OR ELSE

Tomorrow it is exactly four weeks since Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine, a sovereign country bordering Russia and long considered a friendly neighbor. It was so predictable. Putin had systematically positioned a massive military force all along the Russian border with Ukraine and yet most of us refused to believe that he would make the fateful decision to cross the border and start a war, even though he had previously done so with Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008 and Crimea and Donbas in 2014.

Putin took months of preparation and amassed a formidable force of more than 160,000 troops on his border with Ukraine in plain view of the world and his point of the spear was positioned a mere 236 miles from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. It is abundantly clear that Putin’s speculation was that he would capture Kyiv in a matter of days, decapitate the Ukrainian government, install a puppet regime, and then proceed to force the Ukrainian military into surrender. And it is equally clear that he speculated that, despite US warnings of severe repercussions, the West would not seriously impede his ambitions. After all, it had allowed him to get away with all his transgressions in 2008 and 2014. Four weeks later things look a little different.

War is horrible and this one is no exception. We get minute by minute images of human suffering and material destruction inflicted by overpowering weaponry in a deliberate attempt to pound fearful defenseless civilians into submission. There are reports of more than 10 million displaced persons out of a population of 44 million Ukrainians, including 3.3 million refugees who have sought safety in the bordering states of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova. And the death toll, although shrouded in the fog of war, is measured in tens of thousands. The Ukrainians are paying a terrible price for the defense of their sovereignty and, indeed, the protection of a democratic world order.

And yet, the democratically elected Zelensky government is still in place and in control in Kyiv. The Ukrainian parliament is able to vote, the central bank is working, trains are running, local governments function, groceries, if they are not bombed by the invaders, are open, and the Ukrainian people are heroically defending their freedom. Putin has evidently been unable to disrupt the Ukrainian command and control. His ground troops, hampered by material breakdowns and supply shortages, are finding themselves in a quagmire, and are reportedly taking heavy casualties. And he has yet to establish complete control of the airspace over Ukraine. 

For too long we have been held back by the assumption that NATO intervention would create an unacceptable risk of triggering a full-blown European war. It kept us from telling Putin: “You stop the aggression, or else”, because we were unsure how we could credibly fill in the ‘or else’ part. We should now capitalize on the Russian failure to execute its war plan, by turning the table on Putin.

When it comes to the West, Putin has fatally miscalculated. His unprovoked aggression has met with a determined, unified, response from NATO and the EU and the sanctions imposed on him by a unified front are crippling his economy. In an impressive show of defiance of Putin and solidarity with the Ukrainian case, the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia visited last week with President Zelensky in Kyiv while it was under attack from Putin’s military. Most damaging to Putin is the determination by the West European countries that they made a strategic mistake in thinking that Russia, under the Putin regime, could be depended upon for the supply of a substantial part of their need for oil and gas without jeopardizing the security balance in Europe. The whole idea that by establishing strong economic ties between Russia and Western Europe, the Putin regime could be held in check and the peace in Europe could be maintained, is now out of the window. The mood in Western Europe has changed. Confronted with naked aggression from an authoritarian Russian regime, it has accepted the need for increased military spending, and it realizes better than before the value of the NATO alliance. Sweden and Finland that have sit on the sidelines and stayed out of NATO are now rethinking that position.

President Biden’s efforts to restore the Western alliance have been boosted unexpectedly and immensely by Putin’s folly. As of this writing Biden is on his way to visit Brussels and Warsaw and we should not be amazed if he would risk arranging an unannounced meeting with President Zelensky in Lviv or even Kyiv. It would give the Ukrainians an invaluable show of support and it would demonstrate for the whole world to see that Putin does not set the rules of engagement.

The risk, of course, is that in the face of such ongoing humiliation Putin will double down on the course he already has been forced to embark upon by the failures of his ground troops to capture territory: The indiscriminate targeting of Ukrainian civilians, infrastructure, and property from the air and from the sea. The near total destruction of Mariupol and Kharkiv gives evidence of his disregard for the rules of warfare, and we should take him seriously when he threatens the use of nuclear weapons in the face of continuing resistance by the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian people. US intelligence has warned of the probability that Putin will resort to the use of chemical or biological weapons if he can’t prevail using conventional means. Either way, the devastation in the Ukrainian cities, in only four weeks, is already of biblical proportions and the real question is: How long will NATO stand by and allow these atrocities to go unanswered. That question is likely to be the centerpiece of the talks later this week in Brussels and Warsaw.

What can the free world say or do to stop Putin from continuing his path of destruction? Is there a credible red line that the free world can draw and say to Putin “to here and no further” without triggering WWIII in the process?

I hope that the NATO leaders will agree this week to tell Putin that, if he continues to attack non-military targets in Ukraine with artillery, missiles, and bombs he exposes himself to NATO retaliation against Russian troops on Ukrainian soil. NATO should be prepared to target the invader with the same weapons that are used by Putin, but only if and to the extent the invader is present on Ukrainian territory. The justification for such intervention would be found in prevention of further crimes against humanity. The United Nations could show its continued relevance by having its General Assembly authorize such NATO intervention.

Others have written, and I agree, that it is high time that we deny Putin the right to dictate the rules of the game. He is the aggressor and should be stopped. And if sanctions alone don’t get the job done, we need to have the courage to resort to even more punishing action. We simply cannot stand by idle while he flattens one Ukrainian city after another. President Obama drew a redline in Syria and then backed off from enforcing it against Assad and Putin. President Biden should not make the same mistake. He should cash in on his credit with other Western leaders and get NATO to draw the line for Putin, preferably with a UN mandate. Putin should be told “stop here, or else” and he should be left under no illusion as to whether the ‘or else’ part will be enforced. Once the violence against civilians has ended, negotiations about the future of security arrangements in Europe can start.