There are two parties among conservatives when it comes to Ukraine. One advocates for more involved assistance even though it at least temporarily coincides with the detestable liberal powers that be in the US and Europe. The other side rues the temptation to be enmeshed with the interests of the Global American Empire (GAE) and intervene for an entity with little independent history, deep corruption, and a past and a likely future with liberal Europe provided they are not fully exterminated.
Personally, I have to side with temporary involvement. First, there’s the humanitarian side. There are probably still a handful alive that experienced the period of famines staged by Stalin in which approximately 4 million Ukrainians died of starvation and this on top of various pogroms against the Jews and other casualties of the disenfranchised during WWII. Putin’s siege is quite literally an extended continuum of that genocide. If you can’t stand against a genocide, what good is it to stand for some academically pure conservatism? At some point, your karma is due. I didn’t intend to dwell on this but the faction of conservatism that focuses on me-and-my-house alone is at best shortsighted. We don’t need a million self-identifying monarchs any more than we need a million self-appointed dictators. Don’t pay anything now and you may pay far more later. Pay to fight the despot over the sea or you may soon have to pay to keep him out of your neighborhood. It’s surprising to listen to some conservatives mouthing the same resolve as Joe Biden two weeks ago.
The second more practical reason is that all of us have a direct vested interest in the strategic outcomes after Ukraine. Be assured, there is an ‘after’ if Putin is not annihilated. Once Ukraine falls, every other former Soviet state adjacent to Europe are in the crosshairs, especially the Baltic states, and with it, a free Europe. Uber-conservatives may not like NATO but the irony is that now isn’t the time to dislike it now that it’s really needed for the first time in its existence. Hell, you might not even like Europe and are ready to give that to Putin as well. You can grumble all you want, but NATO and its now longstanding obligations aren’t going to go away. Your country signed onto this long before a lot of people today were born and long before the neocons and the GAE folks started putting pins in the map. A free Europe, NATO, our allies, and our own troops that are obligated to respond to Russia at that point are indeed on the line. The fate of Ukraine is not an abstraction, not an isolated peccadillo by a mis-calculating Putin. It’s but one move in a chess match. We said Crimea, one and done; then Donetsk, Luhansk, talk of just the Eastern half, that’s all Putin wants. Experience and intelligence suggest otherwise. Would we really want to wait until Russia occupies the other half of the check points staffed by our allies? Would we really want to face a much smarter – bruised – but battle tested Putin that learned from his mistakes in Ukraine on those borders?
I claim ignorance on the best tactical measures with which to confront Russia. Its above my pay grade, nevertheless, I have observations. Sanctions, of course. Troops, no. Weapons? We could do a lot more, send in more advanced defensive systems, particularly anti-missile systems and an unlimited supply of light arms to the citizen foot soldiers defending their own home and lands. Send any and every weaponry that can be plausibly denied; isn’t that how Putin does it? Come to think of it, we’ve been pretty good at it over the years. While some make much of wartime disinformation in Ukraine calculated to bolster morale, let’s not get bogged down in specifics. The big picture that seems to be emerging from the clues is that Ukraine is at least holding and may have multiple tactical advantages and Russian ground forces may be outright losing. For Putin to be floating conditions of leaving is telling. Truth be told, we should be publicly broadcasting conditions from which the Russian army gets to go back home. Leave and destroy every piece of hardware that crossed the border, and every POW will walk back across the border. There would be full reparations.
If Putin is deposed, dead or alive, maybe the world will consider restoring economic ties. Generalize the proposition by pointing out that the Russian people can expect to live in abject isolation, poverty, and domestic subjugation if they continue to countenance imperialist Putin. The purist conservatives seem to think Putin will do just fine with China and India cooperating and bailing out the Russian economy and displacing the dollar as the world currency standard. I’m no expert but that strikes me as glib. A leveraged and inefficient Russia along with a China that’s in a plummeting trade relation with the US doesn’t sound like a formula for paradise. If all that it took was a little war to make it happen, they’d have made that marriage long ago. In spite of the rosy rhetoric, they hate each other except when the US is in the equation. Just like prior attempts, that union would come apart very quickly.
It is said, we have no ‘interest’ in Ukraine, but if we value any part of Europe, we do. Conversely, we have no feud with Russia apart from the person of Vladimir Putin and to repay for the death and destruction that he ordered. Deliver him up and we can go back to boring. I think Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposal bears more serious consideration.