This kind of wimpy political crap really upsets me…
“I think we need to be clear that we are not going to go to war with Russia,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
“I do agree with Senator Chris Murphy. I think that we cannot engage with Russians.” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)
“It means starting World War III. It’s very difficult to do.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.)
I guess I have to be the one to tell you, World War 3 has already begun. Disagreement about that is a semantic debate. The political leaders in the USA all hold on to their jobs because they are masters of risk aversion. As a nation, risk aversion is our defining characteristic. Risk aversion is the reason that nobody wants to tell you that WW3 has begun.
WW2 began long before the USA got over its risk-aversion and that is why WW2 was so extremely brutal. Now, WW3 has already begun but again, appeasement, risk aversion, and some strange belief that a reckless tyrant will back off because he becomes ashamed of his own actions is just incredibly stupid.
Putin is not unpredictable. He is crystal clear about his intentions and he is as serious as death when it comes to following through on the things he declares that he will do. It is not unreasonable to observe that the USA seems to think that TikTok videos will shame Putin into stopping his annihilation of innocent families in Ukraine.
Hitler was sneaky and disingenuous in the lead up to WW2. Putin today is the opposite; he says what he will do and then he does it.
The annexation of Crimea in 2014 is no different than the annexation of Austria in 1938. We just have the benefit of history to make this obvious today.
WW3 has begun. 32 countries are involved. The good news is that this war is currently 31 countries versus 1. The bad news is that 30 countries are trying to fight a sterile war and hoping that one country fighting a kinetic war supported by lots of social media videos that embarrass Putin will somehow be good enough. 30 of the 31 countries that are engaged are behaving as if good speeches and the UN will make a difference. Many Americans absorbing the news coverage seem to think that 20 billionaire oligarchs are all going to gang up on Putin in a conference room and get him to change course. WTF?
Sanctions, oh yes, we are all for sanctions unless, of course, they might disrupt the mid-term elections in November. Or, heaven forbid, the stock market goes down and we have to deal with a recession. That's not all, we might have to pay $6 for a gallon of gasoline!!! Woe is me, oh oppressed poor American that I am. We are weak to our core and I am right there in the middle of that. Include me here. I also own this feeling that my principles are strong unless my comfortable retirement and my children's lifestyle might be disrupted.
Well, at least it looks like we might be getting over that weakness.
So hey, go ahead and impose “the mother of all sanctions” as our fearless president has called for in his demonstration of powerful leadership. Putin must be really, really scared of that.
The notion that Putin is capable of using nuclear weapons is not lost on me. Putin has a history of doubling down when backed into a corner and it has always worked for him. If doubling down means that he triggers global annihilation, that would suck. I get it.
Do we live in a world where one tyrant, not-supported by any other country in the world and not supported by anybody in his own country under the age of 50, can dictate world affairs and crush the civilian populations of entire cities when those cities and those people have done nothing wrong? Do we live in a world where a tyrant can do all of those things with impunity because he has nuclear weapons? It seems that we do. If so, Putin has already won WW3. The so-called "free world" is deciding that "mutually assured destruction" is a policy that gives shameless tyrants the power to run the world on their terms. It now appears as if Kim Jung-un has been right the whole time.
Either Kim Jung-un is the smartest leader in the world or the leaders of the free world are going to have to prove that they will stand up to Putin.
Nobody wants nuclear annihilation and that includes Putin or else we are all doomed anyway. The global strategy called “Mutually Assured Destruction” is effective. If we accept that Putin does not want to end the world as we know it, we have to ask what the real source of our extreme risk-aversion actually is.
In my opinion, America has fought too many stupid wars, stayed in wrong-headed wars far too long, and pursued goals in stupid wars that were unreasonable. Our history of fighting in stupid wars for decades leaves us weak, paralyzed, and afraid of fighting in a real war. That's my view of the problem that holds us back right now.
Even so, the other side of that argument is that Ukraine is not our war. America has finally learned its lesson that we are not the “good cops” for the world in the fight for Jeffersonian democracies around the globe. (It’s heartbreaking what is about to happen to Kyiv. Watching Anderson Cooper Facetime with moms holding babies in basements makes this war emotionally raw and real and brutal. As TV viewers, we know this is not going to end well and yet, we watch - me too and I am crying inside every night.) - But hey, this has happened in Yemen, Grozny and Aleppo - and all throughout the history of civilization. America cannot pretend that it can stop atrocities all around the world. We can’t.
That is a good argument. In that case, I wish we had known that this would not be our war back when we helped the UN to enforce legitimate elections in Ukraine. Ukraine elected Zelensky and we helped him to show his middle-class citizens the joys of political and economic freedom. The speed with which the population of Ukraine tipped towards Western values as opposed to its legacy of emotional attachment to "mother Russia" was stunning. The Ukrainian people are about to pay an ungodly price because they got seduced by the West. That was Putin's red line and we crossed it. Even so, we had good intentions and it’s not our fault that Putin turned out to be this brutal. It’s still not our war.
Let’s think this through. Doesn't every non-military thing we are doing now make things worse instead of better when we view it through the acknowledgment that this is not our war?
We are now in the process of pushing Russia into a hermit status that looks more like North Korea than a fully economically engaged super-power. The idea that Putin will stop at the borders of Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova is logical in a geographic and military sense. Maybe Poland is truly safe thanks to NATO. But, the world is connected by the Internet now. How much damage is Putin willing to do in a cyberwar if his country is economically isolated and his people are rebelling?
Does anybody believe that kinetic activity is the only way that a modern world war will be fought? When 30 countries gang up on one of the world’s super-power nations in order to destroy it economically, how is that not WW3?
All NATO countries and all of the big corporations who are headquartered in NATO countries have started a huge economic war with Russia. The idea that any of this will cause Putin to change his mind about Ukraine is naive and wrong. So, are the sanctions our way to feel a little bit better about the idea that we won't let a bully tyrant with nukes push us around like wimps on the playground?
However you choose to answer that question, we are deep in the shit now.
It sure looks like Kyiv is going to be Grozny and Russia is going to be pushed backward economically until it resembles what it looked like after World War 2. The problem is that this is going to happen in a world tied together by the Internet.
I do not see how the West retreats from its economic war anytime soon and I don't see how Putin resists the impulse to generate a cyberwar as his counter-attack for this facet of the war.
Nobody has experienced what a nation-state cyberwar is like but if the lights go out and our digital access to money breaks down, I guess we will find out.
American tax payers have been underwriting a military budget that is 12X Russia’s budget and we have been doing it for decades. The USA’s military budget for 2023 is something like $770 billion and Congressional politicians from both parties will fall all over themselves in their rush to approve this budget. Why? If we don’t want to leverage this investment now, what is the point?
Putin is the clear initiator and his army is actively trying to annihilate defenseless citizens in cities like Kyiv. The NATO countries are well within their rights to use long-range, non-nuclear missiles to destroy Putin's army amassed along the border with Ukraine without regard for which side of the border they might be on. With just a small amount of creativity and imagination, we can make it appear that Ukraine's army is the one pushing the buttons. We know how to do this but we have to fight now instead of fighting later.
Instead, many of us have already surrendered on Ukraine's behalf and we've started talking about how great Ukraine's insurgency will be after the war is lost. “Putin will never be able to control 40 million people in the country the size of Ukraine. This will be his Afghanistan.” Pundits are already talking like this. God forgive us for that.
It’s fair to say that Ukraine is not our war but that requires us to believe that Ukraine is the entirety of what is going on here. Who really believes that?
WW3
Mark, great job on this article. I 100% agree, right up to the nuclear line. As you say, he does what he says he will do and I think we need to take him at his word at this point. He has demonstrated that he is willing to do "whatever it takes" to "win" this. I think that if we overtly attack, he will launch nukes. Now, I fully advocate for subversive tactics to remove him from office. Really anything is fair game there, IMO. I love the idea that we could surreptitiously launch a military annihilation of his forces, but in practical terms, I think he already knows what Ukraine has and doesn't have in terms of their strike capabilities, so I fear that it would get the keys turning as well. It's a quandary for sure and I respect your opinions. Thanks for putting this out there.
Super: hope it reaches a larger audience.