So, first thing's first: I was pretty wrong. Definitely no shooting war over Crimea.
With that said, the US, Canada, and NATO are all saying Russia looks pretty poised to invade the rest of Ukraine (either to take more of Ukraine or get to Moldova), so stay tuned! There may yet be a shooting war. (The ethnic Russians live in those really red bits and would be the likely target in Ukraine.)
Ukraine up and pulled its troops out of Crimea after Russian troops smashed into the bases. In what is ultimately a complete and unlikely miracle, nobody was shot during this entire process (save for some stray sniper rifle fire from who-knows-whom.) At least the dolphins don't look like they're going to surrender.
Why surrender so quickly?
Simple: it's pretty obvious that Ukraine lacks support. The EU and US just had no interest at all in risking a war with Russia, so they weren't going to come to the aid of the Ukrainian military (which would have lost on its own). Biden may have visited Poland specifically to tell them "no-go" on getting involved in Ukraine (they seemed otherwise chomping at the bit to get in there with the Visegrad 4, which I kept believing would happen).
The US is not considering putting Ukraine under the defensive umbrella of NATO.
The biggest sign of non-support for Ukraine comes from the pretty weak sanctions against Russia. So far, it's only against individuals (travel bans, asset freezes, etc). The US and EU are considering further sanctions if Russia invades the rest of Ukraine, which basically gives Putin a hearty thumbs-up to invade the rest of Ukraine. (The Daily Show actually nails it for once, explaining that "Putin Doesn't Give a S--t.")
(So I'll have to note here that my bias in this matter is pretty obvious. I think undeterred territorial-expansion invasions in Europe are a dangerous thing and set a very bad precedent for the stability of Europe in the future.)
So let's assume a second invasion of Ukraine is pretty likely at this point. It's not clear whether or not Ukraine is going to fight a losing war for the rest of its eastern territories. Certainly Tymoshenko--most influential leader in Ukraine right now--is ready to "wipe out" the Russians and take up arms. Highly controversial statement, but it may get her swept into power quickly if Russia invades again.
Ukraine is clearly not going to get military support if it doesn't fight. I think in Crimea it was ready to see if it could get the support it needed. Russia moved quickly and jammed through the sham-referendum, and the West balked at helping. By the time Ukraine knew what help it could get, it was just too late.
If Russia invades again, Ukraine knows it can't wait for help.If it starts fighting and its people start dying--rather than doing nothing--it is much more likely to provoke a military response from a friendly nation. It seems somewhat Machiavellian to throw one's army into a fight one knows it will lose (on the hopes that help will come), but the pro-Western part of Ukraine very much sees itself as the Czech / Poland to Putin's Nazi Germany right now. The idea of rolling over is fairly horrifying to many.
Sadly, I just can't predict what's going to happen. They absolutely can't depend on the EU, US, or NATO--they've been quite thoroughly hung out to dry by all of them.
Once again, I turn to the Visegrad 4, the sleeping tiger in all of this (and the only ones that seem to be kicking up any serious dirt about Russia's invasion of Ukraine). It may be the very weakness of the US/EU/NATO response that kicks them into gear. The V4 was formed quite explicitly out of a lack of confidence in the rest of NATO to protect them from Russia, so they're a bit of a rogue element within NATO. To them, Russia is a very real and credible threat, and so the US/EU/NATO responding weakly is going to shake V4 confidence in that leadership. They'll be, in turn, less likely to listen to any warnings about getting involved.
So I'm still going to predict that, if Russia invades eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine fights, Poland and the V4 are going to get themselves in the fight. They won't invade Russia, but they're poised right on the western border of Ukraine and would be ready to send their battle group in to hold the line.
Once that happens, Russia will have a bit of a tough choice: either take them head on or try to avoid a fight and hold on to whatever territory it has. Normally, I'd assume that neither side wants to be seen as an aggressor, but Russia might just not care that much and try to give them enough of a bloody nose to boot them out before NATO can decide whether to back up the V4 and try to win back some shadow of a hint of relevancy in Eastern Europe.
But I'm not going to predict how that fight will go.
The big takeaway here is that the US, EU, and NATO are very quickly losing relevance in Eastern Europe, and that's where the action is. Ukraine is on its own unless the V4 jumps in. If they do, NATO as a real power in Europe is probably doomed.
So it's a pretty big deal.
With that said, the US, Canada, and NATO are all saying Russia looks pretty poised to invade the rest of Ukraine (either to take more of Ukraine or get to Moldova), so stay tuned! There may yet be a shooting war. (The ethnic Russians live in those really red bits and would be the likely target in Ukraine.)
Ukraine up and pulled its troops out of Crimea after Russian troops smashed into the bases. In what is ultimately a complete and unlikely miracle, nobody was shot during this entire process (save for some stray sniper rifle fire from who-knows-whom.) At least the dolphins don't look like they're going to surrender.
Why surrender so quickly?
Simple: it's pretty obvious that Ukraine lacks support. The EU and US just had no interest at all in risking a war with Russia, so they weren't going to come to the aid of the Ukrainian military (which would have lost on its own). Biden may have visited Poland specifically to tell them "no-go" on getting involved in Ukraine (they seemed otherwise chomping at the bit to get in there with the Visegrad 4, which I kept believing would happen).
The US is not considering putting Ukraine under the defensive umbrella of NATO.
The biggest sign of non-support for Ukraine comes from the pretty weak sanctions against Russia. So far, it's only against individuals (travel bans, asset freezes, etc). The US and EU are considering further sanctions if Russia invades the rest of Ukraine, which basically gives Putin a hearty thumbs-up to invade the rest of Ukraine. (The Daily Show actually nails it for once, explaining that "Putin Doesn't Give a S--t.")
(So I'll have to note here that my bias in this matter is pretty obvious. I think undeterred territorial-expansion invasions in Europe are a dangerous thing and set a very bad precedent for the stability of Europe in the future.)
So let's assume a second invasion of Ukraine is pretty likely at this point. It's not clear whether or not Ukraine is going to fight a losing war for the rest of its eastern territories. Certainly Tymoshenko--most influential leader in Ukraine right now--is ready to "wipe out" the Russians and take up arms. Highly controversial statement, but it may get her swept into power quickly if Russia invades again.
Ukraine is clearly not going to get military support if it doesn't fight. I think in Crimea it was ready to see if it could get the support it needed. Russia moved quickly and jammed through the sham-referendum, and the West balked at helping. By the time Ukraine knew what help it could get, it was just too late.
If Russia invades again, Ukraine knows it can't wait for help.If it starts fighting and its people start dying--rather than doing nothing--it is much more likely to provoke a military response from a friendly nation. It seems somewhat Machiavellian to throw one's army into a fight one knows it will lose (on the hopes that help will come), but the pro-Western part of Ukraine very much sees itself as the Czech / Poland to Putin's Nazi Germany right now. The idea of rolling over is fairly horrifying to many.
Sadly, I just can't predict what's going to happen. They absolutely can't depend on the EU, US, or NATO--they've been quite thoroughly hung out to dry by all of them.
Once again, I turn to the Visegrad 4, the sleeping tiger in all of this (and the only ones that seem to be kicking up any serious dirt about Russia's invasion of Ukraine). It may be the very weakness of the US/EU/NATO response that kicks them into gear. The V4 was formed quite explicitly out of a lack of confidence in the rest of NATO to protect them from Russia, so they're a bit of a rogue element within NATO. To them, Russia is a very real and credible threat, and so the US/EU/NATO responding weakly is going to shake V4 confidence in that leadership. They'll be, in turn, less likely to listen to any warnings about getting involved.
So I'm still going to predict that, if Russia invades eastern Ukraine, and Ukraine fights, Poland and the V4 are going to get themselves in the fight. They won't invade Russia, but they're poised right on the western border of Ukraine and would be ready to send their battle group in to hold the line.
Once that happens, Russia will have a bit of a tough choice: either take them head on or try to avoid a fight and hold on to whatever territory it has. Normally, I'd assume that neither side wants to be seen as an aggressor, but Russia might just not care that much and try to give them enough of a bloody nose to boot them out before NATO can decide whether to back up the V4 and try to win back some shadow of a hint of relevancy in Eastern Europe.
But I'm not going to predict how that fight will go.
The big takeaway here is that the US, EU, and NATO are very quickly losing relevance in Eastern Europe, and that's where the action is. Ukraine is on its own unless the V4 jumps in. If they do, NATO as a real power in Europe is probably doomed.
So it's a pretty big deal.
4 comments:
I think it's more complicated than international support vs. not. During the early days of the wars in Libya, Egypt, and Syria, the oppressed party that overthrew the government represented a small majority of the population (55-65%) and created significant bloodshed, whereas in Crimea, the vast majority are of Russian heritage, and the transition was nearly without violence. Why do we exalt one as the "Arab Spring", and view the other as Russian aggression?
I'm kindof surprised you're using the Arab Spring as an analogy. I sat back and thought about it for a bit but I'm still thinking that it just doesn't come all that close. I also don't particularly exalt the Arab Spring--leaving morality out of this, there is a clear difference in what's going on, and why one is a threat to the long-term international order.
Reasons:
1) Russia invaded another country, with troops and guns, claimed the territory. Nobody invaded these Arab Spring countries. Letting countries run around invading each other and gobbling up land is a bad thing. One can point to a hundred different little locations all throughout Europe in which there are concentrated ethnic minorities, and a precedent for peace/stability _has to be_ that "no, you cannot just invade a country because it has some concentrated ethnic minorities that happen to be a majority in your country."
2) There was no separatist movement in the Arab Spring. This was about internal regime change. Violent regime change has its own set of problems, but it's a completely unrelated set of problems from separatism and re-drawing the map. Generally the peaces of Westphalia / Waterloo outline non-separatism as the thing to squelch, specifically because a precedent of separatism allows #1 to happen.
3) These were people that were legitimately being oppressed in awful ways: y'know, torture, murder, all that. Go look these dudes up, I mean they were _bad news_. International Law has a somewhat fuzzy line on this, but generally there are certain standards a government has to meet in order to be considered legitimate and "not butchering your people wholesale" is one of those, so when you start butchering your people wholesale, you've crossed a line that's "generally accepted" one in which your people overthrowing you is thumbs-up.
4) If instead of the Arab Spring you started looking to stuff like Kosovo or South Sudan to bring separatist movements into the picture, we're also talking about extenuating circumstances for these ethnic minorities that are "somewhat" clearly outlined in international law: namely that the ethnic majorities of those countries were butchering / oppressing those people and after some time of trying to solve this in other ways, separation turned out to be the only real solution. It's not 100% clear where the line on this is, but it is very clear that Crimea wasn't close.
It's not at all clear that a majority of Crimeans even wanted to join Russia! 58% of Crimeans are of Russian heritage, but just because someone is of Russian blood doesn't mean they'd want to leave Ukraine for the brutal oligarchy/kleptocracy of Russia. Let's not stereotype Russian ethnics too much here. The other 42%--Ukrainian and Tatar--while the same rules apply to them, they're not going to have much incentive to want to jump ship. What I'm saying is it's not actually totally clear that you had even a majority--much less an overwhelming one--wanting to join Russia.
So if Crimea was being systemically oppressed by the Ukrainians and then tried to leave but the Ukrainians started butchering them and then Russia came in to _actually_ save people, then we might be looking at something that was not clearly, obviously, shamelessly pure territorial aggression, but since it was clearly "Russia coming in, unprovoked, with military, to take a strategically key piece of land when its neighbor was unstable, and then forcing a sham referendum with guns pointed at voters to make it seem half-legitimate to its brainwashed public," then yes, I'm going to call it Russian aggression, because it's Russian aggression.
So I ran across an article in the Globe the other day that implied in passing that they kicked Russia out of the G-8 in response, and went back to being the G-7. I have seen no reference to it anywhere else, but admittedly haven't been looking. Did that actually happen? If so, do you think that's actually a sanction that will mean something to Putin?
It definitely at least temporarily happened. I think of course the idea is to slap them on the wrist and bring them back in later.
If Russia cares, it's in the wrong way, I fear. Russia's own "self-talk" here is that the EU is deaf to them, isn't cooperating, that NATO is encroaching on them, and so they have this story of victimization for themselves (a la the Germans in the 30's) about how bad everyone else has been to them. I think kicking them out of the G8 and severing ties certainly will stoke that self-talk...
...but at the end of the day I think the self-talk is reverse-justification for what they're already planning to do. I don't think Putin cares much about this kind of acceptance and I don't think the Russian public will get bent out of shape that the West doesn't like them anymore. I really do think Putin sees the G7 types as rivals and doesn't really plan to cooperate with them beyond what's convenient for the moment (where the US might get quite bent out of shape because it sees the other 6 members as close allies).
So in short I'd lean towards "doesn't care" but if anything I think it's likely to make the Russians feel more empowered/justified to be unilateral.
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