Thursday, February 24, 2022

NAKED POWER

The same sense of foreboding that came over me when in 1956, when I was just twelve years old, the Soviet Union moved on Budapest to put down the uprising of the Hungarian people against the Soviet dominance of the country, is coming back to me now that today Putin’s Russia is moving into Ukraine to impose its political will on another nation yearning for deliverance from Russian imperialism. I have never forgotten that on June 16, 1958 the Soviets finished the job by executing the Hungarian prime minister Imre Nagy and I bet you that President Zelensky has not forgotten that either even though he was not born yet when it happened.

As in 1956, in 1968 when the Soviets put down the Prague velvet revolution, and in 2014 when Putin overran and annexed Crimea, the sense of powerlessness overwhelms me. With all its military, economic, and political might, the Western alliance has nothing more than sanctions to respond with, is utterly incapable of changing the course of events, and has no choice but to leave it to the Ukrainians to defend themselves, their nation, and their freedom. Our power proves to be naked. The only hope to offer Ukrainians is that in the long run they may yet prevail, as the Hungarians and Czechs ultimately did when the Soviet Union broke apart.

It is agony to hear the Ukrainians under siege asking, like the Hungarians and the Czechs did before them, “where is the West when we need them” and to have no answer, no comfort, no help to give them. But the reality is that short of nuclear power, the West has nothing in its arsenal that can militarily turn back the Russians and Putin has clearly demonstrated that he has no time or respect for diplomacy. The best we can hope for is that Putin, in his delusion and arrogance, pushes his ambitions further that the Russian people and its military are willing to go and in the process is digging his own grave. Kyiv may ultimately become Putin’s Waterloo once the body bags are coming back to the motherland in large numbers, the sanctions are seriously hurting the home front and the oligarchs, and the ordinary Russians are wondering why they would be fighting their Ukrainian brethren. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is like the USA invading Canada or the Netherlands invading Belgium.

With ‘Naked Power’ I mean power that on paper looks formidable but in practice is unusable. The weakness of NATO is that its only serious deterrence to Russian aggression is in its nuclear capabilities, but these awesome capabilities are matched, if not outmatched, piece by piece by the Russian nuclear systems and, if put to use, are certain to produce catastrophic mutual destruction. The lesson of WWII is that Europe, without massive American reinforcement, lacks the military readiness and cohesion to defend against a force that is organized to attack and is led by a determined despot.

There is a US domestic component to this Ukrainian tragedy. As of the time of this writing there is no official coordinated response from the Republican leadership to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it is clear from utterances from former President Trump and some of the right-wing media that in part of the GOP there is more sympathy and support for Putin than for Ukraine. Undoubtedly fueled by speculation that a win for Vladimir Putin will be seen by the American voters as a loss for Joe Biden.

There used to be a time when the American political tradition was that the divisiveness between the political parties would stop at the water’s edge (the water being the ocean water). It meant that, when it came to conflict with foreign powers, the parties would close ranks behind the commander in chief. That tradition has gradually eroded by ill conceived military interventions, without prior congressional approval, in the Balkans, in Iraq, and Afghanistan, but it never has been flaunted as much as in recent days when the former President, his acolytes, and his media voices, in defiance of the Biden foreign policy, have openly sided with Putin in his invasion of Ukraine. While it remains to be seen whether the GOP aisles in Congress will follow the Trump route and withhold support for the sanction regime designed by the Biden administration in close coordination with its European allies, it hints at the possibility that the GOP will push this issue to the point that it will hurt the party in the upcoming elections of 2022 and 2024. Just like Putin may find to have shot himself in the foot by overreaching in his imperial ambitions to the point that he will lose the support of the Russian military and the Russian people, the Trump faction of the GOP may be disqualifying itself in the eyes of the American voters by siding with Putin in his attack on Ukraine. We will find out in the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, we are relegated to standing by as the Ukrainians struggle to maintain their sovereignty. If we don’t want to be confronted with the nakedness of our power at the next go-around, America better gets busy reorganizing NATO into a force that can actually deter any enemy with military might that does not rely on a nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, article 5 of the NATO charter may prove to be a empty letter. Putin may just be betting it is. Let’s pray that Putin’s next move, if he does not get tripped by his Ukrainian escapade, will not be directed towards the Baltic, where our resolve to stand by our commitment under article 5 of the NATO charter would be sorely tested.

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