Just a week ago I wrote that I was afraid that once the images of the true horror of war start coming, once Putin ramps up the destruction, the calls for the West to "do something to stop it" might become so great that the leaders of the West wouldn't be able to withstand the pressure of the public demanding to go to war.
And here we are...
Responsible people are calling for the West to "do more." The big push right now is for weapons (fighter jets), but the call for soldiers will be soon coming because air power never won a war.
Biden is right for making it clear that NATO/the US will not fight for Ukraine. This has been clear from the very beginning: Ukraine was on its own and was going to suffer horribly. Terrible as that is, it is the price for preventing the war from taking over all of Europe.
The best one could have hoped for was that Putin took Ukraine and stopped there, not moving on the Baltics/Poland. Now, there's an outside chance that Ukraine might actually "win" (Not having the whole country become part of Russia). Biden is right for trying to tamp down the drumbeats of war.
I do not trust the American people; they have the attention span of a gnat. RIGHT NOW they support military action. RIGHT NOW they feel for the Ukrainians. But I've got $100 that says if the US puts boots inside Ukraine, and those bodies start coming home, at least half the country will be screaming about how terrible Biden was for sending those boys to die.
There have been as many, or more, casualties in two weeks - on both sides - than the US suffered in 20 years of combat IN TWO THEATERS (Iraq, Afghanistan). People seem to forget how bloody the wars in Europe have been for the last 400 years; the last century being the deadliest and most destructive.
Sending US troops means LOT OF US deaths, and Americans are not going to tolerate that. At all. They will revert back to their isolationist selves.
But at that point, it will be far too late and the world will be committed to a full-scale war in Europe.
The problem is that while the US is the pre-dominant power in NATO, we do not have the level of control necessary to force the other members into things that lie outside the scope of the alliance (like defending a non-NATO country). We would actually have to persuade them to do so or take overtly coercive action, which would likely backfire in the mid to long term.
I do not think that Putin, et al are too worried about NATO acting outside of their treaty obligations and moving to defend a non-NATO country. I think it is naive to think that a statement by any US President to the contrary would have a deterring effect.
And there isn't the political will in the US at this time to act unilaterally--especially not with whay amounts to a strong pro-Russia/Putin faction in the GoP.
Biden continues to do the best he can with what he has got.
I wonder if the administration's signal it is doing everything possible to avoid wider conflict is aimed at China. China now represents probably Putin's only chance to get what he wants out of this thing. Without their help and oil purchases, he faces an extended quagmire that threatens to cripple his military for the foreseeable future. If China feels threatened by a victory for the West in this war, they may jump the wrong way and the US will end up facing an axis of authoritarianism instead of two countries with fairly disparate interests. China is well known for its concern for sovereign authority - by showing that the US is sticking to the letter of UN and NATO rules Biden may be trying to reassure China that it can choose our side or at least stay out of it without ending up with a threat to their territory.
All the talk of Putin being told he free to take any non-NATO county is premature. The Russian military has not been able to defeat a hugely outnumbered Ukrainian defense. It is obvious that Putin will not be able to take all of Ukraine, much less hold it. At this point the Russian army collapsing is as likely an outcome as some form of victory, if not more so.
Also, does anyone else find it strange that the Russians are recruiting mercenaries? This tells me that Putin does not have confidence in his own troops.
On escalation, Putin is already bombing and shelling cities with 'dumb' weapons. The only escalation Putin can engage in now is chemical or nuclear weapons. Biden was asked about the use of chemical weapons last week, in what was likely an administration planted question. In response he simply said (paraphrasing here) there would be a strong response. So Putin is not being given carte blanche here.
Does anybody believe we are going to put troops on the ground - or fight Russia in any capacity - over Moldova, or Ukraine? Can anybody point to an instance post-Cold War (or pre-Cold War), where we stopped, using military force, a Russian invasion of a country?
Of course you can't. Biden knows this. Putin knows this. Everyone knows this. Putin wants to try to recreate the USSR with non-NATO territories, he is welcome to try. The silver lining for us is the present war in Ukraine doesn't appear to be going well for him.
I don't think there's a single person not on Kremlin payroll who thinks Putin should have invaded Ukraine, but I would hope to God we have enough level-headed people in leadership positions to understand the consequences of a NATO vs. Russia war.
I no longer take solace in the polls. Just because it's fashionable now to stand for Ukraine and against Putin, it wasn't that long ago that 90% of the Republican electorate backed trump's anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin stances just because he's their dear leader, they believe everything he says, he never lies, and Ukraine wouldn't go along with his extortion attempts. Remember "I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat"? Any Republican who thought different stayed silent so as to not offend the orange one or his cult followers. So who's to say that these people don't change their minds yet again the minute he tells them to?
by doing this "He did not personalize the conflict. He did not turn himself into the star of the show " Biden acts as the un-tyrant, and was smeared by the GOP as "weak". They cannot see straight anymore.
In defense of Biden, there is no mention here of our (US, NATO, other nations') sanctions, which amount to economic warfare and are really hurting the Russian economy and their ability to sustain Putin's war. Not enough, not what my anger tells me we should be doing militarily, but still an effective, deliberate and powerful response, with more to come if, probably when, Russian escalates (e.g. ratcheting up to cut off Russia's largest bank). And, as became clear early on, working in concert with NATO and the EU has strengthened those alliances in ways that no one thought was possible before Russia's invasion. We are fighting an economic war, which has its own dynamic and momentum, and which may yet have more consequences for Russian that a few dozen jets or a no fly zone.
I think Biden is pretty much getting things right so far. As to this messaging thing, maybe or maybe not. I know enough to know what I don't know. And that is what's going on behind the scenes out of the range of the public's eyes and ears. Wouldn't be the first time a president or his administration took a public position on something knowing full well they may have to abandon it. And whatever message Biden may be sending to Russia in public, there may be a very different one being sent in other ways behind the scenes. Or there may not. But the public didn't know what was done behind closed doors to resolve the Cuban missile crisis until long after the fact. Of course, this is not that in some very significant ways, but still...
What I would like to hear Biden talking about in public is the fact that there will be a cost for all of this that we, as a country, must bear whether we like it or not. We can argue all we want about whose fault it is that we find ourselves in the position that we do. There's plenty of blame to go around. But that won't accomplish anything other than making some egos feel better. We are where we are at the moment, and we must pay the price, whatever it turns out to be. Or the price to be paid later will be much steeper.
At the risk of sounding like an endless echo...Freedom isn't free. And another payment on the account is now due. Actually, it is past due. And as the leader of this country, Biden should be making that clear to all of those here - myself included - who have taken the possession of this precious and invaluable treasure for granted for far too long. As the tag line from a very old advertising campaign said..."You can pay me now, or you can pay me later", the inference being that paying later would be much more expensive.
We need to be prepared to pay up. And Biden should be making that point at every opportunity.
I live in Germany, two hours airplane flight time from the Ukraine, much less for Russian based rockets. And I live in Frankfurt, a definite top candidate on Putin's targeting list as the financial hub of continental Europe, and a transit and data-center one, too. That said, I wish Biden would tell Putin in no uncertain terms that HAZMAT weapons are absolute game-changers in terms of his "no fight" rhetoric.
Make Putin fight it out with conventional weapons and his inadequate army while providing the Ukrainians more and better weapons, such as missiles capable of hitting higher altitude targets than they currently possess, and help them get the MIG-29s that Poland want them to have. That will increase the short-term destruction in Ukraine, kill and wound innumerable people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it will also lead to more and more Russian unrest at every level of Russian society.
I say "short-term" because there will be a BUBB Plan (Build Ukraine...) financed by all the frozen assets of Russia and the oligarchs, not to mention the 459-foot, half a billion dollar yacht currently "unclaimed" in the Mediterranean.
While I totally see (or even agree with) Alex Vindman and others’ point, bluffing a “non-existing” NATO resolve can also be dangerous. I can imagine how hard it had been for the Biden admin to pull the European allies after the Trump administration. It would be so much harder to get NATO members on the same page knowing today’s GOP leadership has no respect for NATO.
It's interesting to see all the experts we have about conducting wars, aside from Tucker (our little dumber boy) and the Dumper (no one was stronger against Russia)! They all make it sound so simple. Those that want the ancient MIGS given to Ukraine need to explain where they would be housed, how to keep them safe, who would maintain them and find enough folks to fly them. But the biggest concern would be are they air worthy or any match for the current Russian fleet. If what I read most airfields in the country have been destroyed? I grew up during WWII which most of the experts have no clue, we don't need another one, especially with all the wackos in the world that already have atomic bombs like the little fat kid and Dumpers buddy in North Korea who is just looking for a chance.
far be it from me to criticize Vindman, Sipher et al but can there be a "good" reason for the administration to lay down there position clearly? I have a hard time believing that this debate is not occurring inside the administration. Then again in 2014 with Crimea the West was surprised and the response was inadequate so obviously there has been a re-evaluation. I take no position but would like to better understand the different positions. Personally I'd love nothing more than to swat Putin like the bug that he is but Tom Nichols has convinced me that we should have more sang-froid in these situations.
I keep hearing if Ukraine falls to Putin "the Baltics will be next". If Putin had pulled off a Blitzkrieg like Hitler did in Poland and France that idea might be a realistic worry. But even IF Putin wins this war the cost will be great enough that he isn't going to whip around and go into direct conflict with NATO. Even after a substantial pause to reconstitute his depleted material and human resources.
I don't think anyone in the West is really expecting a definitive Ukrainian victory. Everyone knows that barring a total rout of one side or the other there will be a negotiated settlement of some sort and the West wants to give Ukraine the strongest possible hand in those eventual negotiations. But, no, Ukraine is not worth a wider armed conflict in Europe... so threatening to have one isn't really helpful.
American enthusiasm for Ukraine, like American enthusiasm for everything that captures their attention, is a mile wide and an inch deep. Anything that would require Americans to suffer any involuntary sacrifice, however slight, will be used as a cudgel by Republicans to defeat Biden. Just look at the demagoguery around gas prices.
Watching the death of a country is rather painful and to do no more for me is unacceptable.
In most land wars, supply lines are what stopped the aggressors every time. If it was possible, I think that nighttime bombing raids on rail and hwys leading from the russian and Belarussian side into Ukraine would create an enormous problem for the aggressors. I see supply lines being a problem soon enough anyways but haste would help at his time.
Why should we escalate and risk ww3 when we have won. NATO is united, Russia much vaunted army has turned out to be corrupt and terrible. All we have to do is squeeze the life out of Russia with sanctions and military aid to Ukraine. The Body bags coming home to the mothers of Russian soldiers will eventually end this war.
Just a week ago I wrote that I was afraid that once the images of the true horror of war start coming, once Putin ramps up the destruction, the calls for the West to "do something to stop it" might become so great that the leaders of the West wouldn't be able to withstand the pressure of the public demanding to go to war.
And here we are...
Responsible people are calling for the West to "do more." The big push right now is for weapons (fighter jets), but the call for soldiers will be soon coming because air power never won a war.
Biden is right for making it clear that NATO/the US will not fight for Ukraine. This has been clear from the very beginning: Ukraine was on its own and was going to suffer horribly. Terrible as that is, it is the price for preventing the war from taking over all of Europe.
The best one could have hoped for was that Putin took Ukraine and stopped there, not moving on the Baltics/Poland. Now, there's an outside chance that Ukraine might actually "win" (Not having the whole country become part of Russia). Biden is right for trying to tamp down the drumbeats of war.
I do not trust the American people; they have the attention span of a gnat. RIGHT NOW they support military action. RIGHT NOW they feel for the Ukrainians. But I've got $100 that says if the US puts boots inside Ukraine, and those bodies start coming home, at least half the country will be screaming about how terrible Biden was for sending those boys to die.
There have been as many, or more, casualties in two weeks - on both sides - than the US suffered in 20 years of combat IN TWO THEATERS (Iraq, Afghanistan). People seem to forget how bloody the wars in Europe have been for the last 400 years; the last century being the deadliest and most destructive.
Sending US troops means LOT OF US deaths, and Americans are not going to tolerate that. At all. They will revert back to their isolationist selves.
But at that point, it will be far too late and the world will be committed to a full-scale war in Europe.
The problem is that while the US is the pre-dominant power in NATO, we do not have the level of control necessary to force the other members into things that lie outside the scope of the alliance (like defending a non-NATO country). We would actually have to persuade them to do so or take overtly coercive action, which would likely backfire in the mid to long term.
I do not think that Putin, et al are too worried about NATO acting outside of their treaty obligations and moving to defend a non-NATO country. I think it is naive to think that a statement by any US President to the contrary would have a deterring effect.
And there isn't the political will in the US at this time to act unilaterally--especially not with whay amounts to a strong pro-Russia/Putin faction in the GoP.
Biden continues to do the best he can with what he has got.
I wonder if the administration's signal it is doing everything possible to avoid wider conflict is aimed at China. China now represents probably Putin's only chance to get what he wants out of this thing. Without their help and oil purchases, he faces an extended quagmire that threatens to cripple his military for the foreseeable future. If China feels threatened by a victory for the West in this war, they may jump the wrong way and the US will end up facing an axis of authoritarianism instead of two countries with fairly disparate interests. China is well known for its concern for sovereign authority - by showing that the US is sticking to the letter of UN and NATO rules Biden may be trying to reassure China that it can choose our side or at least stay out of it without ending up with a threat to their territory.
All the talk of Putin being told he free to take any non-NATO county is premature. The Russian military has not been able to defeat a hugely outnumbered Ukrainian defense. It is obvious that Putin will not be able to take all of Ukraine, much less hold it. At this point the Russian army collapsing is as likely an outcome as some form of victory, if not more so.
Also, does anyone else find it strange that the Russians are recruiting mercenaries? This tells me that Putin does not have confidence in his own troops.
On escalation, Putin is already bombing and shelling cities with 'dumb' weapons. The only escalation Putin can engage in now is chemical or nuclear weapons. Biden was asked about the use of chemical weapons last week, in what was likely an administration planted question. In response he simply said (paraphrasing here) there would be a strong response. So Putin is not being given carte blanche here.
Does anybody believe we are going to put troops on the ground - or fight Russia in any capacity - over Moldova, or Ukraine? Can anybody point to an instance post-Cold War (or pre-Cold War), where we stopped, using military force, a Russian invasion of a country?
Of course you can't. Biden knows this. Putin knows this. Everyone knows this. Putin wants to try to recreate the USSR with non-NATO territories, he is welcome to try. The silver lining for us is the present war in Ukraine doesn't appear to be going well for him.
I don't think there's a single person not on Kremlin payroll who thinks Putin should have invaded Ukraine, but I would hope to God we have enough level-headed people in leadership positions to understand the consequences of a NATO vs. Russia war.
I no longer take solace in the polls. Just because it's fashionable now to stand for Ukraine and against Putin, it wasn't that long ago that 90% of the Republican electorate backed trump's anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin stances just because he's their dear leader, they believe everything he says, he never lies, and Ukraine wouldn't go along with his extortion attempts. Remember "I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat"? Any Republican who thought different stayed silent so as to not offend the orange one or his cult followers. So who's to say that these people don't change their minds yet again the minute he tells them to?
by doing this "He did not personalize the conflict. He did not turn himself into the star of the show " Biden acts as the un-tyrant, and was smeared by the GOP as "weak". They cannot see straight anymore.
In defense of Biden, there is no mention here of our (US, NATO, other nations') sanctions, which amount to economic warfare and are really hurting the Russian economy and their ability to sustain Putin's war. Not enough, not what my anger tells me we should be doing militarily, but still an effective, deliberate and powerful response, with more to come if, probably when, Russian escalates (e.g. ratcheting up to cut off Russia's largest bank). And, as became clear early on, working in concert with NATO and the EU has strengthened those alliances in ways that no one thought was possible before Russia's invasion. We are fighting an economic war, which has its own dynamic and momentum, and which may yet have more consequences for Russian that a few dozen jets or a no fly zone.
I think Biden is pretty much getting things right so far. As to this messaging thing, maybe or maybe not. I know enough to know what I don't know. And that is what's going on behind the scenes out of the range of the public's eyes and ears. Wouldn't be the first time a president or his administration took a public position on something knowing full well they may have to abandon it. And whatever message Biden may be sending to Russia in public, there may be a very different one being sent in other ways behind the scenes. Or there may not. But the public didn't know what was done behind closed doors to resolve the Cuban missile crisis until long after the fact. Of course, this is not that in some very significant ways, but still...
What I would like to hear Biden talking about in public is the fact that there will be a cost for all of this that we, as a country, must bear whether we like it or not. We can argue all we want about whose fault it is that we find ourselves in the position that we do. There's plenty of blame to go around. But that won't accomplish anything other than making some egos feel better. We are where we are at the moment, and we must pay the price, whatever it turns out to be. Or the price to be paid later will be much steeper.
At the risk of sounding like an endless echo...Freedom isn't free. And another payment on the account is now due. Actually, it is past due. And as the leader of this country, Biden should be making that clear to all of those here - myself included - who have taken the possession of this precious and invaluable treasure for granted for far too long. As the tag line from a very old advertising campaign said..."You can pay me now, or you can pay me later", the inference being that paying later would be much more expensive.
We need to be prepared to pay up. And Biden should be making that point at every opportunity.
I live in Germany, two hours airplane flight time from the Ukraine, much less for Russian based rockets. And I live in Frankfurt, a definite top candidate on Putin's targeting list as the financial hub of continental Europe, and a transit and data-center one, too. That said, I wish Biden would tell Putin in no uncertain terms that HAZMAT weapons are absolute game-changers in terms of his "no fight" rhetoric.
Make Putin fight it out with conventional weapons and his inadequate army while providing the Ukrainians more and better weapons, such as missiles capable of hitting higher altitude targets than they currently possess, and help them get the MIG-29s that Poland want them to have. That will increase the short-term destruction in Ukraine, kill and wound innumerable people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it will also lead to more and more Russian unrest at every level of Russian society.
I say "short-term" because there will be a BUBB Plan (Build Ukraine...) financed by all the frozen assets of Russia and the oligarchs, not to mention the 459-foot, half a billion dollar yacht currently "unclaimed" in the Mediterranean.
While I totally see (or even agree with) Alex Vindman and others’ point, bluffing a “non-existing” NATO resolve can also be dangerous. I can imagine how hard it had been for the Biden admin to pull the European allies after the Trump administration. It would be so much harder to get NATO members on the same page knowing today’s GOP leadership has no respect for NATO.
It's interesting to see all the experts we have about conducting wars, aside from Tucker (our little dumber boy) and the Dumper (no one was stronger against Russia)! They all make it sound so simple. Those that want the ancient MIGS given to Ukraine need to explain where they would be housed, how to keep them safe, who would maintain them and find enough folks to fly them. But the biggest concern would be are they air worthy or any match for the current Russian fleet. If what I read most airfields in the country have been destroyed? I grew up during WWII which most of the experts have no clue, we don't need another one, especially with all the wackos in the world that already have atomic bombs like the little fat kid and Dumpers buddy in North Korea who is just looking for a chance.
far be it from me to criticize Vindman, Sipher et al but can there be a "good" reason for the administration to lay down there position clearly? I have a hard time believing that this debate is not occurring inside the administration. Then again in 2014 with Crimea the West was surprised and the response was inadequate so obviously there has been a re-evaluation. I take no position but would like to better understand the different positions. Personally I'd love nothing more than to swat Putin like the bug that he is but Tom Nichols has convinced me that we should have more sang-froid in these situations.
I keep hearing if Ukraine falls to Putin "the Baltics will be next". If Putin had pulled off a Blitzkrieg like Hitler did in Poland and France that idea might be a realistic worry. But even IF Putin wins this war the cost will be great enough that he isn't going to whip around and go into direct conflict with NATO. Even after a substantial pause to reconstitute his depleted material and human resources.
I don't think anyone in the West is really expecting a definitive Ukrainian victory. Everyone knows that barring a total rout of one side or the other there will be a negotiated settlement of some sort and the West wants to give Ukraine the strongest possible hand in those eventual negotiations. But, no, Ukraine is not worth a wider armed conflict in Europe... so threatening to have one isn't really helpful.
American enthusiasm for Ukraine, like American enthusiasm for everything that captures their attention, is a mile wide and an inch deep. Anything that would require Americans to suffer any involuntary sacrifice, however slight, will be used as a cudgel by Republicans to defeat Biden. Just look at the demagoguery around gas prices.
Watching the death of a country is rather painful and to do no more for me is unacceptable.
In most land wars, supply lines are what stopped the aggressors every time. If it was possible, I think that nighttime bombing raids on rail and hwys leading from the russian and Belarussian side into Ukraine would create an enormous problem for the aggressors. I see supply lines being a problem soon enough anyways but haste would help at his time.
Why should we escalate and risk ww3 when we have won. NATO is united, Russia much vaunted army has turned out to be corrupt and terrible. All we have to do is squeeze the life out of Russia with sanctions and military aid to Ukraine. The Body bags coming home to the mothers of Russian soldiers will eventually end this war.