Ronald E Powaski. USA Today. Volume 146, Issue 2868, September 2017.
In March 2014, Russian troops occupied Ukrainian Crimea and fomented an uprising in the Donbas region by ethnic Russian separatists. In spite of two ceasefire agreements that were negotiated in Minsk, Belarus, fighting has continued. More than 10,000 people have been killed in the Donbas fighting, devastating that region and severely straining the Ukrainian economy.
Using the same rationale that Adolf Hitler employed in occupying Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland in 1938—the alleged need to protect that country’s German minority-Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin has claimed the right to intervene in Ukraine and neighboring countries to protect ethnic Russians. He also argues that a Ukraine tied to the West, either economically or militarily, would threaten Russia’s security. The fact is, however, a free and democratic Ukraine tied to the West would not threaten Russia’s security, but it would threaten Putin’s repressive autocracy by offering a model to the Russian people for overthrowing a corrupt oligarchy.
Shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pres. Viktor Yushchenko was overthrown by a popular uprising in Kiev, the nation’s capital. The revolt was prompted not only by the massive corruption of Yushchenko and his government but, more importantly, because he had rejected closer Ukrainian ties with the European Union in favor of a tighter relationship with Russia. Putin, who obviously does not want to share Yushchenko’s fate, will continue to do all in his power—and as much as the West permits—to prevent Ukraine from becoming a viable state, and thereby halt the “virus” of democracy from spreading to Russia.
Putin not only is a threat to a free and democratic Ukraine, he is a danger to the European international order. By invading and annexing the Crimea and fomenting the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia has violated the Charter of the United Nations and the Final Act of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which requires member states, including Russia, to respect one another’s independence and territorial integrity. Moreover, Putin has violated a 1994 agreement by which Russia again promised to respect Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. In exchange, Ukraine agreed to turn over to Russia the nuclear weapons that had been deployed on its territory when Ukraine still was a part of the Soviet Union.
Putin not only has torn up the treaties that uphold the international order, he is challenging the viability of NATO, whose primary responsibility is the defense of its member nations, including the U.S. Although Ukraine is not a member of NATO, if Putin gets away with his aggression there, what will prevent him from applying the same “salami-slicing” strategy against other East European countries that are members of the alliance, some of which also have large ethnic-Russian minorities? A failure by the U.S. and its allies to defend these states would mean the end of NATO, for what other members of the alliance would feel secure if any member were abandoned?
Finally, Putin is a threat to Western democracy itself. He has befriended authoritarian leaders in Eastern Europe, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Polish Pres. Andrzej Duda, and has enhanced the prospects would-be antidemocratic leaders elsewhere in Europe with cyberattacks on their opponents. Putin even has intruded into the U.S. electoral process.
In short, to save his own oppressive regime in Russia, Putin has revived the Cold War with the West, a conflict that has been going on, with but relatively brief interruptions, since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
So, how do we deal with the challenge posed by Putin’s Russia? The U.S. and its NATO partners should dust off the old Cold War strategy that was used successfully to contain the aggressive expansion of the Soviet Union for more than four decades. That strategy was conceived in 1947 by George Kennan, then the State Department’s chief policy planner.
In a so-called Long Telegram, Kennan argued that, if the U.S. took the lead in patiently containing Soviet expansion, eventually the Soviet Union would succumb to its internal contradictions—namely a repressive political structure, an inefficient economic system, and a forced union of Russian-dominated, nonethnic Russian nationalities. These happen to be some of the chief characteristics of Russia today.
Kennan recommended that the U.S. deploy sufficient military forces in Western Europe to deter Soviet aggression against the nations of that region. NATO was created in 1949 and, in the following year, Pres. Harry Truman returned to Europe the first U.S. combat divisions, initially two in number, but later expanded to four.
Truman also authorized, and Congress agreed to fund, the Marshall Plan in 1947, which provided billions of dollars of economic assistance to the war-torn economies of Western Europe. As a consequence of Truman’s initiatives, which were supported by Congress and a majority of the American people, the nations of Western Europe were provided the economic and military security that enabled them to develop into the relatively prosperous and free democratic countries they are today.
However, Kennan also insisted that the U.S. maintain diplomatic contacts with the Soviet Union, not only to reduce the chances of a superpower conflict, but to deal with issues of mutual interest, such as arms control. As a consequence, the Cold War never devolved into a hot war, and the world escaped a nuclear holocaust.
NATO, which had lost its sense of mission after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, has been revitalized by Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, but the alliance’s military capabilities are woefully inadequate to meet the Russian threat. A recent study by RAND, a Washington-based think tank, estimates that, if Russian tanks and troops rolled into the Baltic states tomorrow, outgunned and outnumbered NATO forces would be overrun in under three days.
However, in the wake of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, NATO has taken some steps to beef up its defenses in Eastern Europe. For instance, at the July 2016 NATO summit meeting in Warsaw, the alliance’s members agreed to station four battalions of 800 to 1,200 multinational troops each in Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, and Bulgaria. The U.S. brigade entered Poland in December, much to the relief of the Polish government and people, but a lot more needs to be done to deter farther Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. The RAND study recommends the deployment to the region of multiple brigades of heavy mechanized forces. Such a forward presence would act as an instrument of “deterrence by denial,” that is, one that is designed to prevent an attack rather than repulse it.
However, most NATO members have not fulfilled their pledge to increase their defense spending to at least the agreed upon level of two percent of their gross national products. They also are distracted by other problems, including the coming British withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit), the presence of millions of Middle Eastern refugees, and the rise of antidemocratic and pro-Putin parties in Western Europe.
In addition, some of the allies are reluctant to pay for a larger military presence in Eastern Europe because they fear that it might provoke further Russian aggression rather than deter it, but this ignores the fact that the failure to deal with the possibility of Russian aggression against NATO’s East European members now would be much less expensive—and dangerous—than having to respond to Russian aggression after it occurs. Persuading the European allies to realize this fact has been the task of U.S. presidents for decades, one that Pres. Donald Trump also has assumed.
However, at the NATO and G7 summits in May, Trump refused to support the heart of NATO’s Article 5—which commits every member nation to the alliance’s doctrine of collective defense—but the President’s chief national security advisors (especially, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster) persuaded him to reaffirm that commitment two weeks later. Trump also did so in a stirring speech in Poland leading up to the G20 Summit in July.
The U.S. is better off, both militarily and economically, with a friendly and democratic Europe than one aligned with, or intimidated by, a hostile, autocratic Russia. The U.S. fought two major wars in the 20th century to prevent Europe from falling under the control of a militaristic Germany, and then confronted the Soviet Union during the Cold War to prevent Western Europe from succumbing to Russian communism. Those extremely costly efforts in lives and treasure would have been in vein if the U.S. walks away from Europe now.
Moreover, the U.S. cannot effectively perform its role of global policeman without al lies. NATO nations—particularly Great Britain and France—have assisted the U.S. in military operations in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Along with Germany, they have taken the lead in resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine by imposing economic sanctions on Russia and providing the Ukrainians with economic and military assistance.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and then-Pres. Francois Hollande of France, representing the European Community, took the lead in negotiating two would-be peace agreements between Russia and Ukraine. In the most recent agreement, “Minsk n,” Russia agreed to pull back its forces from eastern Ukraine, but only after Ukraine amended its constitution to decentralize its national government, thereby granting Donbas a degree of autonomy.
That agreement has not been implemented, in part because a minority faction in the Ukrainian parliament, which is strong enough to block any agreement, fears that Minsk n, by granting the Donbas provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk autonomy, would give Putin a legal way of continuing Russia’s intrusion in Ukraine’s affairs—nor does Minsk H make any mention of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
The question of Crimea
Any long-term solution to the crisis, however, must resolve the status of Crimea, which the two Minsk agreements do not address, but it virtually is impossible to conceive how Russia could be persuaded to return Crimea to Ukraine, not only because of its strategic importance to Russia, but because the peninsula is inhabited by a large ethnic Russian majority. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how Ukraine could accept the loss of Crimea, not only because it was acquired by Russia through aggression, but because a vocal Tartar minority in the Crimea prefer to live under Ukrainian—rather than Russian—rule.
Perhaps Ukraine eventually could accept the transfer of Crimea to Russia in return for significant Russian concessions, such as Russia forgiving Ukraine’s debt and giving it long-term access to reasonably priced Russian natural gas. In return, Russia would withdraw its troops from Donbas and recognize that the region will remain a part of Ukraine, albeit with a degree of autonomy. As a complement to such an agreement, the NATO countries would refrain from granting Ukraine membership in the alliance as long as Russia upholds its end of the bargain to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Of course, any solution along these lines will hinge on the willingness of Putin—as well as the Ukrainians—to compromise, which may not be possible. Considering that Putin believes he must continue his aggression against Ukraine in order to distract the Russian people from the economic plight they now face, change on his part appears most unlikely. As a result, the present stalemate is likely to persist as long as Putin stays in power, much as the impasse between Russia and Georgia continues, with Russian troops still deployed in the Georgian province of South Ostia, eight years after they occupied it.
Any diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian conflict is unlikely without a Ukraine that is strong enough to defend itself. To that end, the West has given Ukraine some modest economic assistance. In March 2015, the International Monetary Fund approved a $17,500,000,000 loan to Ukraine, disbursed over four years, which will help to keep the Ukrainian economy afloat, but much more is needed if Ukraine is to become sufficiently strong to stand on its own two feet economically. By doing so, it could serve as a model to the Russian people of what is possible by aligning with the democratic West.
However, the IMF has made it clear that, to receive additional economic aid, the Ukrainian government will have to do much more than it already has to clean up its own corruption. The European Union, for its part, mandated that Ukrainian politicians publicly declare their personal financial condition before Ukraine receives previously approved financial assistance. More than 50,000 officials have complied. The resulting revelations of wealth held by the political elites are a mere $240 per month.
The West also has provided the Ukrainians with some aid, including blankets, body armor, and other nonlethal assistance, but then-Pres. Barack Obama, as well as key NATO leaders, including Merkel, refused to send “lethal” weapons to the Ukrainians for fear of provoking Putin to escalate Russian military involvement in the war. The Russian president obviously has not been fearful of provoking the West. He has provided the Ukrainian rebels with heavy weapons and sent some 9,000 Russian troops into eastern Ukraine to support them.
As a consequence of the very limited support Ukraine has received from the West, its ability to survive as a viable, independent, and democratic country will depend primarily on the efforts of the Ukrainians themselves. This will require the Ukrainians, writes Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University, to quit concentrating on the loss of Crimea and Donbas, and instead tackle the difficult but long overdue political and economic restructuring that is needed to make Ukraine’s Westernization irreversible and its vulnerabilities to Russian aggression minimal. If these necessary changes are not made, Motyl warns, Ukraine, which celebrated its 25th year of independence this past year, “may not live to see its 50th anniversary as a sovereign state.”