Americans want an autonomous Ukraine to survive. They hope the West will prevent the strangulation of Ukraine and NATO by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, the United States does not want its troops to venture across the world to Europe’s backyard to fight nuclear Russia and ensure that Ukraine remains independent.
Most Americans are opposed to the notion that Russia can simply dictate Ukraine’s future.
However, they also reluctantly accept that Ukraine has often been part of Russia historically. During World War II, it was the bloody scene of the simultaneous sacrifice of Russians and Ukrainians – more than 5 million dead – to defeat the Nazi German invasion.
Americans publicly support NATO.
However, most fear that NATO has become diplomatically impotent and a military illusion, a modern League of Nations.
NATO members have a collective gross domestic product seven times that of Russia. Its aggregate population is 1 billion. However, most will not spend enough on defense to stop their weaker enemies.
NATO’s second largest member, Turkey, is closer to Russia than to the United States. Your people vote against the Americans.
Germany is the richest European member of NATO and the power behind the European Union. However, Germany will soon be dependent on Russian natural gas imports for much of its energy needs.
In a recent Pew Research Center poll, 70% of Germans expressed a desire for more cooperation with Russia. Most Americans think just the opposite.
Worse, 60% of Germans are opposed to going to the rescue of any NATO country in times of war. More than 70% of Germans rate their relationship with the United States as “bad”.
We can translate all these disturbing results as follows: the German and Turkish people like or trust Russia more than their own NATO godfather, the United States.
They would not support participation in any joint NATO military effort even against an invading Russia – even, or especially, if led by the unpopular United States.
So suppose the two key NATO members are either indifferent to the fate of neighboring Ukraine or sympathetic to Russia’s stated grievances – or both.
Indeed, most Americans fear that if Ukraine becomes a member of NATO, Putin may be even more eager to test his sovereignty.
Putin assumes that not all NATO members would intervene to help an attacked Ukraine, as required by their mutual defense obligations under Article 5.
If they didn’t, Putin could absorb Ukraine and break up the NATO alliance in one fell swoop.
There are more complications in the Ukrainian mess.
President Joe Biden, in wild statements, confirmed Putin’s bet that the United States is currently divided, confused, weakened and poorly led.
Putin knows that the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seem more concerned about “white privilege” and climate change than about increasing military readiness to stop enemies like him.
Putin sees in polls that only 45% of Americans trust their new politicized military.
The flight from Afghanistan, Putin still conjectures, has made the United States less feared by enemies and less trusted by allies.
The earlier failed American policy of Russian “reset”, the appeasement of Putin’s aggressions during the Obama years, along with the invented hoax of “Russian collusion”, all encouraged – and angered – Putin.
He knows that Donald Trump has left office unpopular. So he assumes that with Trump gone, American deterrence against Russia has also disappeared.
Trump’s now-rejected agenda was to boost American and NATO defenses and pump oil and gas to bring down the global price of Russia’s main source of foreign exchange.
Putin was once furious that Trump unilaterally left an asymmetrical US-Russia missile deal. Trump ordered the use of lethal force against a large number of Russian mercenaries who attacked a US installation in Syria. He sold offensive weapons to Ukraine. He acted by force by eliminating terrorist enemies such as the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the Islamist Abu al-Baghdadi and ISIS itself.
With the death of Putin’s nemesis Trump, Russia assumes that the Obama-Biden administration’s years of appeasement are back. As in 2014, once again Putin is moving against his neighbors.
Finally, there is the unfortunate role of recent Ukrainian government officials. Some were deeply involved in green-lighting the Biden family’s fraud and speculation to secure massive American foreign aid.
Some Ukrainian expats and current government officials have worked with the American left to secure Trump’s first impeachment.
Now, Ukrainians are exasperated that their previous meddling in American domestic politics backfired with Biden’s disastrous presidency — and his apparent de facto acceptance of an inevitable Russian annexation.
Where does all this mess leave the United States?
In trouble.
Putin is undermining a sovereign nation, cracking NATO and, if successful, could continue Ukraine’s model of slow compression in the Baltic States and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, China smiles, hoping that Ukraine’s plan can be used against Taiwan.
Exasperated Americans fear that Putin will be deterred by neither sanctions nor arms sales, but follows only his own sense of cost-effective self-interest.
©2022 The Daily Signal. Published with permission. original in english.
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