Russia's Vietnam: Why an Invasion of Ukraine Would Be a Disaster for Putin [View all]

[Sherman A1]

Ukraine is about Putin's Post-Imperial Hangover, not NATO, Biden's 'Weakness,' and So On

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a disaster for Russia. It would obviously also be a disaster for the Ukrainian population, but geopolitically it is hard to see how Russian President Vladimir Putin would escape either the international isolation which would ensue, or win the war itself with manageable costs.

The media's coverage of Ukraine has missed this; it has been alarmist and hyperbolic. As in the coverage of the Afghanistan withdrawal last summer, the media again has rehearsed exhausted neoconservative tropes about U.S. 'weakness' and the 'strength' of its autocratic opponents who are apparently bent on no less than global domination. The 'blob' seems particularly dazzled by Putin's strength, tactical brilliance, and so on. Just as predictions last summer that the withdrawal from Afghanistan would bring down the world order, this year's hyperventilating will almost certainly be inaccurate.

NATO Expansion is Not to Blame

One variation on this argument is that had NATO not expanded, Putin would not be pressuring Ukraine and other states around Russia. The Russians read NATO as a threat, and its expansion east is the reason Putin supports gangsters like Alexander Lukashenko, the repressive president of Belarus, or maintains 'frozen conflicts,' as in Georgia, along Russia's perimeter. The story goes that U.S. officials made promises to the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, that the U.S. would not expand the alliance towards Russia's borders.

Whether such promises were made and how binding they were given has long been a point of contention, but this entire line of argument misses the real, geopolitical reason NATO expanded – the huge demand for it in Eastern Europe and its massive advance of Western security and values (200 million people and the economies permanently joining the West). The entire Russian argument, for decades, against NATO expansion is premised on the idea that eastern European states do not enjoy full foreign policy autonomy, that they are within a Russian sphere of influence which gives Moscow some measure of veto privilege over their foreign policy choices, such as external alignment. Accepting this line of reasoning is consonant with neither the moral (liberal) values of democratic states, nor in the national interests of the NATO membership.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/opinions/2022/01/25/russias-vietnam-why-invasion-of-ukraine-would-be-disaster-putin.html