Henry Olsen asks critics of Ukraine aid to answer him, and MBD responds.
Henry Olsen asks critics of Ukraine aid to answer him: How would we replace the post-1945 alliance structure?
I didn’t ask to junk it. My question is: Why are you conflating the novel addition of Ukraine as a member and dependent of Western economic and security structures with the post-1945 Western alliance itself, of which it was never a part?
Aid to Ukraine is in America’s interests because it is in the interests of our NATO allies. They need a buffer between themselves and Russia as they rebuild their weakened militaries. Ukraine is that buffer, and its fall would place a confident Russia on the borders of seven EU members at a time when the EU nations — almost all of whom are in NATO — do not have the military capacity to effectively respond if attacked. Ukraine need not regain its lost territories, but it must remain capable of resisting Russian forces as Germany and other nations rearm.
I find myself flabbergasted to read this. You wanted buffers? We used to have them in Ukraine and Finland. It was those insisting on Ukraine’s membership in NATO who wanted to a new 1,400-mile land border with Russia. Including Finland in the alliance, based on a one-time military-spending commitment, adds another 900 miles of land border with Russia.
And we may still have buffers. Despite a great deal of propaganda that Putin is dead set on watering his horses in the Elbe again, he still talks about achieving his war aims which include a “neutral” Ukraine, presumably meaning something that continues to exist outside of Russian territory. He told a Russian TV audience in December, “There will be peace when we achieve the goals you mentioned. Now let’s get back to these goals — they don’t change. Let me remind you of what we were talking about at the time. On the denazification of Ukraine, on demilitarization, on its neutral status. . . . As for demilitarization, if they don’t want to negotiate, then we have to take other measures, including military ones.” The deal that was thrown away at the beginning of the war included maintaining Ukraine’s neutral status outside of NATO, a point on which Ukrainian negotiators said the Russian side was most insistent.
The post-1945 world order is more durable than its advocates imagined. It withstood the Soviets crashing into Budapest in 1956, and Prague in 1968. It withstood the Soviet actions against Solidarity in Poland in the 1980s. It withstood major ruptures between its principal members, such as the Suez crises which brought U.S.–U.K. relations to their lowest ebb since 1812. It withstood the partial defection of France in 1966. It withstood wave upon wave of domestic terrorism throughout the West in the 1970s. It withstood the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, and our retreat from the Horn of Africa in the 1990s.
Olsen continues:
National security also depends on economic power. Modern wars between peers are often battles of attrition, as we are seeing in Ukraine. The combatant with more resources, manpower, and economic capacity eventually grinds its foe into the dust. That means America must ensure that this balance lies on our side rather than our adversaries’.
Our alliance structure helps us advance both objectives. The powers that are sanctioning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine produce nearly 60 percent of the world’s GDP. Acting in concert, they can still impose their will in any military conflict, providing they have built militaries that reflect their economic power. The failure of our Japanese and European allies in particular to have done that in the post–Cold War age is one of the major reasons our system of alliances is now weaker than it ought to be.
Olsen is quite right that the powers sanctioning Russia, acting in concert, can impose their will given their economic power. And he’s quite right that Japan and Europe are militarily well behind. But that’s been the rule for the post-1945 order. “Since roughly 1960, the United States has averaged about 36 percent of allied GDP but more than 61 percent of allied defense spending,” reports Justin Logan for Cato. There’s the further problem of willpower asymmetry. Many European publics and their governments just don’t perceive themselves to be directly threatened by what’s happening in Ukraine. Nor do they view incorporating Ukraine into their structures as an urgent priority. Ursula von der Leyen just this morning kicked the can down the road on providing a “framework” for Ukraine’s EU accession. While the media is starting to blame the American Congress for Ukraine’s lack of shells, the EU has failed to deliver its promise of 155 million shells itself. (While we’re at it, Ukraine hasn’t been able to pass its latest, unpopular, mobilization bill.)
Again, this gets to the fundamental problem critics of America’s Ukraine policy have identified. The giant asymmetry of interests is determining the outcome. Russia has invaded Ukraine twice. It has fought great power wars to maintain access to the Black Sea. It is paying a tremendous cost in blood and treasure to effect its will, and it is rapidly adapting its tactics and industrial base to win. Meanwhile, the West does not really fear that a Russian army that can barely use its major manpower and firepower advantages to advance past Luhansk is going to swiftly confront NATO in Mitteleuropa.
There is a tightfistedness about our modern-day defenders of the world order — maybe a sense that the more weak links we add to this chain, the more vulnerable the whole thing becomes.
If the liberal world order can only exist and thrive if democratic publics have, in effect, no-choice politics on immigration, trade, and foreign policy, then its promise of political freedom is essentially an empty one.