The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-02)

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A29

R

ussian President Vladimir Pu-

tin’s invasion of Ukraine went

sideways within hours because

he misjudged the stubborn in-

dependence of the Ukrainian people. He

is a small man afraid to be in a room with

his own supporters. How would he

understand people afraid of nothing?

Still, given the dominance of blow-

hards in this incipient century, Putin

wasn’t the only one surprised to see the

world changed by six short words. Asked

if he wished to be evacuated to safety,

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky

replied: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Winston Churchill’s ghost is sick with

envy.

With six words, Zelensky jolted the

decadent democracies awake: Either

they help this man and his people, or

they give the world up to the likes of Mad

Vlad.

During a panel convened by the

American Academy in Berlin on Tues-

day, veteran German diplomat Wolfgang

Ischinger marveled at Putin’s strong

dose of unintended consequences:

“NATO strengthened... the European

Union united... the idea of the West

reaffirmed.” Yet, in a crisis likely to grow

much worse before it gets better, he

warned: “I’m not sure how solid these

are in the long term.”

Well. Putin has crossed his Rubicon

and burned his boats. He has shown in

Chechnya and Syria that he will bomb

civilian centers to rubble. But a nation

with Stalingrad in its past should know

that grandmothers who shoulder rifles

and youths who fashion gasoline bombs

will fight even in rubble. Western allies

can supply Ukraine’s resistance indefi-

nitely, but Russia is a third-rate econo-

my, already overstretched. Inevitably,

the time will come, whether slowly or

quickly, when Russian soldiers grow

tired of dying for a germophobic mob

boss in Moscow.

If, that is, the West remains solid.

Putin’s bluff has been called. Now let’s

look at his cards.

Though rising commodity prices re-

cently improved Russia’s cash position,

in broader terms the country is an

economic basket case. This was true even

before the developed world imposed

drastic sanctions. Russia’s 144 million

people together generate less gross do-

mestic product than the roughly 19.5 mil-

lion residents of New York state. Spain,

not exactly a dynamo, has twice the

nominal productivity of Russia.

The capacity of the West to produce

tank-killing missiles is virtually unlimit-

ed; Russia’s capacity to replace burned

tanks is paltry. Russia is a Potemkin

power. It has zero seaworthy aircraft

carriers — fewer than Thailand. The

only one it owns has been out of commis-

sion for years and might not survive

Russian “repairs.” A 70-ton crane fell on

it. It caught fire in dry dock. Then the dry

dock sank during a power outage.

As for his nukes: Putin loves to talk

about them. But nuclear weapons are of

no practical use except as defensive

shields. Contrary to Putin’s paranoid

ravings, no one has offensive designs

against Russia.

But there is a scenario by which Putin

escapes the noose he has placed around

his neck. By escalating the violence in

Ukraine, he might yet force the Zelensky

government into an insurgency and

install a de facto regime. Though fierce

resistance would continue, Putin would

gain control of the original Nord Stream

natural gas pipeline that runs overland

from Russia through Ukraine. Germany

— and others in Europe — would be

offered the seductive chance to buy

Putin’s gas while hiding behind the fig

leaf of the Nord Stream 2 sanctions.

That could be a fatal crack in the

strong allied response to Putin’s rape of

Ukraine. Zelensky’s courage has thrown

open a window of opportunity to be free

of Putin and Putinism. But the window

will slam shut if the West fails to make

hard choices. Europe must be more

energy-independent, starting with Ger-

many. Step 1: Keep the remaining nu-

clear power plants going. Step 2: Accel-

erate capacity to import liquid natural

gas.

The United States must revive its

fracking industry to produce more natu-

ral gas and should encourage Qatar to

increase production as well.

Another challenge will be weaning

the West from the laundered spoils of

Russian oligarchs. The glamour and

luxury of places such as London and

South Florida are propped up by Putin

and his friends. Without them, property

values are likely to fall. Switzerland

might find bank profits squeezed when

it purges itself of secret Russian ac-

counts.

Putin has one remaining superpower:

He is shameless. He does the West’s dirty

work, and it has taught him to hold the

West in contempt. He pumps oil and gas

so that Westerners can stay warm while

pretending to go green. He steals bil-

lions and diverts the money into West-

ern cities so that developers can build

more luxury condos and aircraft manu-

facturers can sell more private jets.

Six words from Zelensky have revived

the spirit of the world’s allied democra-

cies. But the temptation to vice always

creeps back. Putin will be beaten, unless

we defeat ourselves.

DAVID VON DREHLE

Zelensky

and the West

have called

Putin’s bluff

R

ecent images of Vladmir Putin

convey his isolation and arro-

gance. The Russian president

sits at the end of long tables in

the Kremlin, yards away from his

visitors — alone and aloof even as he

issues threats of nuclear war against

the West.

The inescapable question, as the

world watches Putin defy international

law to hammer Ukraine, is whether he is

a rational actor. Is he serving what he

sees as Russia’s national interests, or is

he a distraught dictator driven by an

obsessive desire to force Ukraine into a

neo-imperial dream?

Public discussion about Putin’s ra-

tionality has grown in recent days.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the vice

chairman of the Senate Intelligence

Committee, tweeted Friday that “some-

thing is off” with Putin. Sen. Mark

R. Warner (D-Va.), the committee’s

chairman, tweeted Monday that Putin

was “increasingly isolated.”

Based on Putin’s record and discus-

sions with U.S. officials, his mental

attitude appears to be more of a fixation

on Ukraine than a broader instability.

This isn’t necessarily comforting, given

Putin’s extraordinary willingness to take

chances where Ukraine is involved.

U.S. officials believe that Ukraine for

years has been Putin’s most sensitive

issue — one where his normal political

calculus doesn’t seem to apply. CIA

Director William J. Burns warned at a

business event this past December: “I

would never underestimate President

Putin’s risk appetite on Ukraine.” Putin

broods about Ukraine, rages about its

tilt toward the West, and schemes to

bring it back under Russian domination,

U.S. officials believe.

Putin’s fixation on Ukraine has been

complicated by the reversals Russia

faced in the first week of the war.

U.S. officials believe that when Putin

faces such stress, he draws inward,

toward a tight circle of hard-line advis-

ers. He tends to lash out at critics and

raises the stakes in an effort to intimi-

date adversaries.

“Rationality” is the X-factor in mili-

tary confrontations, especially those

that potentially involve nuclear weap-

ons. A leader’s seeming irrationality

might be his most compelling bargain-

ing chip. Think of a game of chicken:

When one driver throws away the steer-

ing wheel, the other driver will surely

swerve to avoid a crash.

Putin’s war hasn’t gone well, initially.

He misjudged resistance in Ukraine,

Europe and the United States. His vast

army might well succeed by flattening

Ukrainian cities and claiming “victory,”

but in the process, he will create a

festering wound at Russia’s side. He is

creating what might be a generation of

enemies.

Rather than make concessions that

might allow a face-saving settlement,

Putin has lashed out. Facing obstacles

during the first week of a limited

conventional war, he has threatened a

larger nuclear war. He announced Sun-

day that he was putting Russian nuclear

forces on “special combat readiness”

because of “aggressive comments” in

the West.

There’s a worrying mismatch of asym-

metric threats here. President Biden has

studiously tried to avoid a direct mili-

tary confrontation, saying in the hours

after Russia’s invasion that “our forces

... will not be engaged in the conflict
with Russia in Ukraine.” But at the same
time, the United States and its allies
have gone to war economically, impos-
ing crippling sanctions that could, over
time, destroy the foundations of Russia’s
modern economy.
How does Putin see this confronta-
tion? Judging from his writings and
speeches, Putin might believe he
launched a limited military war to
enforce a Russian “red line” that he has
expressed publicly for a dozen years.
Rather than acceding, the West has
responded with total economic war.
Putin’s countermove has been to jump
domains, invoking the nuclear threat.
Putin’s behavior follows the script of
Thomas Schelling in his classic 1960
study of brinkmanship, “The Strategy
of Conflict.” Reckless behavior could be
a useful bargaining tactic, Schelling
argued. “A careless or even self-destruc-
tive attitude toward injury — ‘I’ll cut a
vein in my arm if you don’t let me.. .’ —
can be a genuine strategic advantage;
so can a cultivated inability to hear or
comprehend, or a reputation for fre-
quent lapses of self-control.”
The Biden administration initially
tried to shrug off Putin’s attempt to play
the nuclear card. Asked Monday if
Americans should be worried about
Putin’s threat, Biden responded simply,
“No.” Press secretary Jen Psaki said the
administration saw “no reason to
change our own alert levels.” Against
Putin’s irrational threat, she countered
with the rational response: “Everybody
knows that that is not a war that can be
won.” Putin’s response was to reiterate
the nuclear alert.
As we think about ladders of escala-
tion, America is near the top of its
chosen domain of economic war. Putin
has brought that devastation on himself;
he has doomed his presidency, irrevoca-
bly. But in the weeks and months ahead,
America and its allies will need to allow
Russia an exit ramp to escape this folly —
or face ever-rising danger.

DAVID IGNATIUS

Distraught

dictator or

rational actor?

A

fter her fellow Republicans

booted her from party leader-

ship last year, Rep. Liz Cheney

posed a question: “Do we hate

our political adversaries more than we

love our country?”

Now, with Vladimir Putin’s invasion

of Ukraine, Republicans are answering

that question — in the affirmative.

The dictator is betting that division

within the United States will sap

American resolve and thereby sow

disunity between the United States and

European democracies — allowing him

to crush Ukraine’s democracy and

potentially others. And Republicans

are giving him what he wants. They are

so determined to see President Biden

fail that they would let President Putin

succeed.

Tuesday night’s State of the Union

address, coming six days after Russia

started the biggest war in Europe since

1944, offered a timely opportunity to

showcase national unity for Putin, and

the world. During a similar address to

Congress after the 9/11 attacks, Presi-

dent George W. Bush enveloped Demo-

cratic congressional leaders in bear

hugs. But this time, a number of

Republicans boycotted Biden’s address,

ostensibly because they objected to

getting tested for the coronavirus.

Those in the chamber rose to ap-

plaud the Ukrainian ambassador, and

many wore Ukraine’s yellow and blue.

But as Biden extolled national unity —

“He thought he could divide us at

home, in this chamber, in this nation.

... But Putin was wrong.” — Republican

lawmakers sniped at him on Twitter.

“Joe Biden sought to appease Vladi-

mir Putin from the very beginning,”

wrote Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). “Biden is

empowering our enemies.”

“The United States is back to leading

from behind under President Biden,”

tweeted Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-

Tenn.). “This is the second time Putin

has invaded a foreign country while Joe

Biden has been in the White House.”

How deep was the contempt? As

Biden mentioned the cancers that kill

many U.S. veterans, including his own

son Beau, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co-

lo.) heckled the president.

GOP leaders had set the blame-

Biden tone earlier in the day. Rep.

Michael McCaul (Tex.), the top Repub-

lican on the House Foreign Affairs

Committee, likened Biden’s actions

toward Russia to Neville Chamberlain’s

appeasement of Hitler, saying, “We

have a weak president, and he’s creat-

ing a very dangerous world.”

Also Tuesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik

(N.Y.), the No. 3 House GOP leader, said

Biden “failed to engage in meaningful

deterrence against Russian aggres-

sion,” and asserted that “the war on

Ukraine represents one of the greatest

foreign policy failures in modern his-

tory.”

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy

(Calif.) and Rep. Steve Scalise (La.), the

House GOP whip, amplified the attacks

on Biden over Ukraine. And Sen. John

Barrasso (Wyo.), head of the Senate

Republican Conference, said Biden’s

“policies from Day One have enabled,

emboldened Vladimir Putin to do what

he has done,” adding that it’s “as if

Vladimir Putin were Joe Biden’s secre-

tary of energy.”

Some Republican candidates have

even been fundraising off calling Biden

“weak” on Ukraine.

The relentless assault no doubt un-

dermines Biden — but it also weakens

America. Biden’s response — the U.S.

response — can be only as strong as

Republicans allow. By sabotaging the

commander in chief, Republican lead-

ers have made it more difficult to rally

the nation to accept wartime sacrifices

(accepting higher energy prices or,

potentially, lost American lives).

A poll released Monday by Yahoo

News-YouGov shows how corrosive the

Republican assaults on Biden have

been. Though Americans overwhelm-

ingly call the Ukraine invasion unjusti-

fied, Trump voters actually had a more

favorable opinion of Putin than of

Biden. Ninety-five percent of Trump

voters expressed an unfavorable view

of Biden (including 87 percent holding

a very unfavorable view), compared

with 78 percent of Trump voters ex-

pressing an unfavorable view of Putin

(60 percent very unfavorable). Only

3 percent of Trump voters said Biden is

“doing a better job leading his country”

than Putin, while 47 percent said the

dictator, who has brought isolation and

economic crisis to Russia, is doing a

better job than Biden.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Trump,

while opposing the Ukraine invasion,

has called “peacekeeper” Putin’s ac-

tions “very savvy,” “genius” and

“smart,” while “our leaders are dumb.”

That’s a bit rich, after Trump threat-

ened to blow up NATO, unsuccessfully

tried to persuade other world leaders

to readmit Russia to the Group of

Seven and infamously tried to condi-

tion military aid to Ukraine on the

country’s willingness to provide Trump

with political dirt on Democrats. Re-

publican lawmakers defended Trump

by parroting Russian propaganda

falsely blaming Ukraine for 2016

U.S. election sabotage, which Russia

actually did.

But this isn’t the time to point

fingers at political opponents. It’s time

to confront the real enemy. Do Republi-

can leaders know the difference?

In the official GOP response to the

State of the Union, Iowa Gov. Kim

Reynolds picked up the blame-Biden

theme, accusing him of “focusing on

political correctness rather than mili-

tary readiness” before the Ukraine

invasion. “Weakness on the world stage

has a cost,” she charged.

It does. And Republicans, by under-

mining Biden in a time of war, risk

making America pay.

DANA MILBANK

Republicans so want Biden to fail,

they would let Putin succeed

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

President Biden, flanked by Vice President Harris, delivers his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

make Russia pay “dearly, economically

and strategically,” and to make Putin a

“pariah on the international stage.” Ger-

many announced it will add $100 billion to

its military spending, twice its annual

level; other European countries will fol-

low. There’s talk of adding Sweden and

Finland to NATO. And Putin’s decision to

put Russian nuclear weapons on alert will

surely launch a new arms buildup, acceler-

ating the trillion-dollar “modernization”

already underway in the United States.

Indeed, we should expect ringing calls

to arms for a decades-long battle against

authoritarianism. These cries will ema-

nate from a foreign policy establishment

that has been discredited by its serial

debacles from Iraq to Libya to Afghani-

stan, but that will nevertheless seek to

consolidate bipartisan and militarized

support anew. Already an armchair war-

rior at the Atlantic Council has called on

the United States to prepare to fight Rus-

sia and China at the same time — and

double our military budget to do so.

What’s lacking here is any sense of

proportion or grasp on reality. The new

Cold War will sap resources and attention

from pressing dangers we already face.

More than 900,000 people have died from

the coronavirus in this country alone, with

many more permanently injured. Conta-

gions will continue to wreak havoc with-

out a dramatic upgrading of public health

capacity at home and around the world.

The plight of hundreds of thousands of

refugees from Ukraine is wrenching; at

the same time, a report by the Internation-

al Federation of Red Cross and Red Cres-

cent Societies estimates that the majority

of the nearly 31 million people displaced

C

ommentators argue that Vladimir

Putin’s war on Ukraine has over-

turned the postwar world order.

But the reality is perhaps more

dangerous than that.

Yes, Putin’s indefensible invasion has

been transformative, violating interna-

tional law and fueling a perilous escala-

tion of violence. We have witnessed the

heart-rending suffering of Ukrainians, in-

cluding the 350,000 already forced to flee;

the bravery unfairly required of people

lining up to donate blood or organize

resistance; the more than 6,000 arrests of

antiwar demonstrators in Russia.

But none of this has forged a new world

order; Putin has simply (and brutally)

reasserted Russia’s role. The old order —

with its Cold War attitudes, militaries,

alliances and enmities — is reclaiming

center stage.

NATO, adrift since the Soviet Union

ended, now claims new purpose and en-

ergy. Hawks in Russia and the United

States alike are emboldened. Weapons-

makers are drawing up plans to profit in

the coming arms buildup, and ideologues

and demagogues are dusting off familiar

rhetoric. China, clearly helping Russia

mitigate its sanctions, now weighs heavily

in the balance.

As this old reality settles back in, we will

pay a continuing price for ignoring

George F. Kennan, the grand strategist of

containment who warned that expanding

NATO to Russia’s borders after the col-

lapse of the Soviet Union was bound to

lead to “the beginning of a new Cold War”

— and all its folly.

Concrete steps are already leading us

that way. President Biden has vowed to

in 2020 were fleeing weather catastro-

phes. The World Bank says extreme

weather will displace more than 200 mil-

lion people over the next three decades.

So what can stand in the way of this

wasteful Cold War revival? In Ukraine, the

hope is that the global outrage will lead

Russia to negotiate a cease-fire. The Minsk

Accords, terms hammered out in 2015 but

never implemented, could offer the out-

lines of a settlement. They essentially

guarantee Ukraine independence in ex-

change for neutrality.

The intense diplomacy spurred by the

crisis should also lead to new thinking

about security: Could security focus first

on building the cooperation needed to

address pandemics and climate change?

Could it create institutions that divert

resources from the entrenched institu-

tions of war?

Rather than build up weaponry in Eu-

rope, could the United States initiate ne-

gotiations about shared security, disarma-

ment and a military stand-down? Could

this war lead us to think more seriously

about how to build peace rather than how

to build weapons?

What’s needed above all is a courageous

and transnational citizens’ movement de-

manding not simply the end of the war on

Ukraine but also an end to perpetual wars.

We need political leaders who will speak

out about our real security needs and

resist the reflex to fall into old patterns

that distract from the threats we can no

longer afford to ignore.

By invading Ukraine, Putin demands a

return to just that archaic and obsolete

Cold War order. The world would be wise

not to accede.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL

We must end the war on Ukraine