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Bipartisan Support For Paying Soldiers, Just Not Ours
Foreign Aid’s Outsized Role in Our Foreign Policy
by Scott Kelly
Congress decided to show its ass again this past week, barely accomplishing the bare minimum of keeping the government open as we all got to observe that while there may be adults in the room, they have no idea where their kids are.
In the backdrop of the pending government shutdown and ouster of the speaker of the house by hardliners in his own party, we saw politicians in both houses wringing their hands and decrying the final deal that was struck to keep the government temporarily open because it lacked funding to pay the troops and keep them supplied.
Not ours, mind you, but Ukraine’s. We saw members of both parties offended that in order to avoid a shutdown and keep their own troops paid and their families out of soup kitchen lines, they had to table approving further funding for Ukraine, funding that less than half the American public supports. We saw Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill) vote against the temporary funding measure because it lacked Ukraine funding, Sen. Michel Bennet (D-Colo.) hold up the bill in the senate, all while republican senators blamed house democrats for not voting down the measure when it was originally brought due to a lack of Ukraine funding.
The ridiculousness of the whole situation aside, it does tie back to the larger question of what purpose does American foreign aid spending serve and how is it justified when it takes dollars away from domestic priorities. What’s the case for funding a war in Ukraine, corona virus research labs in China, and wells in Africa, when we have a homelessness crisis, crumbling infrastructure, and ongoing disaster recovery efforts at home?
How Foreign Aid is Critical to Our Security
Foreign aid, in one form or another, has been key to America’s foreign policy and national security strategy in the post World War II era. The clearest example of this was the Marshal Plan, America’s effort to rebuild Europe. The success of this effort to finance Europe’s reconstruction was instrumental to our national security by gaining us a suite of powerful allies to both trade with and later enter security agreements with. There wouldn’t be a strong NATO alliance to stand up to the Soviet Union if it hadn’t been for the benevolent foresight of the makers of the Marshall Plan, funded mind you at the same time we drastically expanded benefits for veterans through the G.I. Bill and managing to continue paying for FDR’s “new deal” policies at home.
President Kennedy formalized U.S. foreign aid as a key policy tool, creating the Peace Corps and consolidating a myriad of different aid programs under USAID in the State Department, with the goal of fostering economic development abroad. This had two objectives. First, to get more and more countries involved in global trade, based on the belief that a rising tide raises all ships and that countries that trade with each other rarely fight each other. And second, to counter the spread of authoritarian communism by seeding capitalism and, it was believed then and now, through it democracy (China has become a great example of where this failed epically, but that’s a whole other topic). Foreign aid spending, for military, economic, or “humanitarian” reasons has now become a routine part of U.S. foreign policy, with 69 billion dollars spent in 2022 alone. This is only 1% of the 6.27 trillion dollars the federal government spent that year, but are we getting value for our money?
Too Much of A Good Thing?
The value of U.S. foreign aid is a hotly debated subject. It’s easy in retrospect to look back at the efforts undertaken in the immediate aftermath of World War II and find ways to directly credit them with staving off future conflict. After all, without the economic recovery in western European states brought on by the Marshall Plan the NATO alliance would never have been possible, or at least not as effective at deterring soviet aggression. As we get deeper into the second half of the 20th century though, the record becomes more mixed.
Perhaps the statesmen that lived through World War II had a clearer vision of the true nature of geopolitics than those who followed and so were able to wield aid more deftly. Perhaps we became victims of our own success following the end of the Cold War, assuming that aid could solve all ills, and feeling secure in the belief that as long as we supported development everywhere, we minimized the odds of having to fight anywhere. The long, costly failures of our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror despite prolific military and economic aid to both countries have highlighted the limits of what aid can accomplish in the most painful way possible, and China’s increasing authoritarianism as they emerge as our chief geopolitical rival has shown that blindly bankrolling another nation’s integration into the global economy does not guarantee that country will become more democratic or a better global neighbor.
Coming Full Circle
Which brings us back to the current day. Is funding Ukraine’s defense critical to our national security? Is there a limiting principle at play? Is it likely to change the outcome of the conflict as we watch Ukraine’s much vaunted counteroffensive make minimal progress and Russia’s economy continue to function despite what were supposed to be crippling sanctions? McCarthy torpedoed his own career and in doing so kept our troops out of the breadline for 45 more days, but is this really something to play chicken over between political factions when it directly affects our own uniformed men and woman’s ability to keep chicken on the dinner table at home?
The obvious answer to most Americans appears to elude our politicians. Perhaps we shouldn’t single out this one instance too much. Perhaps it’s too much to hope, given the current state of politics in America, that our elected leaders could have a mature conversation about what America’s priorities are, and how to best allocate our limited resources to address those priorities. What can be said is that when a plurality of our politicians are so concerned with the possibility they may not be able to pay for someone else’s military that they are willing to entertain the notion that it makes sense to risk not being able to pay our own, something is deeply broken in the heart of our politics.
The Dollar Dethroned
by Scott Kelly
Time to stock up on bitcoin, bourbon and bullets as the U.S. dollar falls under attack and will soon be worthless. At least, according to some of the latest headlines. The BRICS nations are declaring their intention to break away and form their own currency club, creating a competitor to the dollar that will further accelerate the decline of American power abroad and put us on increasingly unstable financial footing. The use of the dollar as the world’s global currency has been a boon to American prosperity in the post World War II era, elevating the status of our banks, allowing us to finance our deficit spending, and giving us the ability to impose unilateral sanctions to support our foreign policy objectives. So, what are the odds of BRICS pulling this off?
The BRICS nations are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, with a few other smaller players as well. How did all of these nations get together? Goldman Sachs in the early 2000s made up a new acronym to describe a group of developing nations with strong economies. That’s it. There’s nothing else holding these countries together, other than eventually a few of them started to drink the kool aid and talk about a new alliance they were going to form to create an alternative to the dollar backed global financial system. A key talking point in all of their meetings has been how they’re going to start trading amongst each other in a currency other than the dollar, specifically to curtail America’s influence in their affairs. Sounds great, and on paper it might look like they could pull it off, but this would actually cause more problems for the BRICS nations than it would solve.
First of all, to do this, either they all need to agree to use one of their existing national currencies, or create a new one. The only country with a monetary supply large enough to use their own currency would be China. However, 99% of China’s currency is kept at home, a deliberate decision by the Chinese Communist Party to help insulate the Chinese economy from larger fluctuations in global markets, and allowing them to manipulate it freely to maintain the ability to cheaply export goods. Using their own currency as the medium exchange for other nations at any meaningful scale would take power away from the CCP, and they’re not going to let that happen. Even if they wanted to, other nations would have to trust the CCP to not manipulate its currency whenever it felt it was in their interest to do so, and that’s a big ask. Especially for a nation like India, who has seen ongoing border clashes between its military and China’s and is an active competitor for influence in the Asia Pacific.
To create a new, common currency for exchange would also create problems. If it was adopted as the common currency among nations domestically as well as for international trade, it means each country would have to rely on the others to follow the agreed upon rules for banking practices and the fortunes of one country would affect the value of the currency in others. This has already proven difficult within the European Union with Britain leaving the alliance over just such concerns. It’s almost impossible to imagine that the BRICS nations, with differing forms of government, cultures, economic interests, and spread out across multiple continents on different sides of the world would be able to effectively do what Europe has barely managed to pull off. The level of transparency between the nations central banking systems would be politically impossible domestically, as it would curtail the ability of the current regime in each nation to hide financial issues (insolvency, corruption, etc) from their own populations. This is much more of a problem for some BRICS countries than others, but is still a huge barrier to overcome.
The real issue behind why the BRICS nations will likely never be able to create a meaningful alternative to the dollar is the most basic issue behind the creation of any currency, trust. No one country in the BRICS group has a reason to trust any other. In fact it’s the issue of trust that causes almost everyone in the world to use the U.S. dollar. The dollar is backed by the largest economy in the world, with a well regulated banking system and legal system that creates transparency around who possesses how much of the currency and what its current value is.
Yes, the Federal Reserve changes interest rates whenever it wants and Congress prints money like crazy, but they’re transparent about it, and countries abroad have little need to worry that a change in U.S. administration would radically adjust the value of the dollar or their ability to use it for commerce. No one needs to trust each other, as long as they trust America to be transparent about its finances, however foolish those finances may sometimes look.
So for now the dollar may lose some global market share to countries entering bilateral agreements, or expanded use of other well established currencies such as the Euro, but it’s not going anywhere, while the most valuable thing about a hypothetical BRICS currency is the headlines and talking points it produces for pundits and politicians.
Weaponizing ORAN to Beat China
by Scott Kelly
The COVID-19 pandemic shined a light on how critical the infrastructure that connects us in the information age is, as well as how much leverage China has amassed over the global economy. This has fueled an acceleration of creating new technologies that will enable highspeed nationwide 5G coverage, while finding ways to make networks more secure and less reliant on single source, large foreign vendors.
The current model of how telecom networks are deployed, with large vendors deploying proprietary equipment at massive scale, is too costly to keep pace with the growing demand for increased network connectivity. This has led to a move towards Open Radio Access Networks (ORAN). The move to ORAN will radically change the value of large telecom vendors in establishing modern networks, including Chinese telecom company Huawei. Huawei is a key player in Beijing’s espionage efforts and facilitator of China’s drive to expand its global influence. This gives the U.S. and her allies the opportunity to weaponize ORAN to contain China’s expansion through the development, provisioning, and deployment of ORAN technology globally.
What is ORAN
ORAN is a new approach to building and operating wireless networks that aims to increase competition and innovation in the telecommunications industry. The traditional approach to building wireless networks involves using proprietary equipment from a single vendor, but ORAN aims to use open, interoperable components from multiple vendors, allowing for more flexibility and innovation in the design and operation of networks. This will lead to reduced costs, increased efficiency, and faster deployment of new technologies. Additionally, ORAN will allow new players to break into the telecommunications market and increase the opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises that don’t have the resources to support the cost of building out their own proprietary end to end network.
The U.S. government is funding ORAN research and development because of concerns about the potential national security risks associated with relying on a small number of foreign vendors for critical communications infrastructure. By promoting the development of ORAN technology, the government hopes to increase competition and reduce the dependence on foreign vendors in order to increase security and resiliency in our communication infrastructure. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced its support for ORAN technology and has proposed more than $1 billion in funding to support the development and deployment of ORAN networks. Organizations such as the ORAN Alliance have brought together various telecom industry vendors to develop standards for ORAN compliant hardware and software. These enable numerous small companies to independently develop tools for different parts of the network and to support unique use cases, many of which legacy vendors won’t support due to the high cost of developing new proprietary equipment that may not profitably scale across a single large network.
China’s Playbook
As China is seeks to replace the U.S. as the dominant player in world affairs it has used diplomacy, information, and economic tools to expand its sphere of influence and coerce nations into compliance with its goals and silence over its atrocities at home and bad faith acts abroad. The vanguard of this effort has been Chinese telecommunications company Huawei.
Huawei has made significant investments in developing countries, contributing to the creation of their digital infrastructure, and providing jobs for local people. They offer an all-in-one end to end telecommunications solution with proprietary hardware, software, access to cheap financing and the technical expertise needed to deploy and maintain a full network. This has helped build relationships with governments and local communities, which in turn helps China to strengthen its influence in and gain access to critical natural resources.
Industry experts have examined how the contracts for these cheap, modern networks are written, and determined that some if not all of them are impossible to be profitable for the company, even accounting for rock bottom labor and manufacturing costs. They have even taken unprofitable contracts in developed countries such as the United States, setting up telecom equipment in hard-to-reach rural areas traditional mobile network operators won’t cover due to lack of a sufficient subscriber base to make deployments profitable. By improbable coincidence, these Huawei supported networks were set up near key national security assets such as our ground based nuclear missile facilities. This has led observers to conclude that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing is directly funding Huawei’s global ventures as a way to expand their sphere of influence, gain leverage to exploit developing countries, and conduct espionage.
The Enemy is Inside the Gate
There are several security risks associated with the use of Huawei technology in building telecommunications networks. Huawei’s close ties to the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) make it a tool for Chinese espionage. Critics have raised concerns over the presence of “backdoor” access points in Huawei’s equipment that can be used by the Chinese government for surveillance or other malicious purposes. The widespread use of Huawei’s technology in critical infrastructure, such as power grids and communication networks, has raised concerns that a cyber-attack targeting Huawei’s equipment could have far-reaching impacts, disrupting essential services and potentially causing widespread harm. The vulnerability is enhanced by the possibility that the CCP would initiate such an attack themselves in retaliation for perceived slights, such as speaking out against the Uigur genocide they continue to perpetrate in Xinjiang.*
* Australia experienced a version of this when it proposed an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and China responded by initiating a trade war, attempting to use economic blackmail to silence their critics abroad by targeting Australian exports with tariffs
The extent of the threat posed by wide scale use of Huawei’s telecommunications equipment was made clear in 2017 at the African Union headquarters building in Ethiopia. Built in 2012 with a 200 million dollar “gift” from China, the building was outfitted with a full ensemble of cameras, teleconferencing equipment, and dedicated servers housed in an onsite data center. Five years after opening it was discovered that every night between midnight and 2 am, those servers that carried the most sensitive political, military, and economic conversations of Africa’s leaders were uploading all of their information off site to Shanghai. The breadth and boldness of the spy effort was as shocking as it was impressive. China was able to gain more insight into the goals, plans, and capabilities of each African nation than those same nations were sharing amongst each other. China knew not only what diplomats shared with each other, but what those diplomats discussed with their home governments and chose not to share with other African nations. With that one telecommunications deployment, China gained leverage over an entire continent and at a bargain price. By way of comparison, the price tag of $200 million was less than what it cost the U.S. to support a single day of combat operations in Afghanistan.
China is able to continue to peddle its telecom products around the world despite the known security risks for two simple reasons. Telecom networks are expensive, and necessary. A traditional telecom network requires a single, large-scale vendor to create, install, operate, and maintain using its own suite of proprietary technologies that create barriers to entry for new players. They are also necessary for modern banking, transportation, healthcare, agriculture, and a host of other industries. In a globalized world, you either get yourself plugged in, or keep yourself locked out. For a government leading an otherwise underdeveloped, impoverished nation with no path towards raising the capital needed for their own network, China’s robust tech and cheap financing, no matter how predatory, can look very attractive. If you’re not trying to get ahead but simply trying to catch up and keep up in the game of globalization, letting China hold a digital gun to your head as they bring you along can seem better than not getting there at all.
Enter ORAN
ORAN disrupts this environment by reducing the barriers to entry for new players in the telecom markets and opening new pathways for nations to build, own, and operate their own networks. Instead of contracting with one major provider to build out an entire network, governments can source components from a suite of vendors all over the world. This allows for incremental deployments, reduces the technical expertise needed to create a network, and avoids the issue of being beholden to one large company for decades to maintain the network. It also changes building out a network from a necessary step on the path to future economic growth, to a key driver of growth itself. ORAN enables numerous small and medium sized local companies, with ownership based in the same countries and communities they operate in, to drive a network’s creation, deployment, operation, and maintenance.
ORAN doesn’t just give developing countries a viable alternative to the legacy model that drives them into bed with China, it gives them a better one.
Although the task of ensuring the integrity and security of components from multiple vendors does present new security challenges, it drastically reduces the possibility of the CCP, through a proxy like Huawei, gaining control over an entire network, and by extension, leverage over an entire country’s economic, diplomatic, and security future. The adoption of ORAN also kicks off a cycle of creative destruction that will play to the advantage of those who are best able to innovate and adapt.
This poses a tremendous challenge to the closed, authoritarian political regime in Beijing and creates a massive opportunity for open, democratic societies to leap ahead in a variety of technological fields. Innovation requires the free flow of ideas, respect for intellectual property, and the ability to collaborate at scale. The CCP can’t allow its citizens to do this without simultaneously opening the door for domestic political revolution. In America, we can’t hold it back even if we tried.
The adoption of ORAN is good business at home, and great policy abroad. Its implications go beyond the technical achievements it enables and reaches into how people interact at every level of society, including the nation state. It poses a direct challenge to the current model China uses to expand its sphere of influence, and creates new problems for the political regime in Beijing as they balance the need for technological innovation with maintaining political control. While they deliberate, the free world will be innovating in as yet unforeseen ways, as more nations will be able to participate in the information age freely and securely.
Veterans Day
by Scott Kelly
On the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month in 1918, the guns fell silent over Europe as WWI ended. Within the year, this day became known as Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of the war to end all wars, and honor those who fought in it. In 1954, after several more generations of veterans had been created, it was renamed Veterans Day – a public concession to the reality that no matter how terrible a conflict was, war would continue, and more veterans would come as a result.
Veterans Day has correspondingly meant different things to different people over the years, based on their own experience, relationship to military service, and the national mood. It has always been a special day for me, though the meaning has changed over time. When I was a kid, it meant that all my favorite old war movies would be playing on the TV. As a young adult, it was a reminder of the sacrifices being made by friends who I watched go off and fight in the forever wars. As a soldier, it was a day to see which of my colleagues would make cringe-worthy posts on social media. This year is different. This year is my first Veterans Day as a veteran.
It is hard to say what Veterans Day means for veterans. Society tends to paint us with a broad brush, but our experiences in uniform, and how we carry those memories after, are very personal. Some of us lived in the mud with a rifle, others poured over intelligence reports in dingy tents. Some were engineers maintaining our nation’s most advanced systems, others handled payroll and administrative functions. The only real constant I have found is fond memories of the best conversations with comrades over the worst food imaginable. Even here though there are differences there, too. For an Army infantryman, it was a cold meal ready to eat (MRE) served with moldy bread and tepid coffee that resembled motor oil. For an Airforce pilot, it was a steak accidentally served well done.
The transition out of service to becoming a veteran can be challenging. Wearing the nation’s flag every day and working with people who are willing to drop everything and pay any price in service to their country comes imbued with a sense of purpose and meaning that is difficult to recognize until you take the uniform off. For many, myself included, a key part of a transition from soldier to veteran is finding a place that helps you hold on to a little bit of that, to find a place where you’re still surrounded by folks who have an intrinsic motivation to serve and excel beyond just knocking out the daily task list.
I was able to find a new career in a privately owned tech company committed to bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.. My days serving the country by jumping out of planes with a rifle may be over, but I still get to be of service by working to help secure America’s technological future and reduce our reliance on hostile foreign regimes for our economic lifeblood. There are numerous like-minded veterans working to do the same in different companies, filling positions in every department, at every level, modeling excellence in how they carry themselves daily and the leadership they bring to their teams.
Perhaps this begins to get at the heart of what Veterans Day is about. It is a day of remembrance and bonding, both between veterans who come together, and between the veteran community and the nation who asked them to serve. For the nation, it is a chance to express gratitude and develop an understanding of those who have borne the burden of its security. For veterans, it is a day to honor colleagues, remember the past, and remind us it is okay to lay down those burdens we may no longer have the strength or desire to carry as we pick up new tools in our new lives. For both, Veterans Day is an opportunity to reflect upon and learn from the sacrifices of our past so we can better pursue the opportunities of tomorrow.
We Need Domestic 5G to Beat China
5G’s Role in State Competition
by Scott Kelly
The adoption of 5G will trigger an evolution in how we share and use information, creating opportunities for innovation and growth that will touch every industry and aspect of our lives. The successful pursuit of these opportunities will be critical to our national security. It will expand the arena of great power competition among states, and directly affect the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic aspects of national power. If we are to beat the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), we need to understand the nature of these changes and pursue policies that will maximize 5Gs benefits for us and our allies, while minimizing the CCP’s ability to pursue growth by stealing our innovations.
Diplomatic
Trust as Currency
While security is critical at home, trust is critical abroad and is more valuable than the U.S. dollar as a reserve among nations. The U.S. and China are currently the only countries capable of developing and manufacturing large scale 5G infrastructure. The low monetary cost of Chinese components gives them a nominal advantage as a vendor in many countries. However, due to China’s 2017 national security law, (*1) transmitting any information over equipment provided by Chinese firms is tantamount to handing it directly to the CCP. Providing a domestically produced and owned American 5G network solution will allow countries to access the critical infrastructure needed to participate in the modern global economy while protecting their intellectual property and state secrets from being stolen by the CCP.
(*1) On June 27th, 2017 China enacted a new National Intelligence Law, which created an affirmative responsibility for all Chinese citizens and companies to provide access, cooperation and support for Beijing’s intelligence gathering activities. This extends to citizens living, studying, or doing business abroad.
Information
Knowledge is Power
5G will supercharge connectivity and power massive networks of users, fueling innovation at a previously unseen pace. The power of nations, and their relative position of strength over one another will be determined by how this innovation is fostered and harnessed. Open, democratic societies like America have a key advantage over authoritarian regimes like the CCP in driving these innovations and harnessing their benefits, provided we can secure our infrastructure.
In open, democratic societies access to information and the free communication of ideas among citizens fuels a cycle of creative destruction that leads to innovation and growth. In authoritarian societies, this same process enables collaboration against the current political regime and is a direct threat to those in power. This creates a dilemma where open access to information and collaboration fuels the innovation necessary for growth and state power, but also requires ever increasing state control over how people communicate in their daily lives to prevent domestic opposition to the regime from forming. This stifles the potential for future growth. The move to 5G will further exacerbate this divide between how increased access to information affects open and authoritarian societies.
To prevent domestic opposition from forming, the CCP has employed strict population control measures such as social credit scores, massive online censorship, and genocide against ethnic minorities.(*2) To pursue growth while being unable to allow domestic innovation, they have relied on stealing technologies from more developed nations, achieving growth while avoiding the need to allow their own population to collaborate and innovate. Their 2017 national security law ensures that they can leverage any Chinese citizen or corporation studying or doing business abroad to collaborate in the theft of technologies. Having a domestically owned and produced 5G infrastructure, from hardware to software, can stifle these efforts and help ensure the next generation of American innovation turns into economic and military advantages for America, widening the power gap between us and the CCP.
(*2) In 2014, it was revealed that the CCP had begun perpetrating a genocide against Uygher Muslims who lived in western China which has continued to expand as they seek to destroy Uygher ethnic and religious identity which are viewed as incompatible with the CCPs values and a source of potential domestic political opposition.
Military
There are two people on the battlefield: the quick and the dead.
5G’s ability to enable secure networks that can support massive amounts of devices in austere locations with minimal infrastructure will drive an evolution in how wars are fought. The type of maneuver warfare that is employed by modern militaries relies on the ability to coordinate long range fires from air, land, and sea forces in close coordination with rapidly moving ground forces(*3) to overwhelm an enemy. This has made tracking where friendly forces are in real time a critical element in modern warfare. It’s not enough to have more combat power than the enemy, you need to be able to quickly mass it at critical points so your military’s strength is greater than the sum of its parts.(*4)
5G networks allow massive amounts of devices to be employed to track everything from vehicles to individual soldiers, enabling unprecedented coordination among maneuver forces. When combined with other advances in long range fires and the ubiquitous use of drones for reconnaissance and attacks, field expedient 5G mesh networks will become a decisive feature on future battlefields, as necessary as the machine gun after WWI and fighter jets after WWII.
(*3)Think artillery, rockets, cruise missiles, strike fighters, and bombers that need to land on the enemy while avoiding our troops on the ground and each other in the air
(*4)Ukraine’s recent success in pushing back and wiping out entire Russian army formations during its Kharkiv offensive, enabled by its ability to effectively mass fires to support ground maneuver is a modern example.
Economic
Money Talks
Developing a robust suite of 5G technologies that can be deployed domestically would be a boon to the American economy. Its immediate impact would be an increase in domestic spending on manufacturing and transportation as we develop the infrastructure needed for production and distribution. It would decrease the exposure of U.S. firms to intellectual property theft from China (which routinely steals 225 to 600 billion dollars of property from U.S. firms annually) by providing a ready source of secure network connectivity absent built in malware and back doors by foreign firms.
It would also provide an exportable solution to allies and partners who wish to benefit from the evolution to 5G without risking exposure to subversion and manipulation by the CCP. This would enable increased export of American products and further boost our domestic economy by creating new markets for our goods and services. American made 5G can become as important to global networks and telecommunications as Boeing is to global aviation.
Winning in the Information Age
America is well into a new era of great power competition, against a regime that seeks to present totalitarianism as a credible alternative to the western democratic model of statehood and supplant the U.S. as a world leader. After WWII, in the age of nuclear weapons, we relied on containing the Soviet Union through military alliances and economic aid to allies and partners. Beating China in the information age will require a new type of containment, built around secure networks and the opportunity to express ideas free of censorship and bullying. 5G with the windfall of innovation and economic growth it will provide is the next competitive arena we must master. We need 5G here, we need it now, and we need to own it, or we will find ourselves continuing to underwrite the growth of the CCP as they bully their neighbors, commit genocide against their own citizens, and undermine the credibility of the modern world order.
The High Price of Peace
The role of negotiation in ending the war in Ukraine
As Putin’s invasion of Ukraine continues to sputter and the realization that he can not achieve a quick victory settles in, the hopes that a negotiated settlement might bring an end to the bloodshed increase. Both Putin and President Zelensky have softened their tone and repeatedly sent delegations to engage in peace talks. Ukraine has abandoned any ambition of joining NATO, and Russia has ended its calls for “denazification”, which many viewed as code for replacing the current Ukrainian government with their own puppet regime. Any negotiated settlement would likely require significant concessions from Ukraine to Russia, potentially including recognition of the annexation of Crimea and the independence of the Donbas region in exchange for guarantees that Russia would not invade again and seek more in the future. There is good reason to doubt Putin’s sincerity in any negotiation, and good reason for Ukraine to consider pursuing such a negotiated outcome anyway.
Territorial concessions to Russia would seemingly reward Russia for its aggressive behavior, and comments over the danger of “appeasement” have increasingly surfaced in pundit and polity circles alike. Boris Johnson and other world leaders have pointed to the west’s muted response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 as a policy failure that left Putin emboldened to pursue further territorial conquest. This has invoked comparisons to the failure to deter Hitler’s attempted conquest of Europe when in 1938 Britain and France signed a soon to be broken peace agreement that acknowledged Germany’s annexation of Austria in exchange for Hitler’s guarantee not to expand further. So how does Putin’s position vis a vis President Zelensky compare to Hitler’s position vis a vis Prime Minister Chamberlain? Should negotiations continue to be pursued, and where is the line between appeasing a war criminal and accepting a new reality to avoid more suffering for one’s people?
Military Power, Not All Dictators Are Created Equal
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been mired by logistical failures and an inability to coordinate maneuver forces, artillery, and airpower effectively. It has struggled to resupply its forces despite geographic proximity to its own borders and those of its ally, Belarus. Unlike the modernized German Army that Hitler was prepared to use to conquer Europe in 1939 that used a revitalized, robust domestic economy and superior tactics to quickly overwhelm a technologically superior French military in a matter of weeks, Russia has struggled to efficiently subdue cities defended largely by militias and remnants of Ukrainian military units that have been cut off from resupply since the beginning of the conflict.
Its difficult to imagine a situation where after reaching a negotiated settlement, Putin and Russia would then have the capacity to turn elsewhere to fuel Putin’s imperialistic ambitions. Unlike the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the support given to separatist regions in Donbas over the past 6 years, this invasion has incurred a significant material cost on Russian forces. Estimates of casualties are beginning to top 40,000 and numerous older, cold war relic vehicles have been employed in Ukraine to replace more modern ones that were initially lost. To replace these forces would require a considerable investment, which would have been challenging for Russia before the invasion, but seemingly impossible after given the state of their economy after severe sanctions were imposed. The success of Ukrainian counter attacks to reclaim territory around Kiev and Russia’s apparent withdrawal of forces from its failed campaign to capture the city to focus on efforts in eastern Ukraine is further demonstration that Russia has reached the limits of its ability to project conventional military ground forces. Negotiating an end to the conflict would be less of an opportunity for Putin to expand his imperialist ambitions and more of an opportunity to avoid further embarrassment.
Troubles Abroad? Try Troubles at Home
Putin also lacks the popular political support at home to support large scale military adventurism. Although it is notoriously hard to gauge the political leanings of the Russian people, and Putin has successfully maintained his seat of power for decades, telltale cracks are beginning to appear. He has been purging the upper ranks of his military and intelligence services, while protests continue in the streets. Dissenters have even appeared in state media, while young professionals flee the country in a “brain drain”. The most telling signs come from Putin himself, who has felt compelled to avoid describing the conflict in Ukraine as a war and instead insisted it was a “special military operation” employing only professional forces and mercenaries, whitewashing the majority presence of regular conscripts. This is in stark contrast to the xenophobic nationalism that drove domestic support for Hitler’s conquest of Europe and enabled the Nazi ruler to mobilize the whole German nation to support his ambition.
Although there are reports that Putin’s domestic propaganda efforts have had limited success in galvanizing the population to support his war efforts, these come with reports by western intelligence agencies that his mostly conscript army fighting in Ukraine has begun to refuse orders, sabotage its own equipment, and kill its commanders to avoid fighting. Putin may be able to maintain his grip on power, but there does not appear to be a meaningful way to translate a domestic rally in support in solidarity against western sanctions into the type of support needed to maintain the fighting spirit and esprit de corps needed for Russia’s conscripts to be successful and carry-on Putin’s “special military operation”.
Why Settle Now?
With Ukraine successfully counterattacking in several areas and Russia’s withdrawal from the area around Kiev leading to revelations of mass atrocities and war crimes that have been perpetuated against Ukrainian civilians, it is tempting to push for a full-scale military effort to repulse all Russian forces from Ukraine and retake Crimea and the Donbas region. The more that comes to light about Russian atrocities and massacres, the harder it is to stomach the idea of negotiating with someone like Putin. However, President Zelensky has still said he is willing to negotiate if it will end the war, and he has good reason to try to.
The longer the war drags on, the more death and destruction Ukraine will face. Russia may have failed to take Kiev (for now), but they wiped Mariupol off the map, leaving the collapsed skeletal ruins of what was once a vibrant city in their wake. The brutality is even more shocking when you consider that it was done with conventional weapons, house by house and block by block. The longer the war continues, the more likely Russia is to apply the same treatment to other cities. The risks of Putin pursuing a desperate escalation through the use of chemical or tactical nuclear weapons, especially in a supposed “defense” of the separatist republics in Donbas also increases the longer the war goes on and he views the chances of an acceptable outcome decreasing. Additionally, Ukraine’s success so far has been reliant on a steady flow of support from the West in the form of advanced weapons and sanctions against Russia. The west has been a fickle partner to other nations in the past, and President Zelensky may be wise to pursue a negotiated peace before the west’s support slips away and western media outlets move on to the next hot topic, dampening popular support and reducing the political pressure to continue providing support to Ukraine.
Appeasement vs Acceptance
Power, not ideology, has always been the driving force behind international relations. Russia’s is far less than initially believed, and Ukraine’s is far more, based in no small part on the moral dimensions underpinning why they are fighting. The chance for a negotiated peace that ends the blood shed should not be cast aside lightly if it proves to be possible, or blindly derided as “appeasement” by a western press and political establishment who are happy to see Russia laid low, but do not bear the direct costs of the fighting. Appeasement is a naïve attempt to placate ambitions of a bully in order to limit costs and avoid tragedy. Negotiation is informed by two sides who know the costs of conflict and know they will have to pay them, one way or another. This is Ukraine’s fight to bear, and the world should support whatever hard choices it eventually decides to make.
Putin’s Folly
How the Invasion of Ukraine Threatens China‘s Rise
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has caused a permanent shift in the balance of world power, shattering the notion that state sovereignty was sacrosanct among great powers and that military force was no longer a significant factor in European politics. Although much of the world has joined in condemning the invasion and imposing harsh sanctions designed to punish Putin, Russia’s long standing geopolitical ally China has avoided condemning the invasion and has taken limited measures to support the otherwise isolated Russian economy. The failure to deter the invasion of a democratic nation by its powerful authoritarian neighbor has caused policy makers to increasingly fret over another potential invasion target, Taiwan. However, contrary to the talking points of the day, Putin’s invasion appears more likely to strain the Russian-China alliance, putting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) plan to rise to global prominence in peril.
After All, What Are Friends For?
China has long been a strategic ally of Russia, as both have sought to benefit from participating in global trade while protecting their interests from interference from western outsiders. They have done so through the aggressive assertion of the principle of national sovereignty, decrying any military intervention in the affairs of another state and bristling at diplomatic statements and economic actions, no matter how limited, designed to curtail human rights abuses (the assassination of journalists and dissidents in Russia and the genocide against Uighur Muslims in China for example).
They have sought to increase their influence in global affairs by offering themselves as allies to each other and other authoritarian regimes which are otherwise shunned by the global community, (Russian support of Assad in Syria and China’s long-standing relationship with North Korea are examples), claiming respect for national sovereignty as justification for ignoring human rights abuses. Both nations simultaneously use the United Nations to bolster their legitimacy and protect themselves from broader rebuke, while decrying any attempt to mobilize the global community to intercede in the affairs of other nations lest such mobilization eventually be brought to bear against them (ironic that Putin’s invasion has achieved the very mobilization and unity that he feared in Europe).
Guilt by Association
However, China’s continued support of Russia’s actions are uncertain, as shown in their decision to abstain when the United Nations Security Council voted on mobilizing to stop Russia’s invasion. National sovereignty is a sensitive issue for China, and Russia’s invasion blatantly violated Ukraine’s. To stand by Russia’s actions in the face of global condemnation, while Russia’s invasion becomes steadily more brutal in the face of Ukrainian opposition will likely invite criticism of China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is incredibly sensitive to international criticism. This was shown in their comments condemning the Biden administration’s and other prominent countries decision to not send diplomatic delegations to the Winter Olympics hosted in Beijing, and their request for Russia to delay invading until after the games were over in order to ensure the international press was focused on an event China viewed as critical to its international image.
Money Talks
As brutal as broad reaching economic sanctions such as being cut off from the SWIFT banking system are on Russia’s economy, they would be even more catastrophic for China’s. Continued economic growth is the bedrock of the CCP’s domestic justification for rule and the use of invasive population control measures. A more assertive west that has already shown a remarkable willingness to accept the costs of imposing severe sanctions on Russia may decide now is the best time to challenge China economically.
With global supply chains still under strain from the pandemic, and political pressure in countries around the world to invest in making their domestic markets more robust and diversified, policy makers could reasonably believe now is the best time to announce a permanent move away from reliance on China. This would enable them to make future economic cooperation contingent on increased respect for human rights and civil liberties in China.
Also, having Ukraine be a warzone and Russia being sanctioned threatens China’s belt and road initiative, there ambitions plan for expanding their global reach that is key to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s CCP’s plan to continue growing the Chinese economy. This projected growth is the cornerstone of the CCP’s justification for staying in power and ensuring stability at home, as well as its plans to become powerful enough to challenge the United States for dominance in the international system.
“Never Tell Me The Odds” General Han Solo
It has become more rational for western policy makers in democratic nations to think they could maintain enough domestic political support to survive the consequences of open economic conflict with China than it ever was for Putin to consider an invasion of Ukraine as a rational policy decision for his country. It impossible to predict how far a resurgent west committed to rearmament, ready to accept economic hardships to an extent unimaginable prior to the war in Ukraine, and driven to protect fellow democracies may go, and that creates untold uncertainty and anxiety among China’s leaders.
This anxiety and doubt has two significant consequences. The first is straining China’s traditional post cold war alliance with Russia, and the second is to mellow plans for any near to mid term attempt at reunification with Taiwan through military force over fear of facing the same sanctions Russia now does. It is too soon to judge how this will shape the shifting geopolitical landscape and the implications it may have for China, Russia, the crisis in Ukraine and the future of Taiwan, though a potentially devastating and destabilizing public break between Putin and Xi Jinping is possible. It is becoming clear however that Putin’s invasion has created new obstacles for China’s growth as a world power and reminded the free world that aggressive economic and military confrontation, though uncomfortable and fraught with risk, is sometimes the best and only path to security and prosperity.
Putin’s Rebellion
Russia has invaded Ukraine, marking the start of the largest conflict on European soil in decades. When Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, commentators spoke with shock and disdain over how he was acting like an 18th century man in the 21st century era of neo-liberal globalization. Putin’s more recent decision to invade all of Ukraine is a stark reminder to policy makers and scholars alike that power is still the driving force behind geopolitics, and the ultimate exercise of power is military force. As Putin rebels against the arc of history that many believed would “civilize” leaders like him and slowly shape them to the modern era, the world looks on and waits to see if Putin emerges as the bold brilliant leader of a resurgent Russia or as a fool who overplayed a potentially winning hand with needlessly catastrophic consequences for the people of Ukraine.
For months, media pundits and policy analysts have been warning of this event and debating its significance with bombastic fervor that has clouded attempts at rational dialogue about the situation surrounding Ukraine, Russia and the potential ramifications of invasion. This isn’t surprising, as the Russian invasion of the second largest country in Europe forces people to grapple with a form of geopolitics dominated by balance of power considerations. Instead of friction over concerns of economic parity and human rights, the fault lines here are drawn along lines of ideology and national identity, a stark contrast to the neo-liberal world view that dominates much of western foreign policy. A key part of neo-liberalism is the belief that globalization and economic interdependence would make violence between industrialized nations prohibitively costly and irrational. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union wars between nations have been seen as aberrations to be curtailed through proper policy coordination among responsible nations, rather than a legitimate, if violent, negotiation tactic among states.
If Not NATO, Then What?
In the media the growing tension surrounding Ukraine has been framed as a dispute arising from Ukraine’s potential admission into NATO making Russia nervous about its security. Putin’s recent comments in several speeches make it clear however that this is not that case. Putin has long viewed Russia as a great power that has been wrongly relegated to a second and then third tier status among important nations, due to both a series of unfortunate circumstances throughout the 20th century and the mistakes of his predecessors who too easily gave up territory and standing in the name of “developing” into a modern nation.
His revisionist take on history where he denies Ukraine’s historical separation from Russia due to its long dominance by the Russian empire indicates that he has decided to act not out of a rationally calculated security concern driven by the potential encroachment of NATO, but as a rebellion against the arc of history that the neo-liberal worldview believes makes such moves among the economically interdependent industrialized “modern” world a thing of the past. Evidence of this can be seen in the level of risk Putin has accepted to play his gambit.
It’s hard to overstate how much of a gamble Putin has taken with his invasion. As much as pundits and analysts will seek to debate how America or various European nations could have pursued different policy options to dissuade invasion, it must be acknowledged that Putin was sent a clear series of signals that an invasion of Ukraine would make him and Russia economic and diplomatic pariahs, with potentially crippling consequences for Russia’s already fragile economy.
Having communicated to his population repeatedly that he was not planning invading, he has had numerous opportunities to claim a series of small, but significant diplomatic victories and not risk a single Russian life or ruble on military adventurism fraught with danger and whose outcome is impossible to predict even in the most lopsided of contests. In any calculation it is hard to see how the seizure of Ukraine’s various natural resources and economic infrastructure will make up for the losses Russia is likely to incur by invading. Focusing on the perceived “errors” of western political leaders of any kind ignores the level of agency Putin and Russia feel entitled to act with within Eastern Europe, or how much agency the Ukrainian nation is willing to exercise in response.
Putin’s Odds of “Success”
Ukraine’s President has pledged an all-out defense against Russian aggression and has a much better trained and equipped military than in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and fomented rebellion in Donbas. However, in a straight up fight, Russia clearly has enough military power to defeat the Ukrainian military and occupy most if not all of the country. The questions that need to be asked however are how quickly and at what cost?
Russia’s mechanized battalions are designed to move quickly and effectively employ artillery and air power to mass combat power where needed to pulverize or bypass hardened defenses. However, they also rely on armored vehicles for firepower and mobility, which are extremely vulnerable to man portable anti-tank missile systems. America has been flooding the Ukrainian military with Javelin missile systems, which were purpose built to destroy Russian tanks and can be employed by small teams of two soldiers. Such teams can impose a heavy cost on advancing Russian armor, even if they are unable to stop a column entirely.
Then there is the problem of fighting in cities, which can be easy to advance to and challenging to subdue as defenders can employ the full range of techniques available to the urban guerrilla. The will to fight and defend one’s home plays an outsized role in urban combat and holding a city can become more challenging than seizing it. This will to fight was demonstrated by the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island, who lost their lives after refusing a demand to surrender by a Russian warship at the beginning of the invasion in an event reminiscent of the Alamo.
Even if it succeeds in conquering Ukraine’s territory Russia faces the risk of fighting a protracted insurgency. One of the things that made the invasion of Crimea and Donbas successful in 2014 were the large ethnic Russian populations in these territories and geographic proximity to Russia ensuring secure lines of communication and resupply. By invading the rest of the country, Russia is giving up these advantages. Although Russia can target Ukraine’s centralized military infrastructure and cripple the country’s ability to launch an effective defense of its borders, it must contend with the semi formal patchwork of territorial units and volunteers which were key to staving off rebel advances in 2014, and that the government has supported and armed. Poland, as a friendly neighbor with a secure border can provide a safe haven for Ukrainian partisans fighting against Russian occupation, while fighters and supplies move back and forth hidden in the cross flow of refugees and aid that are the likely result of fighting in cities across the country.
Holding It All Together
The costs in time and materiel could show Putin’s bold rebellious gambit to be a colossal blunder. The longer the fighting drags on, the more the people of Russia will question the prudence of the decision to invade after being repeatedly told that there were no plans to do so as Russia had no reason to. As the international community continues to pile sanctions on Russia’s brittle economy, popular support, or apathy, to the invasion will turn to outrage against the regime. Political opposition in Russia has a long record of failing to garner meaningful support or challenging the power of the central regime, but this is due in no small part to Putin’s prudent avoidance of pushing the Russian people too far and avoiding direct accountability for blunders in the domestic press while simultaneously painting attacks in the global media as anti-Russian propaganda that only he is strong enough to stand up to.
Now he’s proven the foreign “propagandists” right while leaving his own domestic state media stuck performing rhetorical backflips to justify his actions to a population whose young men were just sent to fight and die in a war that until recently they were told didn’t need to be fought. It’s too soon to tell what repercussions this may have, but it does mark a fundamental break from the playbook that has kept Putin in power for so long. Even among the most staunch, nationalistic hawks in Russia’s establishment the potential loss of a significant chunk of its most capable military hardware and units could begin to lead to doubts about the wisdom of this campaign and the leader that brought them to it.
Russia already struggles with maintaining its military while pursuing limited modernization programs, and equipment lost cannot be easily replaced domestically or purchased abroad. As with many authoritarian regimes, the Russian military is as much of an employment program for young men as it is a tool of power, and an outsized portion of what is capable of fighting is now at risk in Ukraine. The economic sanctions will only make this worse. A slow, costly takeover of Ukraine followed by a bloody insurgency could leave Putin facing a restless population and a chorus of insiders indicating it’s time to cut losses with little to show for his efforts. Obviously, Putin believes otherwise, and maybe he and his advisors are justified in a certain amount of confidence given their success in Crimea and Donbas in 2014, in Georgia in 2008, and their recent expeditions to support Assad in Syria. Seizing and subduing all of Ukraine is a fundamentally different problem though, and wars never go as planned.
Europe’s Awakening
Putin has seemingly decided to risk it all by starting a war in Europe he believes he can contain and control. In one sense he appears to be right, as no nation has rushed to send its own troops to protect Ukraine and powerful nations that could help, such as the United States, have made it clear that they will not put their own soldiers in harm’s way or risk getting into a shooting war with a nuclear power. But the ramifications of engaging in an imperial conquest on the European continent is a break from international norms drastic enough to lead to a restructuring of the security architecture of Europe in a way that permanently blocks any attempt at further Russian expansion while leaving them cut off economically and diplomatically for generations.
The feverish attempts at shuttle diplomacy undertaken by leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron is evidence of a newly felt agency among European leaders following Brexit and the election of Donald Trump and his “America First” policies.
Russia’s invasion is likely to accelerate the European Union’s desire to create a European military separate from NATO and American sponsorship, while the willingness of German Chancellor Olaf Shultz to halt and potentially permanently scuttle the Nord Stream 2 pipeline indicates a willingness by European leaders to bear the costs of increased domestic energy prices in a world where Russia has become an unreliable, destabilizing actor on the continent. Poland is certain to rush military units to its border with Ukraine for its own security and to deal with an ever-increasing flow of refugees while accelerating projects to move its permanent military bases from its western borders facing Germany, where they were established during the cold war under Russian guidance, to the East to fend off the same Russia.
Past as Prologue
If Ukraine is conquered and subdued in a timeframe and at a cost the Russian people can stomach, Putin may still find himself in a worse security position than before. In reaching for empire, he may cripple his country and hollow out the nation he seeks to promote. In 1979 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to expand and protect the interests of the Soviet Union and hold back a perceived threat of encroachment by western outsiders, only to retreat in disgrace years later after draining the Soviet Union of military power, economic resources, and political credibility at home and abroad it could ill afford to lose, contributing to its downfall. The march into Ukraine may prove to be a path to a similar fate for Putin’s Russia.
In success or failure though, Putin’s rebellion against the arc of history which was destined to end in neo-liberal globalization has damaged the credibility of the neo-liberal world view and its utility as a guide to geo-politics, potentially beyond repair. Adherents to the orthodoxy may claim that this is a temporary aberration, overhyped in the news cycle of the day as we observe this temporary, and relatively small wrinkle in the modern flow of international relations. Perhaps they are right, and this is the last gasp of a dying, power driven ideological approach to geo-politics that has stubbornly held on at the periphery long after it was viable. But that gasp will include the cries of the Ukrainian people and the creeks of a brittle world order struggling to stand against collapse.
It seems more likely that the time after WWII, and the seemingly universal acceptance of western ideas of government and human rights that proliferated after the Cold War will be remembered as a temporary feature of the international system that is moving away from American dominated liberal hegemony and back to balance of power politics. Putin’s rebellion may eventually be contained and put down, but its impact on the world is here to stay.
Putin’s Gambit
How Ukraine’s Struggle for Sovereignty Exposes Cracks in the Western Dominated World Order
By Brian Taptick
As those living in the Western world sleep peacefully at night, the stability of the post-World War II international system sits in the hands of the Ukrainian soldiers guarding the trenches in the eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas, who face Russian backed separatists and await a possible Russian invasion. Ukraine, a young democracy that seeks closer ties to the West through potential membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), is being held hostage as Vladimir Putin attempts to show the world that Russia is the geopolitical power that he dreams it to be. Many in the United States question why the US and its allies should care about the fate of Ukraine, a former Soviet Republic that is far away and has struggled throughout history to maintain its own sovereignty. Today, Ukraine stands as a young democracy of 30 years, that has struggled with corruption within its own government and manipulation from its Russian neighbor but is being threatened with annihilation by the Kremlin for becoming a better nation for its people, and a more involved member of the international community.
Putin’s “Policy”
Throughout his reign at the head of the Russian government, President Putin has attempted to undermine the norms and values of the current world order to advance his own imperialistic ambitions. To avoid provoking a strong reaction from the West, Russia’s aggressiveness towards its neighbors that do not obey the wishes of the Kremlin are carried out with unconventional and subversive measures to undermine the stability of countries on Russia’s periphery. These include cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns that the world has grown too accustomed to in the news. Sometimes Russia finds a reason to justify the use of military force outside of its borders to achieve its goals.
Similar to China’s “One China” policy, Vladimir Putin has his own policy known as the “Russian World”, which he uses in the name of protecting ethnic Russians wherever they may be. Lucky for Putin, the countries on his borders have sizable groups of Russian minorities, so the Kremlin fabricates abuses against Russians at the hands of foreign governments to justify intervention. The result is the creation of and support for separatist movements that create long-term destabilization. Russia currently supports separatist regions in Transnistria (Moldova), South Ossetia and Abkhazia (Georgia), the Donbas and the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula (Ukraine).
Most relevant in the news today is the continued crisis on the borders of Ukraine, where Russia has amassed nearly 100,000 troops, and reports believe an invasion could happen as early as this month.[1] Winter does not sound like an ideal time to invade, but the frozen ground offers a hard surface for a quick advance across the country, while the soft fertile soil of Ukraine can slow troops movements in warmer weather, and muddy conditions during warmer times can make some areas impassable. The Russian Federation is now moving troops into Belarus for military exercises in February.[2] This places the Russian Armed Forces on the entirety of Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southern territorial boundaries, including inside of Crimea and along the Black Sea, until Ukraine’s border touches Moldovan controlled territory outside of Transnistria.
The Struggles of Trying to be a Good Neighbor
Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe, is one of the major breadbaskets of the world with some of the richest soil on the planet and is strategically situated along the northern coast of the Black Sea. At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the host of a sizable amount of the Soviet nuclear arsenal that would have made them the third largest nuclear power at that time. In exchange for security assurances to guarantee its territorial integrity, which includes the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 and sent its arsenal to Russia. This agreement was supported by the United States as it attempted to mend a relationship with the new Russian Federation, feeling it is better to keep the most powerful weapons in the world with the nation the United States was already accustomed to negotiated with. Without nuclear deterrence, Ukraine could only rely on the Budapest Memorandum and the international system it was now a part of the guarantee its future.
Almost 20 years later, in November of 2013 Ukraine was on the verge of signing a trade agreement with the EU that would have brought closer economic ties and laid the groundwork for potential EU membership. Putin was not going to allow Ukraine to move closer to the West and strong-armed President Viktor Yanukovych to back out of the agreement. The response from the Ukrainian people was resolute. Protests now known as the Euro-Maiden erupted as the people displayed their frustration with government corruption, and what they viewed as a denial of a better future. As the government attempted to violently break up the protests, they were met by a determined and united population that was ready for its government to serve the people. When the masses did not accept a government proposal of new presidential elections in October of 2014, Yanukovych fled to Russia in the middle of the night. Without his puppet at the head of the Ukrainian government, Putin seized on the moment of instability.
The Russian Bear Leaves the Cave
Putin moved his forces quickly and illegally annexed The Crimea, a strategically important peninsula that has long been home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at the naval base in Sevastopol. Soldiers in unmarked uniforms, now referred to as “little green men”, began to appear and forcefully took control of military basis, key terrain, and critical infrastructure. These of course turned out to be Russian operatives sent to take control from within, allowing Putin to avoid open invasion. Many Ukrainian soldiers attempted to maintain control of their bases awaiting instructions that would never come, as the government in Kyiv was frozen in the chaos. Soon Russian forces began to flood into Crimea as Putin claimed he was looking to protect the Russian population, and that Russian troops would only stay until order was restored. With the peninsula firmly under the control of Russian forces, a referendum was held to allow the people to vote if they would prefer to succeed from Ukraine to join the Russian Federation. Unsurprisingly, the illegal vote that was entirely controlled by Russia showed that 95% of the people chose to become part of the Russian Federation.[3] The West only stood by and condemned the illegal actions by the Russian Federation.
Additionally, a Russian backed separatist movement sprung up in eastern Ukraine. With an inexperienced military frozen in the confusion, the separatists moved as far west as Kramatorsk and Slovyansk before being pushed back by Ukrainian civilian volunteer forces. Separatists also overran the regional administrative building in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, and briefly raised the Russian flag before they were repelled by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU or SBU). The Ukrainian military and civilian volunteer forces were able to push back the separatist fighters to the current Line of Contact (LOC) established in the two separate Minsk Agreements, stretching from Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, up through Donetsk and then circling back through Luhansk to the Russian border. The people along this line live in a permanent state of purgatory. As people go to work tend to their garden, kids go to school or play outside with their friends, they do so with the fear of protentional small arms or mortar fire nearby. Mines are another significant issue that threaten the course of everyday life, with no hope for a resolution to the conflict. Today, this area in the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine is where a spark awaits that could ignite the flames of war.
The Western Playbook Hasn’t Worked
As much as Putin is against the current international order that attempts to control his aggressive ambitions, he approaches each scenario in a way that allows him to only draw condemnation from the West, but no true repercussions for his actions. No matter how many sanctions are placed on Russia and Russian officials, they continue the same actions. French President Emmanuel Macron has openly stated that the West must state clear red lines and enforce them.[4] Past failures at enforcing red lines, such as the failure to act on President Obama’s red line in Syria, may have given Putin the confidence he needed to believe he could pull off his land grab of the Crimean Peninsula without much interruption. The US and its European allies are attempting a diplomatic approach to resolve the tensions and prevent a Russian invasion, but the West has not been accepting of Russia’s demands. If Putin is determined to go forward with an invasion of Ukraine, he will most likely fabricate a crisis that justifies Russian intervention, while causes Western powers to hesitate. Unfortunately, that action may already be in motion. Ukraine was hit by a massive cyber-attack on January 14th, and news outlets are reporting that US intelligence is showing Russia is planning a black-flag operation create their own justification for an invasion of Ukraine.[5]
The world stands on edge as the longest period of peace in Europe’s history hangs in the balance. The Ukrainian people want to and deserve to live in peace. It is up to the United States and its allies to ensure that Ukraine is not left alone to fend off its aggressive neighbor, and hold tight the principles of the current world order that have allowed for continuous advances of international cooperation and development, making the world a safer place.
Brian Taptick is a Civil Affairs Captain in the United States Army with a regional focus on European affairs and has served in Ukraine. He graduated from The Citadel in Charleston, SC with a BA in International Politics and Military Affairs and is currently pursuing an MA in International Relations from American University in Washington, DC.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-russia-has-nearly-100000-troops-near-its-border-2021-11-13/
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-moves-troops-belarus-joint-drills-ukraine-invasion-fears-rcna12533
[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crimeans-vote-overwhelmingly-to-secede-from-ukraine-join-russia/
[4] https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-04-18/frances-macron-says-clear-red-lines-should-be-drawn-with-russia-cbs
[5] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/14/us-intel-russia-false-flag-operation-527112