Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth
On Christmas Day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his generals sent a strong message with the violent destruction of the Russian naval landing ship Novocherkassk while it was docked in Feodosia, Crimea. The vessel was suspected of carrying Iranian-made drones.
With the hit, Zelenskyy’s messaging was threefold: One, Kyiv has no intention of negotiating away any of its territory, regardless of how many “peace feelers” Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin may have floated in Washington and Brussels. Two, Ukraine remains intent on militarily retaking the entire Crimean Peninsula. And three, the Ukrainian army will fight on, with or without U.S. military aid and economic support.
While Ukraine continues to push back against Russia, Washington remains at war with itself. Ideally, the Christmas weekend should have brought hope to the Ukrainian people in their fight against Russian aggression. Instead, it became another lost weekend.
Putin likely is taking notice. If he has put out feelers about negotiating a ceasefire, it’s not about finding lasting peace. More likely, he wants to further divide Capitol Hill and use beltway politics to buy time so that Moscow can reset its badly mauled army and fight another day — the same tactic Putin used in Chechnya.
We know how this could end: If Washington policymakers accept Putin’s overtures for their own political expediency, the result could be a badly destabilized eastern Europe — and potentially, a fractured NATO.
Yet, as we have warned, Washington is on the cusp of awarding Putin that which he cannot militarily achieve: Russian domination of eastern and central Europe and renewed opportunity for Moscow to reassert itself in the Balkans and Caucasus.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks urging Congress to pass his national security supplement request, which includes funding to support Ukraine, on Dec. 6, 2023.
Discerning what’s at play here is not a difficult task, especially when it comes to assessing the Kremlin’s strategy. The Budapest Memorandum alone should be dispositive. In exchange for Ukraine’s giving up its nuclear arsenal, Russia was prohibited from “threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.” But Putin violated the 1994 agreement twice, with his illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015, ending Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine, proved worthless too.
Why would anyone in Washington believe this time might be different?
Moreover, how could anyone on Capitol Hill believe that Kyiv would be so naïve as to trust Putin after all that has happened over the past decade? Poland does not trust him, nor do the Baltic States.
Moscow’s unending war crimes should be proof enough — actions such as the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17 over Ukraine by Russia-backed separatists in July 2014; Russia’s crimes against humanity in Bucha, Mariupol, Bakhmut and other population centers; the kidnapping of Ukrainian children; the weaponization of winter by attacking Ukraine’s electrical grids and nuclear power plants; and the destruction of grain storage facilities in Odessa.
Peace and goodwill among mankind is a laudable goal, but Putin will never be the man who achieves it. The Russian president’s notion of peace is simply a “time out” to prepare for his next military move — and if he is left undefeated or unchecked, he eventually will reach beyond Ukraine.
Imagine if, on Dec. 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress had decided to ignore the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, and the Philippines, or that they had foolishly set aside Nazi Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s declaration of war four days later. What would the global world order have looked like for the past 81 years?
We are veering into similar territory now, with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
Putin’s war in Ukraine is one more Russian assault on the global order as we have known it since the end of World War II. Washington cannot afford any more “lost weekends” in confronting him and ensuring his defeat. Russia is weakened; what are we waiting for?
Peace is possible only if Putin loses in Ukraine. Letting his army survive to fight another day would be bad enough; rewarding him by negotiating away any Ukrainian territory should be unfathomable.
On a bipartisan basis, the U.S. Ship of State is foundering. We can’t help but recollect Stanley Kramer’s 1965 “Ship of Fools,” in which a fictional passenger ship is headed to Nazi Germany in 1933 and the characters, in their own ways, are in denial of the world order devolving around them, slipping ever closer to chaos.
Zelenskyy and his generals are under no such delusions. They know the dark world that Putin’s victory would bring about, and they are urgently considering mobilizing 500,000 more Ukrainian troops to prevent it.
“Ship of Fools” ends when one character asks moviegoers, “What has all of this to do with us?” His answer to the audience was, “Nothing.” But in our reality, the war in Ukraine has everything to do with us — and with the fate of the Western world for generations to come. Two world wars did away with the concept of isolationism.
Still, Putin seems to be betting on America saying “this has nothing to do with us after all.” If we do, then we have become a “Ship of Fools” deserving of our fate, and many more lost weekends lie ahead for us as a people. We can do the right thing and find the resolve in the new year to ensure that Ukraine wins and Putin decisively loses.
No comments:
Post a Comment