WARMONGERS OR PEACNIKS?

Today, Wednesday, February 16, 2022, Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine.

This is the second month of a crisis involving an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine that has, thankfully, not yet materialized. With the 24-hour news cycles, it seems a lot longer. This particular bit of the crisis began last Friday afternoon when PBS NewsHour’s foreign policy correspondent, Nick Schifrin tweeted: “NEW: The US believes Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine and has communicated that decision to the Russian military, three Western and defense officials tell me.” A follow-up stated: “The US expects the invasion to begin next week, six US and Western officials tell me, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last night.” At the time the tweet went out, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was addressing the issue in a White House press conference, warning that - given all the Russian military movement U.S. intelligence had observed - there was a “very distinct possibility” that Russia would invade “on a very swift time frame.” But he stopped pretty far short of saying it would happen this week. “As we’ve said before, we are in the window when an invasion could begin at any time should Vladimir Putin decide to order it.”

He went on: “Now, we can’t pinpoint the day at this point, and we can’t pinpoint the hour, but what we can say is that there is a credible prospect that a Russian military action would take place, even before the end of the Olympics.” The media got hold of that and the next thing anyone knew, the Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! February 16!!! For sure!!

The Wall Street Journal reported Biden had told European leaders Putin had made a decision. Perhaps Biden had misspoken on that call, or his administration was willing to be specific with NATO allies but didn’t want to with the public.

Over the weekend a story started to coalesce.

That is that - for all the careful wording and anonymous walk-backs, this is exactly what the administraqtion wanted the media to do. Regardless of the Schifrin tweet, what Sullivan had said would have still sent the media into a panic, which now appears to be the point.

There is a view of Putin as being the guy who wants to be “inscrutable,” the guy whose next move is unknown and unknowable. So, if he had been planning a February 16 invasion, the Biden Administration telling the world would lead to his decision not to do so. As one analyst said last night on MSNBC, each day that this strategy works is a day when there isn’t a war in Ukraine. Given the United States will not engage militarily on Ukraine territory, keeping Putin at bay until the Pinsk Marshes - a huge swamp between Ukraine and Belarus that has been a major impediment to military actions in that part of the world forever - are no longer frozen. This would make the area less accessible to an invading Russian army. And that could make the entire prospect look less like it might succeed. Which would lead to it being called off.

President Obama correctly pointed out back when Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, that Ukraine means more to Russia than it does to the United States. This is partly a question of geography, as well as the intertwining histories and cultures of the two countries. But the c urrent situation is also a product of American fatigue over foreign intervention after the disastrous adventurism of the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thus, the Biden administration - which badly wants to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine - has few options if military intervention is out. Putin has come to see sanctions as a cost of doing geopolitical business: they are “overhead” rather than “deterrent.” Thus, the new strategy of carefully timed disclosures. Twice, the Biden administration has announced what it said were Russian plans for a false flag operation that could have given the Puting the pretext he was looking for to invade. Then they leaked that they had intercepted Russians talking about how mad they were about those leaks.

The weekend leaks were the result of a general belief before that, a certain kind of conventional wisdom, that Putin would wait until after the Olympics, so he wouldn’t anger Xi Jinping, the man he needs the most right now. With immediate conflict “on hold,” the pressure on Russia was easing. So the White House released information to blow up the idea Ukraine was safe until the Olympics were over. Not only had the troop build-up continued, but Putin was ready to pull the trigger. These well-timed links are what is known as “information warfare.”

Given that there is no “military option” available, I admire this diplomatic maneuvering. With luck, it might provide time for enough people - or maybe only Vladimir Putin - to stare into the abyss and decide not to jump in.

Perhaps proving the effectiveness of the administration’s actions over the weekend, yesterday Putin sent the news cycle spinning in reverse by announcing he is ready to negotiate and some Russian troops stationed at the Ukrainian border would be returning to their garrisons. And while everyone was talking about his move to de-escalate, Ukraine’s defense ministry and a major Ukrainian bank were crippled by a cyberattack.

As of today, 24 hours after the Kremlin said Russian troops were leaving Ukraine’s borders, NATO and the Western allies say it’s basically a lie. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said this morning in London that the U.K. has not seen “any evidence at the moment of that withdrawal. Physical observations that we see show the opposite of some of the recent rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this morning they’ve not “seen any de-escalation on the ground. On the contrary, it appears that Russia continues their military build up.” This was said at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Nobody knows what is really going on, and that is not a good thing. As Twain once said, history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. This feels to me an awful lot like that period between the day Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and August 1, 1914, when the war nobody wanted but everybody planned for finally broke out.

The nub of the matter to me, getting down to the heart of everything that has been going on, is this: Putin wants the power to dictate what security agreements Ukraine and other independent states can join. Up through the last century, such an arrangement was known as a “protectorate.” It’s about as clean-cut a case of imperialism as can be found today.

And yet, Peter Beinart has recently argued that we should recognize a capacious Russian “sphere of influence” in Eastern Europe and urged a “Finland model” of a neutral Ukraine. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has called for “compromise.” Compromise means giving each side part of what it wants. In this case, that means giving Russia partial dictatorial power and quasi-imperial control over Ukraine. That doesn’t sound like “progressive values” to me.

“Back in the day,” the democratic socialists knew a Stalinist when they saw one, and they knew that authoritarian “state socialism” was the anathema of what they advocated. American social democrats were among the most effective opponents of Stalinism in the years of the Show Trials before World War II, and among those who saw the danger that was growing in eastern Europe after World War II that American officialdom of the time wanted to ignore. This past January, the Democratic Socialists of America - the descendants of those people - called for recognition of Putin’s “legitimate concerns” regarding Ukraine and criticized the U.S. for pushing NATO to the Russian borders. Almost all of the “traditional” anti-war/anti-imperialist organizations in the American Left agree with this position.

One thing I know, having eastern European friends, is that the United States didn’t have to “sell” the countries of Eastern Europe on the value of being a member of the European Union and of NATO. The last thing any of them wanted was a return of the old Soviet/Russian empire.

Over the past ten years, I have had some surprising arguments with people I’ve known for 50-plus years, who “back then” were among the strongest advocates of democracy one could find anywhere. And over this time, many have somehow transformed into apologists for a third-rate ex-KGB agent who thinks the worst thing that happened in the past 30 years was the breakup of the USSR. I can remember these people protesting the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia and the end of the “Prague Spring” back in 1968. And those same people today tell me we have no business supporting the desire of Ukraine for democratic independence of Russia.

What’s amazing is that these people I know are now pushing the same line as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, who I know they claim to despise. The Left and the Right are now advocating the same policy, using different words.

U.S. global leadership throughout the Cold War was flawed, frequently counterproductive to its stated goals due to its failure to understand the nuances and political realities of its opponent, confused most of the time and - to be generous - ham-fisted, and inconsistent in advancing American ideals and actual American interests by supporting dictatorships throughout the “Third World.” I opposed it, strongly.

But here in this crisis, the U.S. opposes a “mafia” empire, ruled by the world’s richest man, that opposes and works to destroy every liberal principle at home and abroad, who imprisons the people who work for the kind of world my friends have always said they support, and yet the people I remember as the believers in democracy and our traditional ideals now see the former KGB Colonel, the admirer of Stalin and the Stalinism they used to oppose, as the guy they now support.

It breaks my heart to watch people I have known and respected for their principled politics end up like this.

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