’t trigger any further aggression on his part.  Problem is, all the evidence indicates otherwise. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, Donetsk, now Debaltseve.  In the first two of these, no ethnic Russians needed saving. Yet the land did need integrating into greater Russia, for some reason. Apparently we’re not supposed to connect all these dots. The trick here, if you haven’t noticed, is to identify each instance as wholly unique and necessary. Therefore no pattern. Adduce a pattern and you have to infer that the expansion will continue. At which point you have to believe in stopping Putin now in Ukraine. Here is a highly convincing essay, this time in The American Interest, arguing that making it at least costly for Putin to swallow chunks of Ukraine will deter him from setting his sights on the next weak link.

That is, indeed, the correct and unavoidable redoubt for us all in the West to rally around: arm Ukraine as best we can. Even if Putin triumphs eventually, it will cost him more and convey our resolve. Otherwise it will be the Baltics next, then eastern Europe, then the oil fields of Baku. Enough of this nonsense about Russian fears of encirclement, or Moscow saving people from Ukrainian Nazis and Georgian supremacists, and enough about trying diplomacy first and forever – all delusional hocus pocus. Putin is now visiting Egypt, endeavoring to win back a lost Soviet ally.  He’s not just trying to regame the 1990’s, he’s lusting for the 1970’s.  It’s a maximalist global strategy.  So much for saving embattled Russians; he’s rebuilding Moscow’s empire pure and simple, this predatory opportunistic ogre with his botox-frozen KGB face, his unblinkingly cynical self-leveraging via mafias and militias and radioactive poisons, atop mountains of bodies from Grozny to Damascus to Donbass to MH17. That he even remotely hints at nuclear recourses as he has done repeatedly should suffice to tighten our moral fibers.

Endless pharisaical throat-clearing by the free world only goads tyrants, as we’ve often learned. No one’s advocating Iraq-style Nato boots on the ground to vindicate Putin’s paranoid  pretexts. No, the solution is within hand’s reach, of his own making. Moscow’s military is so thinly stretched from the Ukraine adventure that Russia’s defenses lie exposed to all manner of threats everywhere else incountry and out. Here’s a fascinating sketch of their perilous situation published in The Moscow Times no less. Russian troops who find themselves in  Ukraine have trained only for rapid-reaction contingencies. They’re not equipped or competent in the long term slog of a Ukraine scenario. Battalions from Central Asia, Rostov and the like are being hurriedly rushed into the breach. Now’s a chance for the West to think strategically by keeping him pinned down in Donbass while helping Central Asia to throw off the Russian yoke. It’s time for the so-called ‘Stans to join the wider world, build pipelines, pursue trade beyond Russia. For this, Georgia's current government needs to drop its pro-West façade and make it real. It must act as a conduit for Central Asia. Azerbaijan is already on board. Armenia is begging for the opportunity.

Russian citizens must be made to see that their leader’s adventurism costs them not only their liberties and prosperity, but even their traditional dominance over subject peoples. At the moment, they’re persuaded that Putin embodies their sense of pride. And they’ve had to sacrifice too little for that delusion. In Ukraine begins the transformation, if we only have the resolve.