The television analysts keep asking: "Why Ukraine? Why now?" Having spent a lot of time in Poland, a former Warsaw Pact country and done NATO war games in Ukraine let me suggest some answers to those questions.
The television analysts keep asking: "Why Ukraine? Why now?" Having spent a lot of time in Poland, a former Warsaw Pact country and done NATO war games in Ukraine let me suggest some answers to those questions.
Why Ukraine? Why now? Putin’s dilemma.
The Russians have been gathering troops around Ukraine for months. I have written several pieces cautioning about what’s going to happen. Putin sent the tanks and troops into Donbas February 21, 2022. Biden and the NATO allies issued sanctions. Putin continues to demand NATO pull back forces to the early 1990’s geographic areas and deny entry to any more Eastern Nations. He wants to return to the Cold War era boundaries. We refuse.
He has now launched a full-on invasion of Ukraine. The battle looks grim for Ukraine. They’ve mobilized their reserves, armed volunteers and are urging civilians to take up Molotov cocktails to fight Russian armor. The Ukrainian president vows to never surrender.
People forget or never learn history. Although the Russian language and Ukrainian is very similar and many claim common ancestral background, Russia has often dominated Ukraine. Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s. Hatred of Russians was so great that after Nazi Germany pushed Soviet troops out of Ukraine, many Ukrainians joined with the Nazis to fight the Communist Soviet Union armies. While there is a subset of Ukrainians who would welcome return to the Soviet Union, the majority view the west more favorably with its dynamic economy and democratic values.
I am currently reading Britain’s War, 1937-1941 Into Battle by Daniel Todman, which I ordered a couple of weeks ago. The historical resemblance to the events of the late 1930’s is uncanny. Putin is acting in so many ways in the same manner as Hitler.
Putin pinched off Crimea. He has claimed Eastern Ukraine is ethnically Russian, indeed he claims all of Ukraine and Belarus is Russian. Just as Hitler did with Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. As France and Britain did with Hitler, the Western allies have allowed Putin his violations of international law in Georgia, Ukraine and Transnistria, not to mention Syria.
Our misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, caused us to pay too little attention to Putin’s machinations. We were stretched too thin militarily, diplomatically and politically to do more than simply voice objection to his military conquests.
Based on the geographic location of Crimea and Georgia, as well as discord among the NATO allies as to a response, we were at a distinct disadvantage in any type of military response. Russia still holds a distinct geographic advantage in Ukraine, but with Poland as an immediate neighbor to the west, NATO and the US is better positioned to respond.
Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are all front-line states and are adamant about staying out of the Russian orbit. There is little doubt that the other NATO nations which were formerly part of the Warsaw Pact are firmly committed to the Western alliance.
TV analysts and diplomats are all asking why now? Why is Putin risking the peace that Europe has largely seen since 1945?
As a retired general, who spent a significant amount of time in Poland and a brief period with NATO soldiers in Ukraine, as well as a former Congressman with a couple of years on the House Armed Service Committee, I have a couple of thoughts. I’m not a psychologist so I won’t speculate on Putin’s state of mind, but his public pronouncements make clear that he longs for a return to the grandeur of the Soviet Union and its position as one of two principal actors on the world stage. Were Putin able to restore Russia to that position of preeminence his place in Russian history books would be assured.
Why now and not last year or next year or a decade from now?
1. Time marches on. Putin will be seventy-years-old October 7, 2022. Most people are contemplating their mortality by that age. How many more years does he have to restore the Russian Empire?
2. The United States has pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq and is in the process of reconstituting its military. The war in Aghanistan consumed much of the training time and dollars of the American military machine. By ending that war, President Joe Biden freed up the defense dollars spent there to be refocused. While American strategists are, or were, prior to the events in Ukraine, focused on China, rather than Russia, Putin does not want to face an American military ready to fight a peer opponent rather than trained and equipped to fight the guerilla tactics of the Taliban.
3. Putin prefers to face a disunited NATO. The four years of Donald Trump attacking NATO weakened its unity. The Biden administrations emphasis on rebuilding bridges with NATO allies could only strengthen NATO solidarity with time.
4. With Europe’s increasing use of renewable energy, particularly Germany’s, over fossil fuels, Russian leverage, with its oil and gas exports to Europe, will lessen with time. Arguably European dependence on Russian energy would have increased when Nord Stream II came online, but that dependence would have required waiting a couple of years which would cost Russia the advantages in one through three. In 2019 oil and gas revenues amounted to approximately thirty-five per cent of the Russian national government’s revenue. Should those revenues shrink it will cause severe problems for the Russian government and economy.
5. The Russian economy shrank more than twelve per cent from 2019 to 2020, based on its gross domestic product. Such economic shrinkage will almost certainly cause Putin’s popularity to likewise shrink, should it continue. The ongoing western sanctions imposed for the Crimean and Donbas incursions are likely to continue Russian economic shrinkage.
6. Should he wait longer to bring Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit, Ukraine will only increase its ties to Western Europe and continue to seek NATO membership, which is intolerable for Putin and Russian imperialists.
Although Russia’s military is the largest in Europe and has the largest tank force in the world, its economy is only the fifth largest in Europe and only ranks eleventh in the world. Its nuclear forces are capable of world-wide destruction. A nuclear confrontation between Russia and the US risks devastation of a level never known.
While Putin oversaw a nuclear exercise a few days ago, thus increasing the level of saber rattling, would he really risk nuclear war? A rational actor we believe would never do so. However, we are basing that belief on our thought processes. Do his thought processes work similarly? Even if they do and he has no intention of letting Russian actions against Ukraine spiral out of control into nuclear war, once the dogs of war are let slip one cannot predict the consequences.
There are those who say this is the Europeans problem, not ours. The problem with this rationale is that twice in the last century a European problem became our problem. We fought two world wars because we failed to take early action. In fact, if we exclude the Mexican War, every external conflict we have fought as a nation has involved European nations as combatants, whether as allies or enemies.
If Putin is allowed to absorb Ukraine by force, it will increase Russian population by a third and its GDP by more than ten per cent. It would push Russia’s western border nearly eight hundred miles to the west to NATO member Poland. All of which would increase Russian power and ability to intimidate neighboring nations. None of which is a recipe for world peace.
© William L Enyart 2022
Email: bill@billenyart.com
Audio production by: Tom Calhoun, www.paguytom.com