Today saw the launching of the largest war in Europe since 1945.
We must keep track of why there was so much peace in Europe over the last 77 years. It wasn’t because the leaders of Europe were all angels, some of them (particularly Stalin) were truly terrible people.
It was because there was a mutual defense pact between all countries which were not occupied by the Soviet bloc. After World War II every large country in Europe, except Albania, Austria, Finland, Ireland Sweden, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia were part of either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. Finland and Sweden are part of the Nordic Council, and Austria was an important neutral state through which Russian natural gas flowed to Western Europe. A necessary hole in the iron curtain for trade to flow. Albania and Yugoslavia were communist. Switzerland is an important banking center for both sides. Ireland was protected because of geography.
With almost all nations having defense pacts or being critical for international trade, mutually assured destruction wasn’t madness, but actually a promise. Any attack on another country would be met with such incredible force that it kept Europe at peace until today. The United States promised aid to any ally who was attacked, and peace was kept.
The map today is very different.
dark blue: NATO and European Union or Schengen Area
light blue: Only European Union or Schengen Area
green: Only NATO
red: Collective Security Treaty Organization
As this picture shows,the only countries of any size in Euroep which are not part of a major alliance are Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, and Serbia. Of these countries, Ukraine is by far the largest and most important country which isn’t fully part of either alliance.
In a perfect world, none of this would matter. Countries would be allowed to make their own decisions, and people would be allowed to follow consent. That’s not what is happening however today as Russia invades Ukraine.
There are two ways towards peace in this world.
- Every leader of every country is an angel
- A web of alliances makes war extremely expensive where even the smallest countries are protected by defense pacts
We obviously don’t live in the first world, so we must build the second.
In the past, due to a complex web of alliances, this is not the reality.
The current Ukrainian crisis started in 2008 when Georgia was invaded by Russia. This war ended
It escalated and reached Ukraine when the War in Donbas started in 2014. The United States threatened to send arms to the Ukranians if the Russians didn’t back off, so they did. Russia didn’t want and does not want to get NATO involved. It was clear that if Russia continued their aggression that the United States would get involved deeper with the rest of NATO until Russia stopped under the Obama administration. They backed off, but were able to keep two regions in Eastern Ukraine under occupation.
Then we come to the Trump administration, and we know for a fact he was supported by the Russian government from the very beginning. Trump signed a treaty with the Taliban giving them Afghanistan, without any input from the Afghans. This sent a major shock to the credibility of the United States. It came into effect in 2021 and the Biden administration, remarkably, allowed it to come into force.
I don’t think Russia expected Biden to win, and I also don’t think they expected him to follow through with Trump’s Afghanistan treaty. Being the second war America lost in its history, Russia made a gamble with Ukraine. They were wondering if Biden was willing to lose Afghanistan, given his clear desire to focus on harmony and unity at home whether he would care about Ukraine. The Budapest Memorandum is clear that if Ukraine is attacked with nuclear weapons that they will have aid. It is vague when it comes to non-nuclear war.
Over the last few months Putin took a gamble. He started amassing troops along the border with Ukraine several months ago and there was no response from the United States or the European Union. No sanctions, no repercussions. That is when the embargo and sanctions needed to begin, to show him that we are serious at protecting our friends. Allowing Ukraine into NATO immediately in the last week of peace in Europe would have been enough to prevent the war.
But NATO did nothing.
Given that Putin was apparently allowed to station his troops on the border, and that NATO would not respond negatively to this, he saw the green light (in his eyes) towards invading Ukraine. Putin announced his deranged speech a few days ago which is when NATO could and should have responded swiftly in response to his madness.
But NATO did nothing.
So Putin attacked Ukraine in a full blown attack with the singular goal of bringing Ukraine under his full rule yesterday, a move which he had been building up to for months. In response to this several countries have started sanctions against Russia.
But I fear it might be too late for sanctions and economic repercussions.
Putin is a megalomaniac, not unlike Hitler (who my family suffered under). He responds to force alone. The threat of taking him out of power through would have been enough to stop him, it worked in 2014.
Fast forward to 2022. The world is a different place. Obama is no longer in office and Biden is now President. Biden is one of only two Presidents to ever lose a war while sitting in office (the other is Ford) and Putin saw this as his opening to attack. Biden talks about unity more than anything else, and attacked progressives when members of his caucus were attacking his bills. This misfiring and losing of major bills and a war gave Putin the signal.
In the past, it has been the United States which has been the major player in NATO. The United States comprises the largest military in NATO by far, making us its de facto leader. Because of this in the past when Putin has played war games it has been the mere threat of repercussions from the United States which has kept him in line. These threats are followed by treaties and he was unable to achieve his goals. We saw this in 2008 with the Georgian war and 2014 with the War in Donbass.
Russian observers at this point understand Putin. We understand he is an anti-democratic tyrant and he only responds to force. He sees treaties without a military as just paper, and treats them as such.
Biden’s career focus on “unity”, losing of the war in Afghanistan, and losing voting rights and BBB with a congress which has a de jure Democratic Trifecta has given Putin the green light. He sees Biden as a weak old man who can’t get even his own party to stand in line and attacks the wrong members. If he so misunderstands his own party that he fails on what he claims to be his most important bills, then in Putin’s mind, why should he expect Biden to be a strong leader of NATO? Especially when Biden has clearly shown that he doesn’t care about immigrant children in prisons, or appropriately resolving the conflict in Afghanistan. The Chancellor of Germany is new to the job, he only came into office in December. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is anti-European to the core. Canada is suffering from anti-vaccine hysteria from truckers who are listening to Fox News (which pretty clearly is tied to Russia).
This is why Putin started massing troops on the border of Ukraine. He was testing us to see if Biden, Scholz, Johnson, Trudeau, or Macron would act strongly in response. He got no response. Now that he is invading we are threatening him with sanctions, but it is probably too late.
I don’t want war. I want to live in a world where people are free to live their lives peacefully, and that can only exist if every leader is an angel or dictators like Putin are held back because their targets have powerful networks of allies.
But we clearly don’t live in either world. We live in the world where Putin is able to attack a country and the countries which have been saying they are friends of Ukraine for years don’t have an immediate plan ready to go immediately.
If we were to attack Russia, and they went nuclear, than we have anti-nuclear missile defense systems which will spring into action. If those systems do not work, than that means the Iron Dome over Israel won’t work, and South Korea is vulnerable from nuclear attack from North Korea (if they get a nuclear bomb which actually works) or just from more conventional weapons. I highly doubt that with over $10 trillion spent on military by the United States since the Georgian War of 2008 that we haven’t built sufficient anti-nuclear bomb systems in Eastern Europe to protect us if Putin launched an attack. This was an initiative of the Bush administration. If we don’t trust those systems, than we just gave the green light to North Korea and Iran to attack South Korea and Israel. I bet those systems work.
If we don’t protect Ukraine from Russia, we just showed that the Bucharest Memorandum is worthless, and American treaties in general are worthless too. It means our word is not worth the paper it is written on, and it is the green light for any of our adversaries to attack allies like Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan, because America doesn’t feel like defending our allies. That is a dangerous world where small democracies can be conquered by large authoritarian states.
This is the world we live in. Tomorrow NATO will meet and discuss the situation. The following criteria must be met:
- Our anti-missile systems must be effective, otherwise Israel and South Korea are screwed.
- We must make sure that our treaties are worth more than the paper they are printed on.
- Putin needs to step down and back off of Ukraine or we will respond and protect our friends.
- Ukraine and Georgia need immediate NATO membership.
Simply giving Georgia and Ukraine NATO membership tomorrow will probably end the war in an instant. Putin knows he will lose that war.
Giving them NATO membership is peace as policy.