The One Ukraine Option That the Public Won't Abide

[Celerity]

Vladimir Putin’s potential invasion has exposed a rare point of agreement between Democrats and Republicans.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/02/russia-ukraine-war-biden/621422/




For decades, American presidents of both parties have relied on a go-to line when confronting foreign belligerents who won’t bend to their demands, a single sentence that serves as both euphemism and threat. How far would the U.S. go to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? “All options are on the table,” President Barack Obama said in 2013, repeating verbatim a reply that his Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, had given in 2006. What about North Korea? “All options are on the table,” President Donald Trump, a man not known for adhering to rhetorical norms, said during his first year in office.

Those six words are diplomatic code for war, whether by military strikes or the deployment of ground forces. But they have yet to escape President Joe Biden’s lips, even as he has warned that a Russian assault on Ukraine would “change the world” and represent the largest invasion since World War II. The Biden administration has stepped up weapons shipments to Ukraine, prepared 8,500 U.S. troops to deploy to protect NATO allies in Eastern Europe, and threatened “severe” sanctions on Russia in response to an invasion. Biden himself has warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin would face “enormous consequences.” But the president has effectively ruled out a military offensive in which American forces would fight directly in Ukraine’s defense. “We have no intention of putting American forces in Ukraine,” Biden told reporters last week.

What’s striking is that after years of deep political divisions over foreign policy and the United States’ role in the world, hardly anyone with power in Washington has suggested otherwise. Putin’s potential invasion of Ukraine has instead exposed a rare point of consensus between Democrats and Republicans: The U.S. isn’t going to war to stop him.

“There are some things we have to be clear about, and one of them is that the American people, frankly, will not support sending hundreds of thousands of Americans to Ukraine,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee who visited Ukraine earlier this month, told me. “My constituents are not going to support an Afghanistan- or Iraq-level deployment of forces, and we have to be honest about that.” Another Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, told me that to threaten war with a nuclear power like Russia would be “a huge mistake.”

snip

[tirebiter]

1. I'd love to play poker with the author

He’s got an obvious tell. JFK never said we’d go to war over the Missile crisis. He just never said we wouldn’t then bent over backwards to “accept” a hint of accommodation.

[Celerity]

3. The author never mentioned JFK.

They did mention this:

Last week pollsters for YouGov asked Americans how the U.S. should respond if Russia invaded Ukraine, offering them options ranging from no involvement in the conflict to a military attack on Russia. The two least-popular options were those that involved the deployment of U.S. combat troops: Just 11 percent of respondents said the U.S. should send forces to fight alongside Ukrainians, and just 4 percent backed an American attack on Russia.

[tirebiter]

4. The Atlantic is going getting wierd about this. That scenario is not going to happen

Russia, essentially, is already attacking. Putin is playing the Jack Palance role saying, “pick up the gun.” Behind the scene negotiations are where anything important will happen.

[Celerity]

5. There is no way to predict anything with such certainty as an absolute statement like that.

[PortTack]

6. Yes they are ..they are already engaging the Ukrainians in the east at Donetsk

[harumph]

2. we shall see.

[Klaralven]

7. It won't actually come to war - the main objective is to strengthen NATO

The Ukraine crisis is primarily useful in strengthening and maintaining the primacy of NATO as the supranational governing body for the North American / Western European sphere and as the primary organization for projecting US sole superpower influence.

After Brexit, the EU started making noises about EU foreign policy and an EU defense capability. The UK was no longer inside the EU and no longer able to throttle such initiatives in the crib. Furthermore, Germany was proceeding with Nordstream 2 and other countries were doing more business with Russia and China. The gap between EU and non-EU members of NATO was growing, especially since the EU members feel used by NATO in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, NATO member Turkey was also being recalcitrant about buying Russian antiaircraft missile systems and gaining influence as a regional power, for example, by supporting Azerbaijan in the conflict with Armenia. Turkey was also at odds with plans for Eastern Mediterranean energy projects.

The Ukraine crisis is useful in demonstrating to the EU that NATO is the superior organization in European foreign policy and that closer economic cooperation with Russia and China will not be permitted.

These objectives can be achieved without actual war.