What Happens Next

Putin

Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian leader of a powerful nation, invaded a smaller neighbor today.  He’s using Russia’s overwhelming military might to attack the sovereign nation of Ukraine.  There was no “false flag” operation, no trickery.  The missiles fired, the helicopters took flight, the jets dropped their bombs.  It was the first, “punch in the nose”.  

Here in the 21st Century, it hard to imagine what 1914 or 1939 felt like.  We thought we were beyond “tanks at the border” or “occupation forces”.  Wars were relegated to outlaw regimes, strikes against the likes of Saddam Hussein or the Taliban in Afghanistan.  But President Putin of Russia has committed massive forces, nearly 200,000 troops, to the ultimate conquest of Ukraine.  It’s not the “shock and awe” of the 1992 US attack on Baghdad.  It’s the early beginnings:  destroy command and control centers, anti-aircraft sites, and border defenses.  

But even now, the growl of tanks, missile launchers and troop carriers is heard at the Ukrainian border with Russian-allied neighbor, Belarus.   Last night Putin made it clear that this was an invasion, his “first-step” in rebuilding “greater Russia”.  To paraphrase John F. Kennedy in a different era:  Putin is willing to, “…pay any price, bear any burden,” to fulfill his self-described destiny of bringing back the Soviet Union.

Echoes of History

The citizens of Ukraine aren’t “shocked”.  There was plenty of warning.  But they line up at the gas stations and ATM’s, and fill the highways with cars bound away from the city center in Kyiv.  Ukraine is no small nation – as broad as the distance from New York to Chicago, as wide as Toronto to Charlotte, North Carolina.   Even on a normal day, the drive across country takes many hours.  And it’s hard to say where to go – Russian troops are to the North, East, South, and on the Northwest and Southwest borders.  There is no easy exit, no “safe zone”. 

For old history teachers like me, the names echo other wars and times.  Ukraine was the battle zone of the twentieth century.  The “front” between Russian and Austro-Hungarian forces swept back and for across Ukraine in the First World War. In the Second, the Nazi juggernaut battled through Kyiv and Karkhiv and Donetsk on its way to its ultimate disaster at Stalingrad in Russia.  The Ukrainian people bore some of the worst suffering of that War.  And  Jewish Ukrainians faced extinction.  More than 33,000 were killed in just two days at Babi Yar, outside of Kyiv. 

Response

That was another generation, a time we thought was long gone.  But the tanks are lined up at the border.  And the nations of the “west” can do little to help the Ukrainian people.

What can “the west” do? (Using the term “the west” is falling back into old Cold War language, the “west” versus the Communist “east”.  Even Putin’s press secretary echoed that language – saying the Russia “will not live behind an ‘Iron Curtain’”.  And of course, Putin brought back the specter of nuclear holocaust, reminding the world that his is one of the largest nuclear forces in the world).  The “west”, the countries allied in NATO (another reminder of the Cold War), can disentangle their economies from Russia.

We can cut them off.  Russia offers mostly oil and natural gas – we can “bear the burden” here in the United States.   The world oil supply will shrink if we cut off supplies from Russia.  That reduction will inevitably raises prices, even if the “west” can pressure the Saudi’s to increase oil production.   

American Way

The United States is self-absorbed.  We wrap ourselves up in our politics and our social issues.  Even the threat of a world pandemic divided us from each other.  So how will the American people respond to the “burden” of supporting Ukraine?  Even more, what will we do if Putin goes “all-in” and tries to attack those former Soviet states that are in NATO, those that we are obligated to defend by treaty.  

Some politicians and “media personalities” (I don’t know how else to characterize Tucker Carlson) have already taken Putin’s side.  They somehow see common purpose with a Russian Empire, and think they can make political “hay” here in America by defending his aggressions.  So it’s an open question whether the American people will unite against Russian expansion, and be willing to make sacrifices for that cause.

It doesn’t seem like the “American Way” anymore.

The people of Ukraine have made a choice.  They face invasion and occupation, but they are standing against Russia.  How long they will last, it’s hard to say – but Ukraine has a long tradition of resistance to occupiers.  While their government may be driven into exile, it’s likely the citizens will not make it easy on Russia.  And in the meantime – what is the rest of the world willing to offer to protest and defend against further Russian incursions?  What of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and rest of the countries who languished behind the real Iron Curtain for forty-five years?

What will the American Way be then?