131 - Investing in Ukraine's Future, to Save America and the World
Every penny that an American taxpayer contributes to strengthening the Ukrainian nation as its people confront relentless Russian bombardments amid the dark, dank, depressing, all-enveloping misery of Putin’s pointless war, is an investment in America’s own sense of right and justice. Our own freedom as Americans and the freedom of much of the world depends on defeating Putin, his missiles, his drones, and his vainglorious attempt to destroy the fundamental foundations of world order and international legality. Restoring/protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty will help measurably to buttress the ability of the globe’s myriad nations to improve the lives and livelihoods of their citizens and provide the security that every citizen everywhere craves.
By supporting Ukraine’s defensive war we are investing in the American as well as the Ukrainian peoples and their future. At first, ten months ago, the Pentagon feared the rapid conquest of Ukraine by rampaging Russian legions. But their drive toward Kyiv underestimated the staunch resolve and tactical ingenuity of the Ukrainian generals and their decentralized corps of defenders and recklessly assumed that Ukraine would buckle.
As I wrote months ago (#9, “Strong Leadership Distinguishes Good and Evil,” March 16), President Volodymyr Zelensky proved equal to the leadership challenges of an unjust and pointless invasion. By demonstrating the importance of integrity and moral righteousness amid aggrandizing terror, and by depriving Putin’s actions of any, even flimsy, shreds of legitimacy, Zelensky brilliantly rallied his troops, his civilians, and his allies behind a cause that now rightly has become the cause of the free world. If we in the West can continue to help Zelensky and his people resist the Russians, so embattled and repressed peoples like the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Rohingya, Indian Muslims, and Afghani women, can stand tall, and closer to their own releases from oppression. Those innumerable Africans and Southeast Asians who endure kleptocratic dictatorship can take hope. Taiwanese, fearful of an invasion from the mainland, can also gain confidence in their future if Putin is at last contained.
The alternative for all of these peoples, and for ourselves, for the countries of NATO and Europe, is otherwise much too calamitous to contemplate.
Alas, we are in no sense anywhere near to realizing closure with regard to Putin’s reckless war. Yes, Ukraine’s valiant fighting forces have taken back territory from the Russians in the east and in the south, notably regaining Kharkiv and part of Kherson. Yes, Ukraine’s partisans and secret operatives have managed a few strikes behind Russian lines, two at least deep into Russia. With the arrival of rocket launchers and heavy ordnance from the U. S. and the West, Ukraine has also pushed Russian artillery farther back from the front lines and given Ukrainians some hope of halting Russian advances – at least for now.
But Russia is using this winter’s enforced pause to train possibly 300,000 raw recruits and to redouble the manufacture of the artillery shells and other materiel of war that are in short supply. Every day that Ukraine is unable to launch damaging assaults on the Russians is a day that enables Russia to regroup and rearm. If Ukraine could, weather and equipment permitting, strike irrefutably damaging blows, then the tide could conceivably turn in their and our favor.
If not, Russia will continue to pummel Kyiv, Odesa, and Kryvyi Rih from the air with missiles launched from ships in the Black Sea and from Russia, and with kamikaze drones supplied by Iran. When the Patriot Missile system and other additions to Ukrainian defenses arrive, fewer of these missiles will strike. Already Ukraine is managing to shoot down most of the slow flying drones, with their lawnmower sounding engines – but not all. The ones that get through, and the missiles, are wreaking havoc on Ukraine’s electricity supplies, taxing resiliency, and making the word immiserate an accurate descriptor.
Zelensky and his generals are predicting a major Russian offensive in February or March. It is incumbent on the West to deny Russia the kind of combat respite that would make such a renewed offensive possible. That means attacking Russia head on — now. We should also warn Belarus from giving aid and comfort to Putin in any way.
The immediate task for the West is thus to give Ukraine the wherewithal not only to defend against the air assaults but also to counter the missiles and drones at launch. Or, if NATO and Washington are finally ready, to do so themselves. A U. S. enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine (similar to the one we imposed over Iraqi Kurdistan) would do the job. The risk, as I and others have written before, of thus provoking Putin is less dangerous and destructive than the damage to Ukrainian morale and the giving to Putin of more reason to keep pummeling Ukraine. (See #17, “To Save Europe is to Save the World,” March 28; and #122, “Give Thanks to Ukraine, and Saving Civilian Lives,” November 25). Putin’s main reason for doing so is to bring the West and Ukraine to a negotiating table, and to gain time. We must not give Putin any such advantages.
The West failed to chasten Putin when he invaded Georgia and Syria, and then grabbed Crimea and Ukraine’s east. This year’s invasion of the rest of Ukraine was the payoff. We must not yield again to a despot’s depredations. Hence the urgent need to stop Putin definitively soon, not to let the dark raping of Ukraine continue. That means destroying drones as they are delivered and prepared for use and obliterating missile launch sites. The investment in doing so will be much less than that required to sustain Ukraine after Russia once again invades. Moreover, giving Putin impunity from Western attack only prolongs the war and the dangers that he and his cohort pose. This is the precise moment for resolve in Washington to show itself.
Subscribers:
Happy holidays to subscribers, wherever you are reading this Newsletter and wherever you are spending the last days of this eventful and calamitous year. I wish each of my readers a happy and joyous New Year. Let us hope that fewer people will be killed in 2023 by gun violence or in war, and that food supplies arrive for those millions who are hungry and insecure.
I will travel this week and next, so this column will pause. But I will return to inboxes in 2023. Thank you so much for reading and commenting incisively in 2022.