It is rare for a head of state, especially one fighting a hot war against, using Mitt Romney’s phrase, “America’s number one geopolitical enemy,” to be invited to address a joint session of Congress. Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko delivered an urgent plea on Thursday for American military support against Russia’s invasion. The passionate speech elicited standing ovations from both sides of the aisle.
For the press, however, it was as if Petroshenko’s speech never took place despite his memorable jab at President Obama: “Blankets do not win wars.” The New York Times relegated Poroshenko to A12. No mention on the Drudge Report, and the Wall Street Journal placed its Ukraine Gets More Aid, No Weapons on A6 and derided Obama’s fear that “real weapons (for Ukraine) will provoke Vladimir Putin, as if he needs an excuse for invasion” on itseditorial page. BTW: The Russian invasion of late August was conveniently dismissed in White-House speak as an “incursion.”
The slaughter of more than 3,000 civilians and Ukrainian soldiers and a growing toll of Russian mercenaries and conscripts in southeast Ukraine can hardly compete with ISIS’s (or ISIL’s, if you like) grisly You-Tube beheadings, but the potential risk posed by Russia’s War of Southeast Ukraine exceeds those emanating from the ISIS threat.
If you do not believe me, hear me out.
A retired general, a former ambassador, and an intelligence expert testified before the House shortly before Poroshenko’s speech about how to defeat the 30,000 strong (and growing) ISIS forces. We must keep our options open and not “tell our adversaries in advance any timeline … or which of our capabilities we will not employ.” Defeating ISIS will be a tough slog. ISIS’s recruitment of European and American sympathizers complicates the war on terror, which we must regrettably fight for decades to come, ISIS or no ISIS.
The same military experts would be hard pressed to explain how the hobbled Ukrainian army is to defeat the Russian-backed separatists and regular Russian troops without military assistance, especially now that Russia has shown it will invade with regular forces. Sanctions are indeed hurting, but they are a price Putin is willing to pay. If anything, Europe and the United States seem to be rooting for Ukraine’s military weakness. Angela Merkel rejected military aid lest Ukraine believe a military solution is possible. Barack Obama expressed fear that military aid might involve the U.S. more deeply in the conflict. Neither Merkel nor Obama seem to understand that you gain a good peace by winning not by losing.
Whereas Poroshenko’s “blankets do not win wars” line gained the most attention, his chilling parallel with the Cuban Missile Crisis largely escaped notice:
“Without any doubt, the international system of checks and balances has been effectively ruined (by Russia’s actions). The world has been plunged into the worst security crisis since the U.S. (Cuban missile) standoff of 1962.”
By this stark comparison, Poroshenko made clear that Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions, his clear intent to restore a Russian empire, and hishatred of NATO provide the tinderbox for reigniting events similar to October 1962 when U.S. and Soviet forces faced each other “eyeball-to-eyeball.” We could be weeks or months away from another such standoff with Russia, not in the Caribbean, but in a small state on the Baltic Sea.
Are the world’s two largest nuclear powers moving towards a missile-crisis-like confrontation because Russia is achieving or failing to achieve its objectives in Southeast Ukraine? Are Europe and the U.S. really hoping that a peace deal entered into by a weakened Ukraine will end Putin’s empire-restoration dream? Or would only effective Ukrainian resistance that denies Putin hisNovorossiya head off such a catastrophe? Merkel and Obama regrettably seem to be pushing Ukraine towards an unfavorable peace that gives Putin a permanently destabilized Ukraine blocked from the European Union and NATO. And the only price he has had to pay is sanctions, which he expects to be lifted after a decent time has passed.
Noted Russian commentator and Putin critic, Andrei Piontovsky, argues that if “Putin succeeds and completely subordinates to himself the policy of Ukraine and blocks its European choice, then he will continue this campaign. And the next target will be the Baltics.” (See Paul Goble’s summary). If he loses in Ukraine, he cannot move to his next target and his regime may be threatened. We are not talking small ball here.
At this juncture, it appears that Putin’s late August invasion ended Ukraine’s successful Anti-Terrorist Operation and devastated Ukraine’s forces in the southeast. Ukraine’s army and national guard have pulled back, hoping to regroup. Putin is close to his objective of an autonomous southeast Ukraine through which he can manipulate the whole of Ukraine, and he has yet to pay what he regards as a real price.
As far as Putin is concerned, the game is almost over. Let’s get ready for the next game.
Piontovsky argues that NATO membership of the Baltic States will not hold Putin back. Rather, it will spur him on. Ukraine-like hybrid wars against Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, “would call the (NATO) alliance as a whole into question and give Putin an enormous victory.” Putin sees the grand prize in reach: the de facto destruction of his greatest enemy, NATO – the very organization that destroyed the USSR and encircled Russia. The risks of such an adventure would be high, but the rewards would be astronomical.
But wait, skeptics argue: Surely Putin understands that an attack on any Baltic state would trigger the Article 5 mutual defense clause of NATO. Did not the President of the United States pledge in Tallinn on September 3 that “Article Five is crystal clear? An attack on one is an attack on all… So if, in such a moment, you ever ask again, who will come to help, you’ll know the answer: the NATO alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America, right here, present, now.”
Putin would not dare, such skeptics say. Obama has laid down a red line, andthis time he means it.
Not so fast! We thought Putin would not dare to invade and annex Crimea and over turn the postwar order, but he did. We thought he would not use regular troops in Southeastern Ukraine but he did. And in all cases, he got away with it largely unscathed. Putin would respond with: I have been there and done that in Ukraine. I can get away with it in the Baltics. I know how to do it. There is truth to what he says. Russia has six years of experience with fighting hybrid wars, none of which have failed. One was against Georgia, a member of NATO’s Partnership For Peace. Putin annexed parts of Georgia and NATO did little or nothing.
As writes Thomas Lifson in American Thinker: “We are in very dangerous territory now. Russia will be encouraged to escalate its provocations, having seen that Obama’s threats are empty. Putin has already mentioned that Russia is a nuclear power, a not so veiled threat to start World War 3 should his future aggression meet a response. The risk is that having shown he can be bullied, Obama will respond too late …. thereby setting off Armageddon.”
We can already describe Putin’s game plan for destroying NATO via the new type of war he perfected in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. It could begin in any of the three Baltic states. Russia has already launched a provocation in Estonia, but this is likely a diversion. Latvia, a country of two million, one quarter Russian, 150,000 of which are not Latvian citizens, is the likely first target.
The first step of Russia’s hybrid war has purportedly already been taken in the form of secret surveys of Latvia’s ethnic Russians. Putin’s propaganda arm, RT, is already hammering Latvia’s discrimination against its Russians. As preparations against Latvia accelerate, RT and Russian TV channels, which are the main source of information for most of Latvia’s Russians, will increasingly feature lurid tales of murder, torture and rape of Latvian Russians by nationalists and neo-Nazis supported by Latvia’s “criminal” state. Agents of Russian military intelligence (GRU) and FSB (the KGB successor) will infiltrate Latvia along with mercenaries, armed with money and lists of likely sympathizers. Riots will be organized in smaller eastern cities with high proportions of Russians. The protester/occupiers will sport signs demanding equal rights and autonomous status. Armed crowds will overwhelm local police and will occupy municipal buildings. The occupiers will then proclaim a Peoples’ Republic of Free Latvia. They will surround their occupied buildings with barbed wire, burning tires, and AK47 toting thugs.
As this is going on, the Russian army will begin “long scheduled” maneuvers on the Latvian border. The Kremlin may admit that Russian “volunteers” have crossed the border, but the Russian people are free to help their Russian brothers abroad, and the Kremlin has nothing to do with this. Russia only wants peace on its borders. The Latvian government will deliver outraged protests to the Kremlin which will claim its innocence, while its troops make feints at the border.
Joint Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian forces will make their way to remove the new self-declared “mayors” and “governors” from the occupied buildings and towns. Shooting breaks out between Baltic forces and the self-proclaimed n Peoples Republic of Free Latvia. Casualties mount. Latvia declares that it has been attacked by Russia and invokes NATO’s Article 5. Russia counters by protesting its innocence and concern that a civil war has broken out on its borders. It could be compelled, however, to intervene if fellow Russians are at risk, and Russia will take no weapons off the table.
Russia and the United States again stand eyeball-to-eyeball. We do not know, to use Dean Rusk’s term, which side will blink. What will NATO and the United States do at this moment? The answer is far from clear.
Airwaves, the press, and the blogosphere will already have been saturated with dire warnings of World War III. Putin is already on record that he can win a war with NATO through the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Putin apologists in Germany, France, Italy and the United States will ask: Are we really prepared to die for Latvia or Estonia? At this point, Putin will volunteer himself as a peace maker. Surely he can work something out. The Latvian commotion is nothing more than a Scotland referendum gone bad. Why should we turn the world upside down just because of a civil war in a small insignificant country that few can locate on the map.
At an emergency NATO meeting in Brussels, the Baltic States make their plea for Article 5. After a considerable tug of war, NATO decides to wait and see. Perhaps everything will turn out just fine. More mercenaries and equipment cross the border to defend the Peoples Republic of Free Latvia. Latvia sinks into a frozen conflict, whose end is not in sight. Russian troops remain poised on the border.
Putin has called NATO’s bluff, and the world has seen that NATO is an empty shell. There is no more NATO. Putin is king of the roost. It is he who decides who will be spared and who will punished.
ISIS and Putin teach the same lesson. If the West wants to win, it must resist before it is too late. ISIS would have been easy to defeat when it was a ragtag force of several thousand. Putin would have been easy to stop if the West had moved in destroyers, carriers, and NATO troops to Poland or Kiev at the first move to annex Crimea. Putin’s unconventional attack on southeast Ukraine could have been halted by massive sanctions before misdeeds (not after), by brushing aside Russia’s protestations of innocence with straight talk, and by providing Ukraine with real military assistance from the get-go. It is already too late to do what we should have done, but consider the scenario that I have described above. Very soon, it could really be too late.
Ukraine is fighting on its own with little or no help from its feckless allies. Those who stand next in the line of victims understand the urgency of the situation. Others do not, if Obama’s remark at a recent fund raiser is accurate: “Geopolitically…what happens in Ukraine does not pose a threat to us.” That remark may go down in history along with Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” statement.
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