Confusing Triage with Empire Building

Jim Geraghty responds (NR readers cheer!) to my response on Ukraine (get ready to boo again).

Writing in today’s Morning Jolt, Jim challenges my view that Russia doesn’t want to swallow the whole of Ukraine by pointing to their attempt to march on the capital. This doesn’t prove anything. When we committed decapitation strikes on Libya it wasn’t a sign that we were going to occupy Libya — it was a sign that we were going to effect a regime change as part of the broader goal of protecting Sunni radical opponents of the regime. Nothing makes a war effort easier than knocking over the government that sponsors and directs the other side.

Jim asks, “What would you need to see to conclude that Putin wants to reacquire control over Poland and the Baltic states?”

First, Jim is lowering the bar to “wants.” Sure, he’d love a friendly or subservient government in Poland. As we want one in Russia. Then Jim cites several lower-tier officials making grandiose statements about humiliating Poland. Then he cites a couple of statements protesting that they don’t have intentions of attacking Poland. He could have cited Tucker Carlson’s recent interview in which Putin described the possibility of war with Poland or another NATO state as something that jeopardized the future of humanity itself. Then Jim says they are shameless liars. So, why does Jim choose to believe all the most grandiose saber-rattling from a country that cannot establish air superiority over a foe with no significant air defense? Frankly, Putin’s tendentious essay on Ukraine has proved to be a reliable guide to his thinking. It’s in that essay that he begins contemplating dismembering Ukraine. He makes his bizarre case for the spiritual unity of Ukraine, but he also seems to recognize that a national government will exist in Kyiv.

Twenty years ago, a Bush administration official co-authored a book in which he envisioned the United States committing regime change in five countries including Saudi Arabia. How seriously should Saudi Arabia have taken this?

Jim writes, “First, you’re going to have a hard time finding anybody who thinks Ukraine should join NATO today, or anytime soon.”

No, I’m not going to have trouble. Here’s the European edition of Politico with an editorial saying that Ukraine should enter accession talks. Here’s a piece in Foreign Policy by a senior fellow at the McCain Institute: “Let Ukraine into NATO Right Now.” And one in Foreign Affairs: “To Protect Europe, Let Ukraine Join NATO—Right Now.”

Then Jim implies that I think Vladimir Putin gets a veto because of his grudges. Again, I’ve written and said over and over again that nobody has a “right” to interfere with their neighbors, but they often have a predictable interest in doing so, and if they have the power to do so, they will. That’s why countries like Switzerland maintained neutrality. That’s why the far side of Irish foreign-policy independence was “neutrality.” Again, this gets at a fundamental difference of worldview. The U.S. military doesn’t exist to morally educate Vladimir Putin, but to advance our interests.

I’ve argued that taking Ukraine on as a permanent security and economic dependent is not in our interest. And I’ve argued that Russia losing Ukraine to the West is such a dire outcome for them that they will sacrifice more. This asymmetry of interests leads to an asymmetry of resources: We’re willing to deplete some weapons stocks and run things up on the credit card; Russia is willing to see hundreds of thousands of casualties.

But here’s where I think Jim really goes off track. He writes:

“I see no Russian empire-building here,” MBD concludes.

In 2008, Russia invaded and occupied 20 percent of Georgia’s territory. In the spring of 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, and started sending the “little green men” into Donetsk and Luhansk. In 2015, Russia made a major military mobilization into Syria, turning the Assad regime into a client state. Then in 2022, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, and now we’ve got the saber-rattling over Transnistria, where Russia has helped create a hostile mini-state out of a narrow stretch along the Moldovan-Ukrainian border.

Pal, what do you need to see to conclude some Russian empire-building is going on under Putin?

As I’ve argued, what I need to see are “acts aimed at truly expanding resources rather than at preserving what was already in hand.” The Bucharest statement that Georgia and Ukraine would one day be members of NATO put both countries in danger. As with all “someday” outcomes in politics, it invites people who would use extraordinary means to prevent those outcomes to give it their best and final shot. That’s why the passage of Home Rule in 1912 led to Ulster Unionists’ arming for civil war. It’s why the passage of Brexit in 2016 but the inability to effect it for years afterward invited Remain.

Now, I’ve personally spoken to people who were in the room with Stephen Hadley, then national-security adviser, President George Bush, and Georgia’s president Saakashvili. President Bush stuck his finger into Saakashvili’s chest and told him, “Do not poke the bear. We will not save you.” The person I spoke to said, shrugging, that indeed Saakashvili poked the bear. British war monitors working for OSCE concluded that Georgia escalated first. The EU’s report said that Saakashvili launched an indiscriminate artillery barrage on Russia that started the war. Does Jim think that the OSCE and the EU both lied to cover up Russia’s imperialism? Are they in on it too?

Then we move to Ukraine and Syria. Again, why did Russia do this? In both states, Russia already had vital naval assets. And both countries were in states of civil unrest in which a new political power might emerge and eject Russia. We would react similarly if our bases in Okinawa were threatened by political developments on that island. Again, where Jim sees empire-building, there is nothing but a desperate bloody scramble, at massive expense and loss, to prevent losses of assets that Russia relied on and could previously count on without military intervention beforehand. This is triage. Was it empire-building when we funded child beheaders like Nour al-Din al-Zinki in their quest to overthrow Bashar al-Assad? Or were we being opportunistic and indiscriminate in the hopes of hurting both Iran and Russia at once by removing a friendly government on the Mediterranean?

Jim will likely reply that he doesn’t care about Russian naval installations and I shouldn’t either. Fine. But the Russians do, and they’re willing to send their boys to die for it. If you’re not willing to send yours to deny them the same — and Americans are not — then the Russians may get their say, and all the ineffectual things you do to postpone the outcome only add to the costs and the humiliation.