Sanctions

Playground Bully

It always seems “not enough”.  When a nation-state acts like a bully, attacking less powerful nations, the obvious response is for an even stronger nation-state to step-in and stop them.  It’s just like the school playground.  The Bully can only be countered by anti-bully force.  The vaunted “outreach” of modern militaries, that can drop paratroopers and missiles on a dime, and infiltrate “special operators” in the night, should be enough, to deter the bully-nation.

But reality is so much more complicated than that mythical playground.  There really are places where forces cannot go.  And the old military maxim:  you can’t send an army where you can’t feed an army, still holds true today.  So when Russia invades Ukraine, while it “feels” like the thing to do is send in the 101’st and 82nd Airborne and the Third Marines and the rest, reality is that Russia is fighting from their home base. Even supplying from Europe, we are a long way from home.

Old Lessons

And there is the critical lesson of the Cold War to consider.  There are three nations in the world that need to avoid “head-to-head” confrontations.  The United States, Russia, and China are all capable of destroying each other, and everyone else, with nuclear weapons.  There is no such thing as absolute military defeat of those nations – because in the last analysis, to back them to that wall means a totally devastating nuclear assault.  

So the “playground” rules don’t quite apply to those nations.  If they act as bullies, they can be countered, but they can never be swept from the field.  The end result of that is too terrible to contemplate.  Vladimir Putin reminded us of that when he spoke of moving nuclear weapons into Belarus, closer to the NATO countries.  With nuclear weapons; distance really isn’t so critical. Our current level of targeting capabilities make proximity unimportant.  But it’s the discomfort of bombs ready to be launched, only fifteen minutes away.

Money Talks

The real lesson of the Cold War, and the fall of the Soviet Union is that it was not achieved on the battlefield.  It was won by a very “American Capitalist” strategy.  The US simply spent so much money, that the Soviet Union couldn’t keep up.  We built missile submarines and aircraft carriers, “Star Wars” anti-missile satellites (that didn’t work) and M1 A1 Abrams tanks.  We raced the Soviet Union to see who could build the “best” weapons, but the race wasn’t about the weapons.  It was about the resources spent to build those weapons.  The US spent nearly 6% of its Gross Domestic Product on weaponry.  

But we forced the Soviet Union to spend nearly 20% of theirs.  It ultimately wrecked their economy, and the Soviet government fell.  the United States won the Cold War by destroying the Soviet economy.

One World

We are a “world economy” today.  We know that gas prices here in Pataskala are likely to go up as the Russian oil supply is cut.   Russia is dependent on the world economy to move it’s natural gas and oil, and to get their computers and cell phones.  If the world stops trading with Russia, the Russian economy will wither and die.

It won’t happen overnight.  It’s a “cold revenge”, not the more satisfying hot action of confronting force with force.   And sanctions work best like a vise, gradually tightening, cutting off sources in succession, over time.  Just when they think things can’t get worse, they do.  So the “west” cuts off some of Russia’s largest banks but doesn’t ban Russia from the world monetary system.  That comes later.  The major natural gas pipelines are closed, but some smaller ones remain open.  The vise will close on them further.

The world will sanction those powerful Russians who support Putin, but why not Putin himself?  Once you sanction Putin, personally attacking his money and his family, how can you then get him to “the table” to negotiate an end to the madness?  In an authoritarian government like Russia’s, if you “take out” the top, there is no one left to talk to.  So Putin is allowed to keep his wealth, as all around him, and his nation as a whole, suffers.  The people of Russia will see that, and grow to resent his “fortune”, literally.  The vise closes even tighter.

Keep Paying

Fighting a long-term war in Ukraine is expensive, and the drain on the Russian economy won’t be financed by Russian oil and natural gas.  Sanctions will dry up those funds, even as the rest of the world adjusts to removing those sources from the market.  The Russian military won’t be able to access the funds they need to replace the bombs they drop, or the replacement soldiers they need to train.

Putin embarked on a military “adventure” in Ukraine this week, for the purpose of fulfilling his own dream of rebuilding the Russian Empire.  As a dictator, he didn’t ask the “permission” of the Russian people, only of the Russian cabinet already beholden to him for their power.  Russians are going to suffer:  economically and personally, as the caskets of fallen Russian soldiers return for burial.  Even if the Ukrainian Army falls, the Ukrainian people will continue to make their captured nation difficult to control.

The Danger

The danger is that before Putin fails at home, he will launch an attack we cannot ignore.  Article Five of the NATO agreement demands that all of the nations of NATO respond to an attack on any one of them.  That obligation has only been invoked once:  after Al Qaeda’s attack on the United States on 9-11.  Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Hungary are all NATO members, and are all at risk of Putin’s expansion.  

Eventually, over months and perhaps years, the final lesson of the Cold War will be taught once again.  The Russian people will suffer enough.  And just like Christmas of 1991, they will make a change in their government.  Let’s hope that happens before Putin puts the world in a head-to-head conflict we can’t ignore.