Gleanings & Observations
For those who have not followed the sequence of events in Ukraine.
November 13*: Ukraine says Russia has massed 100,000 troops on its border.
December 1: Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warns Russia of “severe consequences” if it invades.
December 4: Russia increases facilities to accommodate a troop deployment of 175,000.
December 7: President Biden initiates video call with President Putin. Warns of “strong economic and other measures” if Putin escalates tensions and agrees to hold more talks to discuss Putin’s “red lines.”
December 8: The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence services tells the press, “Ukraine needs to be objective at this point. There are not sufficient military resources for repelling a full-scale attack by Russia if it begins without the support of” Western forces. Marine corps veteran Robert Lee, a Russian military expert, says, “If Russia really wants to unleash its conventional capabilities, they could … devastate the Ukrainian military … within the first 30-40 minutes.”
December 8: Biden says the U.S. will not commit troops to Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion.
December 10: Putin issues ‘red lines”: Legal guarantees that NATO’s offer of membership to Ukraine and Georgia are no longer in force, an agreement that Nato would not deploy weaponry to any nation on Russia’s border, hold military drills beyond a certain distance from Russia’s border, and agree maximum approach distances for ships in the Baltic and Black seas. “It is for Ukraine to decide its own path,” responded a Nato spokesperson. Biden has agreed to discussions with Putin on his security demands.
December 12: Biden says Putin will pay “a terrible price” if Russia invades Ukraine.
December 12: Foreign ministers of the Group of 7, wealthy democracies, meeting in Liverpool, issue a statement that “use of force to change international boundaries is strictly prohibited under international law” and that Russia would face “massive consequences and severe cost in response” to an invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s takeover and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula was not mentioned.
December 13: Ukraine reports that Germany has prevented Nato from selling it all the arms it needs to defend itself should Russia invade.
December 15: Putin and Xi Jinping meet in a video summit to declare mutual support in their conflict with the West.
December 16: EU leaders warn Putin that “Any further military aggression will have massive consequences and severe cost” but, like the G-7 and Biden, did not specify any specific actions.
Russian scholar at the AEI think tank, Leon Aron, summarizes the result of all of this in an essay in The Hill. “Putin is reveling in newly acquired respect. A post-Crimea pariah state, sanctioned and boycotted, with its GDP one-fourteenth of America’s, Russia has emerged as its global rival’s equal: an important popularity and legitimacy component for all Soviet and Russian leaders. While the U.S. and its allies are at pains to guess what he will do next, Putin is enjoying the spectacle of a worried White House confused by Russia’s deliberate ambiguity and obfuscation, the brazen rhetoric, and show of force. He relishes yo-yoing President Biden from a summit to a phone or video call and more. Last week’s video conference was the fifth direct chat with Putin in Biden’s 10 months in the White House — almost certainly a frequency record in the U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russia relations.” But Aron doubts that Putin wants a war.
Bard Professor Walter Russell Mead adds, “The crisis is making Russia feel great again”.
The great William F. Buckley Jr.’s obituary of Dwight Eisenhower included this: “As it happened, Eisenhower, when he was not the laughingstock of the troublemakers, was the explicit object of their contempt. Nikita Krushchev, to whom he tendered a civility St. Francis might have shrunk from showing to a rabid dog, responded with violence and disdain.” Read Biden for Eisenhower, Vladimir Putin for Nikita Krushchev.
*dates approximate