War and Rumors of War

I went for a walk a week or so ago in the Chicago neighborhood known as Ukrainian Village, thanks to all the immigrants from Ukraine who started moving there a century ago. Ukrainian immigration into the neighborhood continued well into the second half of the 20th century, and there are still enough first- and second-generation Ukrainian-Americans to give the neighborhood a strong Ukrainian flavor, even in the face of more recent waves of gentrification. There are still Ukrainian churches, with congregations of Ukrainians who speak the Ukrainian language in Ukrainian services. They fly the flag of Ukraine outside St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral, next to the flag of the United States.

 

Just to be clear, St. Volodymyr wasn't named after Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

 

I haven't said much lately about current events. So here is my (long) statement.

 

Russia was still in the middle of Putin's pre-war sabre rattling as we were heading south on our way to New Orleans a month or so ago, and at one point on the drive I asked Robin whether she thought Putin was really going to stir up this hornets nest. She was a hundred percent sure he was, and that he'd do it as soon as the Olympics wound down in Beijing.

 

I was more doubtful. My feeling was that Putin's survival has always depended on a projection of power, but that he'd been smart enough to know that projection only lasts until you throw the first punch. He's an ex-KGB guy who lives and breathes disinformation and psychological warfare. He's the guy who threatens big things and keeps the world cowed with subtle reminders that Russia still has nuclear-tipped warheads hidden in the taiga. He likes to say tough things while staring intensely at his adversaries across a table, creating the image of unstoppable force, and he'll push that image right to the limits of actual strength. The projection of power has gotten him a lot over the years, keeping Russia in a position on the world stage I personally thought it had no business holding and could never back up. Putin's glare was enough to perpetuate the myth of Russian superpowers long after any reality of it had faded.

 

But I thought Putin was too smart to project so far as an actual, physical invasion of Ukraine. Sure, I knew he wanted to invade Ukraine -- that's just one piece he needs to recreate the Russian Empire as it was the day the Bolsheviks shot Nicholas and Alexandra in a basement -- but more than that, I felt like he wanted the world to feel the threat. He wanted that threat to keep us unsure and off-balance, squabbling amongst ourselves about some looming thing that would never actually happen. Because what would an actual invasion get him? I know a lot of people have talked for a long time about Russian military might, but I've long felt that talk was more out of habit than anything. Oversold hype left over from Cold War propaganda that wasn't really even true back then. I told my son seven or eight years ago when the Army was getting ready to ship him over to sit on one side of a line in South Korea that Putin was a paper tiger. I knew -- and I figured Putin knew -- that taking and keeping Ukraine would not be easy or cheap, and the cost for the Russian people and for him personally would be far greater than any benefit any of them might gain. I've been saying since, oh, about 2003 that when your nation has built its entire identity on a projection of military infallibility, the last thing you want to do is actually invade somebody, especially somebody with the will to maintain a long insurgency. Putin had to know that. He was positively giddy watching 20 years of American adventurism in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I'm sure he had Afghan memories of his own. At the very least, he should have read a few books about the Crimean War. He knew better than to replay that old song. I said that Putin wouldn't invade.

 

Well, we see now a month later how that question was answered. Putin evidently bought too much of his own product. Robin said he'd invade the day after the Olympics ended, and that's exactly what he did. He's pushed too far, and now here we all are, in the middle of it.

 

So the question, then, is what do we do about it?

 

Well, first off, I think we pay attention to what's actually happened, because as it turns out, my paper tiger theory isn't far off from reality. As happens with a lot of tough guys, Putin's projections haven't squared with reality. His army -- supposedly a superpower's army -- turns out to be made up of poorly trained and poorly outfitted conscripts who were never nearly as committed to this whole "Rebuild the Empire" thing as Vladmir had hoped. Meanwhile, they've faced a Ukrainian resistance which, though much weaker, is buoyed by the fact that they're fighting for their homeland, their sovereignty, their freedom, their families, and in many cases their entire lives. Vlad's forces have failed in even the most basic goals. They haven't taken Kiev (or Kyiv, or however we're spelling it now), they've struggled to take the Black Sea ports, they've been held off and pushed back more often than they've struggled forward. This isn't to say they've lost -- far from it, in fact. But it hasn't been the cake walk they or the rest of the world thought it would be. They've shown what's behind the curtain. We've seen their weakness. So we need to not look away from that. We need to hang tough. I think it's been right to let the Ukrainians fight this war on their own, considering how well they're pulling it off. I say we give them all the guns and planes and missile launchers they need to keep it going, at the same time we flood them with food and clothing and whatever else they need.

 

But what if they fall? What if, after pulling back from Kyiv and dicking around a table for a while offering false hopes of make-believe peace, Putin regroups and sweeps west across Ukraine like he meant to in the first place?

 

At heart, I want to be a pacifist. War is rarely, if ever, a good idea, and I don't think the United States has been a part of any "good" or "justified" or "necessary" wars in my lifetime. Maybe the First Gulf War. There's an argument to be made there, when one guy decided to randomly take over a neighbor's country. And maybe the first two weeks in Afghanistan, before we lost the thread and decided to make that war about a bunch of vague things that had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden. But other than that? It's all been a waste. I'm the type of person who will do everything I can to avoid initiating a conflict. But if somebody brings a conflict to me? If they force their way to my door, walk into my territory, and try to bluster me into submission? Well, then screw that. It's on.

 

This take, of course, leads many to think about all those nuclear-tipped warheads hidden in the taiga. Because European War in the 21st century isn't like it was when tsarist Russia went tripping over itself into Crimea in the 1850s. Giants are stomping over the battlefield now, and all-out war has potential consequences that could end civilization.

 

But my answer to that is that if you let a tough guy have whatever he wants just because he has a few nukes, then all you're going to do is convince other tough guys that they need to get nukes. Meanwhile, once Putin sees that a few nuclear threats is all it takes to get the world to back down, he'll demand more and more and more. He'll threaten NATO out of Poland and the Baltics and Scandinavia. He'll roll right up to Berlin. And then Paris and London. "What," he'll say, "the United States wants to elect this person President? I don't think so." He'll make demand on top of demand on top of demand, and even then, at some point, those bombs will go off. You'll never appease him enough to keep them in the taiga, and I don't want to play Neville Chamberlain in this drama. We can't let the shape of the world be decided by whichever nuclear power has the most irrational leader. We need to stand tough. Let Putin bluster and glare. We need to hold firm.

 

And so, as I saw written on a sign hanging on a fence in Ukrainian Village, слава україні. Glory to Ukraine.

Done