On the menu today: A long look at the options the U.S. has to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine, short of using military force.
Invade Ukraine, Reap the Whirlwind
A Russian invasion of Ukraine appears as likely as ever this morning; the Washington Post’s David Ignatius warns that the potential war would “leave a volcano of violence festering in the middle of Europe.”
There’s no easy way to stop more than 100,000 Russian troops, armed with tanks, missiles, and other top-of-the-line military equipment, supported by the Russian Air Force and cyberattacks, from pouring over the Ukrainian border.
On social media, you’ll see a lot of people objecting to a proposal that hasn’t been seriously offered yet, that U.S. troops should be deployed into Ukraine, and/or that U.S. forces should fight Russia directly. (When I see this argument, I can’t tell if the person genuinely thinks this is being proposed, is operating on autopilot from past arguments about Afghanistan and Iraq, or secretly wants to see Russia conquer a neighbor, but doesn’t want to say so outright.) There are a lot of options between “fight Russia directly and launch a war between nuclear-armed great powers” and “do nothing.”
One: Keep the weapons coming. We can now declare that the Obama administration’s reluctance to sell arms to Ukraine was one of the dumbest and most counterproductive foreign-policy decisions of the last decade. The theory that U.S. arms exports would “provoke” Vladimir Putin proved to be an epic miscalculation. Aggressors don’t pick fights with well-armed targets; they prefer minimally defended, vulnerable targets. You don’t see Putin picking a fight with China!
As I observed yesterday, even the Obama team realizes they screwed up. From 2013 to 2017, Celeste Wallander served on the National Security Council as a special assistant to the president and the senior director for Russia and Central Asia. She’s now Biden’s nominee to be assistant secretary of defense for international-security affairs. In her confirmation hearing, she said, “I believe that our response in 2014 was too slow and too incremental. And it’s confirmed by the lessons that I learned, and that I believe others in the national-security community learned, to better address Russia’s ongoing aggression. . . . I believe one of the lessons I learned is that it would have been appropriate and necessary to provide Ukraine with what it needed to defend its territory.”
The good news is that the Ukrainians are much better armed now than when the “little green men” moved into Crimea and the Donbas region in 2014:
The US has been the main provider of military hardware such as radio equipment, military transport trucks and more than 200 Javelin man-portable antitank missiles. Britain, Poland and Lithuania have also supplied Ukraine with defensive weapons.
Even Turkey has come to Ukraine’s aid by selling its famous Bayraktar TB2 drones.
“While the U.S.-provided weapons, such as the Javelin antitank missiles, have garnered the most headlines of Ukraine’s armory, Kyiv’s less-hyped backing from Turkey has raised alarms in Moscow,” noted the Washington Post over the weekend.
The use of the Bayraktar TB2 drones in Libya, Syria and especially the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia has indeed grabbed headlines. But Friedrich notes that while, “it’s true that these machines proved decisive in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it’s difficult to know what impact they could have in a possible conflict with Russia, as the configuration is so different”.
But Russia is moving massive amounts of arms toward the Ukrainian border. A big question will be whether, when the shooting starts, Ukrainian forces will be able to hit key targets to slow the Russian advance — railways, bridges, seaports, airport runways. And remember that the Russians will be trying to do the same in the pathways connecting the West to Ukraine.
Keep in mind, it is likely that Russian air forces will attempt to shoot down U.S., U.K., and other NATO flights delivering weapons to Ukraine.
There’s a good chance that despite the best efforts of the Ukrainian military, Russian forces will advance deep into Ukraine. This is where a heavily armed Ukrainian civilian population can and likely will turn into an insurgency — which we have seen can prove deadly and ruthlessly effective in modern warfare. Sniper attacks, traps, ambushes, improvised explosive devices on roads . . . the aim will be to make holding Ukrainian territory much more difficult than taking it was for the Russians.
At some point, Russian military leaders and soldiers’ families will realize their country is paying a higher and higher price in blood for Vladimir Putin’s legacy-building project. The Ukrainians are exceptionally unlikely to beat the Russians outright in a straight-up fight. But they do have a decent chance of convincing the Russians that occupying Ukraine isn’t worth the cost in blood and treasure.
Two: Maximize the pressure on the Russian economy. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. and its allies will be able to cut off Russian banks from the SWIFT system — Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — which allows money to move quickly from financial institutions in one country to those in another.
Russian lawmakers are claiming that if Europeans cut off Russian banks from SWIFT, then Russia will cut off Europe’s gas and oil supplies. And they’re scoffing that they doubt the Europeans will unite on the agreement to disconnect Russia; as Kevin Williamson noted a few days ago, “SWIFT is incorporated under Belgian law and had to comply with this regulation as confirmed by its home country government.” In other words, NATO really needs the Belgian government to sign on to the idea.
And surprise, surprise, right on cue, the Germans are saying that they’re not big fans of the proposal:
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock expressed scepticism about cutting Russian banks off from the Swift global payments system in an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
“Decoupling all payment transactions would perhaps be the biggest stick, but not necessarily the sharpest sword,” she told the paper.
Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper cited government sources this week as saying Western governments are no longer considering cutting Russian banks off from Swift.
(This is on top of all the other ways that Germany is blocking an effective NATO deterrence of Russia.)
But the U.S. has other metaphorical weapons in its financial arsenal:
The U.S. on Tuesday said it is prepared to impose sanctions and export controls on critical sectors of the Russian economy. Senior administration officials said the U.S. could ban the export to Russia of various products that use microelectronics based on U.S. equipment, software or technology, similar to the U.S. pressure campaign on Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. U.S. officials have previously said that measures under consideration also include cutting off Russian banks’ access to the dollar and possible sanctions on Russian energy exports.
This might be a good time for our well-connected Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, to use her influence to make international investments in Russia as repellent as investments in other odiously abusive regimes. She’s chaired the Federal Reserve, and taught at Harvard, the London School of Economics. and U.C.-Berkeley. She can call any financial institution in the world and the top man will pick up the phone. She’s got to make it clear around the globe that if Moscow invades Ukraine, the U.S. government will see Russian money as blood money.
A thorough U.S. effort can make the ruble crash, create capital flight and runaway inflation, and tank the Russian economy. Vladimir Putin won’t feel it, but eventually the oligarchs who form such a key base of support for his regime will.
Finally, are any kids of Russian oligarchs or top politicians attending universities or prep schools in the West? Time to send them back.
Three: Be ready. It is entirely possible that Russia may choose to hit U.S. targets in cyberspace to dissuade us from helping Ukraine. We’ve already seen Russian hackers shut down U.S oil pipelines — rogue, freelance hackers, we’re assured, not agents of the Russian government.
But this door swings both ways. U.S. Cyber Command can shut down the Russian “troll farms” at the Internet Research Agency, at least temporarily. U.S. Cyber Command can also shut down parts of the Russian power grid. Our diplomats should be communicating clearly that any cyberattack on American targets would trigger a massive retaliation upon Russian systems.
Four: Russia’s ability to use energy as a weapon is a big factor in this Ukraine crisis. One of the reasons the Germans, and some Americans, believed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting Vyborg, Russia, to Griefswald, Germany, was a good idea is that it would provide leverage over the Russian government.
Do you see any of that leverage around these days?
If we really want to ensure that Europe doesn’t become a subservient client state to Russia, somebody’s going to have to blow up that pipeline. Hey, is Andreas Malm doing anything these days?
ADDENDUM: Good news, everyone. President Biden found time to go get some ice cream.