Ukraine: The Long and the Short of it

Long war or short war? That seems to be the question. Putin apparently had fantasized a very short war, Ukraine a pushover — believing it’s not really even a country, its people really Russian.

He portrays the war as provoked by Western threats against Russia’s national security. What crap. NATO was never going to attack Russia. (Actually tried to make Russia a kind of partner in the ’90s.) Nearby nations joined NATO not to threaten Russia but because they felt threatened by Russia. A proven invader of other countries, like Georgia, and now Ukraine. Yet local letters to the editor (one by “peace activist” Tom Ellis) have ignored these realities and pushed Putin’s lie that the West somehow culpably provoked Russia. Its allies and apologists push it too; notably China’s, most of whose people believe it, fitting with demonization of America.

The war is not about Russia’s security. It’s about rebuilding its old empire — to swagger as a great power. As if killing and subjugating people makes for greatness.

Another absurdity is Republicans saying Trump would have prevented this. His cultists do ascribe him godlike powers. In fact, Trump was a total Putin patsy, shown by his treasonous Helsinki performance, endorsing Putin’s lies over the findings of our own intelligence services. That’s why Putin connived to get Trump elected. On the Ukraine aggression Trump would have given him a pass.

In a recent zoom briefing, Ukraine analyst Alexander Vindman (the guy Trump fired for his impeachment testimony) doubted the war would go more than another year and a half, Russia being unable to sustain it longer. I’m skeptical. Rather than admit defeat, Putin can keep it up — inflicting atrocities to terrorize Ukrainians, and throwing away Russian lives (at least 60,000 so far) — for a long time.

They can capture insignificant towns like Bakhmut if cost, human and otherwise, is no object. Showing the war’s pointless insanity. It’s hard to see Russia triumphing, or even consolidating control over the bits it occupies. While if Putin won’t give up, nor will Ukrainians, their resoluteness and morale impressive. The war in fact imparting the national consciousness Putin denies.

It’s said that Putin counts on our tiring of the sacrifices our Ukraine support entails. Thus, a long war. A very bad thing, not only causing horrific human suffering, but it will indeed wear upon Western resolve. So — how can we shorten the war? Not by letting Russia win, an even worse thing, and anyway impossible as long as Ukraine can keep fighting. The only way to get a shorter war — and a good outcome — is to give Ukraine whatever it takes to win, or at least to finally convince Putin he cannot win.

President Biden has done a great job organizing robust Western action. After Obama’s weak response to Putin’s earlier aggressions had convinced him he was pushing on an open door. Biden shut that door. And yet, our squeamish incrementalism — we’ll give Ukraine this kind of tank but not that kind, and not too many, and this kind of missile but not that other kind — seems fundamentally misguided. What’s our real aim? For Ukraine to win, or merely not lose? A long war or a short war?

As Biden kept saying in his State-of-the-Union speech, let’s finish the job.

Of course there’s the fear of escalation. Of getting us into a full-on war with Russia. But Putin’s seen it that way from the start, indeed selling the war to his people as really a war against America and the whole West as Russia’s enemies. And if we give Ukraine everything possible to crush the Russian invasion, what might it provoke Putin to do — that he’s not already doing?

Go nuclear, you say? That’s the big bugaboo. But it’s a bogeyman. It would not mean a “nuclear war” because nobody would respond in kind. And it’s highly doubtful Russia’s military would actually go through with a nuclear strike. Because it would be so crazy and self-harming. Endangering Russian forces as well as Ukrainian. While its battlefield impact would actually be minimal, changing nothing on the ground. And it would make Russia even more of a criminal pariah. Many nations previously unwilling to go against Russia on Ukraine would draw the line at violating the nuclear taboo.

And why are we doing (and spending) so much to help Ukraine? Why is it so important that Russia’s crime doesn’t pay? For thousands of years we lived in a world where nations freely invaded each other, devastating human lives. We thought we’d put that recurring horror finally behind us, for 75 years after WWII. Largely because America stood up to sustain a “rules-based” world order, where Rule Number One was: no invasions. Russia is testing that rule. 

“The Jungle Grows Back” as Robert Kagan’s recent book title warns. If we don’t get that evil genie back in the bottle, we’ll have a very different, more violent and hence much less prosperous world. The cost to America would be huge — vastly more than what Ukraine assistance costs us.

And that support for Ukraine, Vindman remarked, has already bought us, on the cheap, massive destruction of Russia’s military capability. Effectively precluding, for years to come, any further invasions. Surely money well spent.