Senator Chris Coons of Delaware is going to get a lot of grief, much of it deserved, for his statement on Face the Nation yesterday:
MARGARET BRENNAN: In some public remarks this week, you said the country needs to talk about when it might be willing to send troops to Ukraine. You said, if the answer is never, then we are inviting another level of escalation and brutality by Putin.
CHRIS COONS: Margaret —
MARGARET BRENNAN: Are you arguing that President Biden was wrong when he said he would not send troops to Ukraine? Are you asking him to set a red line?
CHRIS COONS: Margaret, I think those of us in Congress who have a critical role in setting foreign policy and in advising the president in terms of his decisions at commander in chief, need to look clearly at the level of brutality. This is a moment of enormous challenge for all of us. And I deeply respect President Biden’s leadership in pulling together the west in imposing crushing sanctions on Russia and in bringing to this fight countries that had stayed on the sidelines before.
I think President Biden’s leadership has been steady and constructive, but this is a critical moment. If Vladimir Putin, who has shown us how brutal he can be, is allowed to just continue to massacre civilians, to commit war crimes throughout Ukraine without NATO, without the west coming more forcefully to his aid, I deeply worry that what’s going to happen next is that we will see Ukraine turn into Syria.
The American people cannot turn away from this tragedy in Ukraine. I think the history of the 21st century turns on how fiercely we defend freedom in Ukraine, and that Putin will only stop when we stop him.
Do you want a shooting war between the U.S. and Russia? Because that’s how you get a shooting war between the U.S. and Russia. And no one can know for sure whether that shooting war would grow to involve nuclear weapons.
The only defense I will make of Coons is that what he is offering is an entirely rational response to President Biden’s statement that Russia is committing genocide. And this was no slip of the tongue; Biden said last week, “Yes, I called it genocide. It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being — being able to be Ukrainian.” But within a day, administration officials insisted Biden didn’t mean what he said, he was only “speaking from the heart.” (That was the same hand-waving explanation they used for Biden’s statement: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!”)
If Russia is committing genocide — whatever you want to call what they’re doing, killing as many Ukrainians as possible is at least in the ballpark of genocide — then Coons is not crazy to say the U.S. has a moral obligation to take action to stop it, including perhaps military action. (As laid out last week, there are still a lot of non-military policy changes the administration could make that it isn’t making.)
This is why the U.S. president shouldn’t declare a genocide is occurring because what he sees really angers him, or because he’s speaking from the heart. A president should only declare a genocide is occurring if he’s willing to take action to stop it. (Although, once again, what we choose to call what is happening is less important than what we’re willing to do about it.)
Call Coons a reckless nut case if you want, but at least he seems to believe what he’s saying. He’s applying what he thought was the big lesson of World War II — if some force is committing genocide, don’t just stand and watch. (Alas, you can argue that one of the other big lessons of World War II is than an enemy that can split the atom can wipe your cities off the map.)
Biden, on the other hand, says that yes, this absolutely is genocide, and no, the U.S. will never send troops to stop it, just as he also simultaneously believes that “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!” but also insists the U.S. will not take any actions aimed at regime change. Oh, and while he’s at it, Biden will probably throw in a “never again” in the mix.