On the menu today: Russia has invaded Ukraine, and it is likely that we are about to witness a horrifying bloodbath of modern war. Far too many of those who confidently declared Vladimir Putin would never launch a full-scale invasion fell into the “mirroring” trap. The U.S. strategy of deterring an invasion by threatening sanctions failed — and it is important to understand why. Finally, back in October 2019, Joe Biden pledged that, “Putin knows that when I am president of the United States, his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe, are over.” So much for that.
Horror in Ukraine
The situation in Ukraine is terrible; by the time you read this, it may well be worse.
At least 16 cities in Ukraine are reporting explosions. Footage of cruise missiles flying over Ukrainian heads is appearing on social media. Apparently, a Russian soldier parachuting into Ukraine has posted video of himself on TikTok. There are reports that Belarusian military forces have joined the Russian forces in attacks on Ukrainian border guards.
We are witnessing, on our television screens and through the web, the largest land war in Europe since 1945, an unprovoked attack by an autocratic superpower with nuclear weapons against a flawed but independent democracy that had committed no crime or provocation. The world is less safe today than it was at the start of the week. Many Ukrainians are already dead, some Russian forces have likely also been killed, and a lot more people will die in the near future.
This is exactly the nightmare scenario that U.S., NATO, and European Union policy aimed to prevent; short of a Russian invasion of NATO member states, this is the worst-case scenario. This is not another relatively small-scale, minimal-conflict land grab like the Russian seizure and occupation of Crimea in 2014. This is the full wrath of the Russian war machine coming down like a ton of bricks on a country of 44 million people.
The snarky thing to write here would be to point out all of the “No, Russia will not invade Ukraine” columns or point to U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres insisting that a Russian invasion would not happen, and scoff that everyone who insisted this was a feint should sit this one out. (In the Corner on December 4, I wrote: “If Russia does make a surprise attack on Ukraine early next year, it will rank among the least surprising surprise attacks in recent history.”)
But it would be better if the people who confidently assured us that Vladimir Putin would not invade paused and genuinely reexamined why they were so convinced that Russia couldn’t possibly be preparing an invasion as it assembled 140,000 or so Russian forces on three sides of Ukraine, and Putin insisted that Ukraine had no right to exist as a country. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
Is it that some people just assume anything from U.S. intelligence is wrong, because of the lack of Iraqi WMDs or 9/11 or other intelligence failures? The U.S. spends a lot of time, energy, money, and resources watching what the Russian government is doing. It’s a lot easier to track the movement of big groups’ tanks than to figure out what’s being discussed in a terrorist training camp or what’s being cooked up in a laboratory in Wuhan. Operating on the default assumption that everything the U.S. government says is false is as likely to be erroneous as the default assumption that everything the U.S. government says is true.
But among a certain class of well-educated diplomats, professors, and foreign-policy wonks, I think what we saw in the past few months was a failure of moral imagination. Because Vladimir Putin had been ruthless but cold and calculating in the past, these experts assumed that Putin’s decision-making would continue in the same pattern. Up to now, Putin and his regime had acted abominably, but on a manageable scale — polonium poisoning, arming radicals who shoot down passenger airliners. Until recently, Putin seemed more rational and patient than an Adolf Hitler or a Saddam Hussein.
On the podcasts lately, I’ve been talking a lot about “mirroring” — the erroneous assumption that the person on the other side of a dispute, conflict, or relationship sees the world the same way you do. Because a full-scale invasion was unthinkable, illogical, and foolhardy in the minds of Western foreign-policy wonks, some of them presumed that Putin had to see the decision the same way.
A few people on Twitter didn’t like my sentence from earlier in the week, “[Putin] sees Ukraine the way Abraham Lincoln saw the Confederate States of America” and — ahem, idiotically — accused me of saying Putin was like Lincoln. No, the point is that Putin sees himself as emancipating or liberating Russians in Ukraine and punishing a heinous band of rogue separatists for splitting his country. That’s a nutty and inaccurate way of seeing the situation, but we should understand that’s how Putin sees himself, as fulfilling his own personal grand destiny. Every villain thinks he’s the hero of the story. (By the way, the fact that I think evil people convince themselves that they’re morally right doesn’t mean I don’t think evil exists. The point is that evil people never think they’re the evil ones.)
And now the world must face the consequences of Putin’s decision. We’re going to hear a lot of questions like, “Why should the U.S. worry about a fight between Russia and Ukraine?” I’m sure Whoopi Goldberg sees this as just another case of one group of white people fighting another group of white people.
Well, the price of oil went over $100 per barrel; Europe is likely going to get flooded with refugees again; no doubt China is watching how the West responds to an all-out invasion and looking hungrily at Taiwan; and Virginia Democratic senator Mark Warner fears that Russian cyberwarfare could end up affecting systems in other countries, including possibly ours. Problems from refugees to extremist groups to viruses don’t really respect borders anymore.
The Sanctions Dud
President Biden, December 12: “I made it very clear: If, in fact, [Putin] invades Ukraine, there will be severe consequences — severe consequences — and economic consequences like none he’s ever seen or ever have been seen, in terms of being imposed.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, January 23: “If a single additional Russian force goes into Ukraine in an aggressive way, as I said, that would trigger a swift, a severe and a united response from us and from Europe,”
President Biden, February 18: “We will hold Russia accountable for its actions. The West is united and resolved. We’re ready to impose severe sanctions on Russia if it further invades Ukraine.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, February 20: “The purpose of the sanctions has always been and continues to be deterrence. But let’s also recognize the unique nature of the sanctions that we have outlined. These are some of the greatest sanctions, if not the strongest, that we’ve ever issued.”
The U.S.’s attempts at deterrence, relying heavily on threats of those swift, severe, greatest, and strongest sanctions, failed. It is important for American policymakers to understand why that approach failed.
For starters, the administration kept declaring that the response would be swift, but earlier this week, announced that the sanctions would be enacted in separate “tranches.” If you’re holding back some sanctions to possibly use later, that’s watering down the swiftness and the severity of your oft-promised consequences.
Second, the enacted sanctions still don’t seem all that severe, at least as of this writing:
- Most of the largest Russian banks remain untouched, at least for now.
- So far, there’s no sign of imminent sanctions on Russian oil and gas exports to the United States, nor of barring imports of Russian platinum, iron, steel, fertilizers, etc. Word from unnamed administration officials to Reuters was that those sanctions are off the table as of Wednesday afternoon, but perhaps the invasion will change that calculation.
- Nor is the U.S. barring the export of semiconductors and semiconductor-production equipment to Russia, and other products that are vital to the Russian economy.
- Barring Russian banks’ access to SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is reportedly still a possibility, but as of Wednesday afternoon, the White House was holding off on that step.
- There’s no talk of banning Aeroflot airlines from U.S. airports.
- The kids of Russian government officials and oligarchs can still attend American colleges and universities.
- We haven’t even done the usual move of expelling the Russian-embassy staffers that we know are spies.
Maybe the White House will make some of these moves in the coming days. The New York Times’ editorial board argued before the Russian invasion began that, “Mr. Biden was right not to unleash the full arsenal of sanctions yet. As long as there is the slightest chance of deterring a full-scale invasion, he and his allies and partners must retain sticks and carrots, however few remain.”
But here’s the problem: Once Russia launched the attack, the threat of additional sanctions no longer worked as a deterrent, only as a punishment, and it’s clearly a punishment that Vladimir Putin thinks his country can endure. Putin doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’s deterred by economic sanctions in the first place, so if you wanted to prevent him from taking a particular action, the Russian people and Putin’s hangers-on needed to feel the economic pain before he invaded, not after. If the threat of sanctions alone had been enough to deter Putin, he wouldn’t have 140,000 or so Russian troops gathered around the borders of Ukraine. Russians needed to feel the consequences.
The Wall Street Journal didn’t mince words: “The measures so far are significantly narrower than what European and American officials have spent weeks crafting to punish President Vladimir Putin should Russian forces invade Ukraine. Those broader measures have at times included options such as cutting Russia off from the global banking system and restricting the export of certain technology to the country.”
Napoleon said, “If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna.” If you’re going to sanction the regime of an aggressive autocrat, sanction the regime of an aggressive autocrat! Don’t do it halfway or piecemeal.
Wednesday, the Biden administration announced sanctions on the companies building Nord Stream 2, after the German government had put at least a temporary halt to the project. As David Harsanyi observes, Nord Stream 2 is much less important if Russia takes control of Ukraine, because then the Kremlin will control the pipelines running through Ukraine.
This winter’s presidential pledges of “economic consequences like none [Putin’s] ever seen or ever have been seen” appear to be yet another case of Joe Biden over-promising and under-delivering. Back on October 23, 2019, then-candidate Biden did his best John Wayne impression:
Putin knows that when I am president of the United States his days of tyranny, and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over. I’m going to stand up to him! He’s a bully, just like the president. And I know he doesn’t want me to be president. But I’ll tell you what, when I’m president, things are going to change. Mr. Putin, the American people decide their elections, not you.
Once again, issues that looked so easy and manageable on the campaign trail turn out to be a lot more complicated and difficult once you’re sitting behind the Resolute Desk.
ADDENDUM: Our Mark Wright:
Pray for all the young men at the front — young men who will soon face the fury of modern mechanized combat, young men with families and loved ones at home, young men who only wish to defend their country, and, if possible, make it home alive. And pray for all the civilians who will, over the next days and weeks, get caught in the crossfire. To the Kremlin, they are not people or even names or numbers. Shame on us if we treat them that way.
Vladimir Putin has unleashed this horror. But he won’t be the one to pay its most tragic price.