What’s the Alternative to Negotiating with Putin? What, exactly, can end the bloody meat-grinder stalemate? by Bruce Thornton
https://www.frontpagemag.com/whats-the-alternative-to-negotiating-with-putin/
Donald Trump’s bilateral effort to put an end to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has incited the usual NeverTrump Dems, along with other foreign policy commentators not necessarily hostile to the president. Some are criticizing Trump for freezing Ukraine and the NATO nations out of the negotiations, insulting Ukraine’s government as corrupt, and denigrating Zelensky. But the real issue is, so far, that there’s been no other plausible plan for ending the bloody meatgrinder stalemate.
The NATO West has not come off well in this crisis. First, the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borderlands after the collapse of the Soviet Union was ill advised, given that Putin as early as 2007 had called European NATO nations’ expansion to Russia’s near abroad a “serious provocation.” Even worse, many NATO members’ feckless neglect of their defense spending, and the sorry state of NATO’s military preparedness, meant that NATO was a paper tiger that couldn’t and wouldn’t backup its challenge to Russia’s ambitions.
Nor was the Biden puppeteers’ criminal negligence in their shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan helpful in concentrating Putin’s mind. Was there any reason why Vlad wouldn’t think it was a good time to start restoring the Soviet empire?
Putin’s confidence was also strengthened by the mostly performative assertions of NATO nations that they would not let his adventurism stand. But what credibility could NATO summon, given that his initial aggression against Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014 was met with blustering rhetoric and flabby sanctions?
And hadn’t Barack Obama also encouraged Putin with his talk of a “reset” with Russia, promise of “flexibility” after his reelection, and cancellation of antimissile batteries for Russia’s Eastern European nations? There’s also Obama’s earlier flip mockery of Mitt Romney’s warning about Putin’s ambitions during the 2012 presidential debate––“the Eighties called, and they want their foreign policy back.” A mere two years later Putin took Crimea, and was met only with sanctions and a school-marmish scolding from Secretary of State John Kerry.
Similarly, after the flaccid Biden administration took over and shamefully skedaddled from Afghanistan, Putin calculated that his odds were pretty good for making his move. Also encouraging was Biden’s talk about a “minor incursion,” a careless, subjective phrase, and also his publicly taking off the table deploying any U.S. troops to the region.
Next, when the brutal invasion commenced, NATO talked big and provided funds to Ukraine, and Germany boasted that NATO embrace of robust military spending was a “turning point.” But as historian Niall Ferguson wrote at the time, the NATO nations’ “military industrial complex has withered away,” making it nearly impossible to adequately supply Ukraine, let alone their own pygmy militaries.
Hence, they stinted on delivering materiel, especially critical assets like fighter jets and long-range missiles, obviously spooked by Russia’s nuclear arsenal, especially its tactical nukes. Stockpiles of artillery shells and other materiel quickly dwindled. Deliveries slowed down as tens of thousands of Ukrainians died and their country’s infrastructure was destroyed.
Meanwhile, defensive weapons like fighter jets and long-range missiles remained verboten, lest the Russian Bear goes on a rampage.
Nor can the NATO West claim that Putin’s invasion was a big surprise. As the Wall Street Journal wrote, Putin made no secret of his intentions to punish NATO:
“As far back as 2007, in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, Mr. Putin excoriated the European security order and teed up NATO enlargement as a ‘serious provocation’ that would justify a serious Russian response. His tone was fierce. In 2008 he reportedly told then-President George W. Bush he didn’t consider Ukraine a real country.”
Nor did Putin keep secret his preparations for the invasion. As John Bolton at the time wrote in the Daily Telegraph,
“The West stood idly by when Russian forces intervened in Donbas and seized Crimea; imposed only perfunctory sanctions thereafter; negotiated the embarrassing, Moscow-leaning Minsk Agreements; and for years did precious little to provide anything close to satisfactory levels of military assistance and training to Ukrainian forces.”
Indeed, for a year before the invasion, NATO nations watched as Putin deployed his forces on Ukraine’s eastern border, and didn’t take steps to prepare for the onslaught, relying instead on feeble threats and sanctions.
Finally, this sorry history of the West’s response to the Russo-Ukrainian war has exposed the fatal weaknesses of our much-vaunted “rules based international order” that foreign policy idealists bragged demonstrated its value with the NATO nations’ noisy but halting support for Ukraine.
But all the shibboleths of that order––soft power, diplomatic engagement, supranational institutions, international law, multinational coalitions––have failed, confirming Thomas Hobbes’ wisdom that “Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all” –– nor can they establish by action a credible deterrence.
As we’ve seen, the NATO nations have not learned that wisdom, relying on rhetorical bluster about appeasing Putin, which they have serially done since 2008; hectoring sermons about “international norms” against seizing another nation’s sovereign territory”; and flimsy sanctions, which in the case of Russia, have been ineffective. After all, how hard can they bite when Europeans have continued to buy Putin’s natural gas?
More shamefully, for decades the richest NATO nations have ignored their military preparedness, both materiel and troops, free-riding instead on the U.S., and preferring to spend their money on welfare transfers and crackpot suicidal projects like banning the fossil fuel energy that created the modern world. At the same time that they damage their industrial capacity, they are ensuring that they will not be able to build a credible military capacity even if they wanted to.
Finally, as we see with Putin’s brutal invasion, such idealism violates over two millennia of tragic realism, starting with Thucydides’ famous reminder that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” Equally important is George Washington’s precept, “No nation can be trusted farther than it is bounded by its own interests,” which explains European NATO’s rich deadbeat members whose national leaders and factions have political and personal interests that weigh heavily in their calculations.
We can scold Trump for his methods and hyperbole, but the real question for critics is, what’s your solution? More of the same? Keep sending Ukraine materiel and money, which so far have created a bloody stalemate with no end in sight to the slaughter?
There’s no good resolution of this crisis, only bad or worse ones. Donald Trump at least is making an effort. If we in the West don’t like it, we should at least acknowledge that our own foreign policy idealism and rejection of using the force necessary to stop Putin shares the blame.
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