Did Biden bait Putin into a disastrous error? Should Ukraine bow to the inevitable about Crimea and Donbas? Readers explore the implications of a Russia-hand's assessment.
I have hesitated to say this, Jim, but I disagree vehemently with the notion that President Biden baited Putin into his Ukrainian "operation" and cannot imagine anyone might have considered this a good idea. The loss of Crimea and the bloody stalemate in Donbas notwithstanding, the slow but exemplary transformation of Ukraine and the Baltic states plus the risk of escalation whether accidental or not defies any Machiavellian calculus on the part of our leaders whether here in the US or in Europe.
I also want to thank your brother, Tom, for sharing his youthful exploits and his more recent and thoughtful reflections of the current situation in Russia. As for pragmatism, I concur with your conclusion that there are no "good" - not to mention obvious - answers or options to this tragedy as it unfolds or even how it might have been avoided - not to mention prevented...
I am confused by this reader comment: “ And unlike Clinton or Trump, he was prepared to stand up to him and call him out.”
Which Clinton does that refer to? Putin only came to power during the last months of Bill Clintons’ presidency and Hillary was well-know for her hard line stance against Putin when she was Obama’s Secretary of State — the hardest of any in that administration.
One or more comments somewhere in the posts suggested that Putin could conceivably have been satisfied with less. I wish that somehow he could have been nudged in that direction, instead of being provoked (if indeed he was).
I agree with Tom Fallows take on point #1: pragmatism over abstract principles. Surrendering Crimea and Donbas is dramatic but what about halting NATO and Ukraine declaring itself neutral before the invasion. Talking about the 'right' for nations to join NATO is not in anybody's definition of self-determination! I think several conventional wisdom have perverted viewpoints. Does Russia's invasion really overturn the post Cold War 'liberal order.' Hardly. the US invasion of Iraq and regime change in Libya already violated the law of sovereignty. The Balkan Wars of the '90s upset the boundaries of Europe. Second, the constant charge by commentators that Russia wants to reconstitute it's empire is over-reach. Most of the former Warsaw Pact nations are already pledged to NATO. Russia has nukes and that's about it. Ukraine/Russia is fundamentally a border dispute not a geopolitical earthquake. It's frankly a failure of that "international order" that this dispute has gotten this far and a sad day for Western leadership.I
Mar 10, 2022·edited Mar 10, 2022Liked by James Fallows
Just because those countries are member of NATO doesn’t mean Putin doesn’t want them back under Russian control as most Russian experts believe. Until recently Putin had good reason to believe that NATO was weakening and that if someone like Trump were to get elected in 2024 it might well be dismantled.
Yes. IMO, he misjudged the situation. NATO did not have a lot to do last 25 years. But a ground-troop invasion of another European nation? That's it's raison d'être.
The notion that we provoked Putin seems credible from the analysis. But then how do we live with the underside of what we set in motion? Talk about do the ends justify the means...
As noted in the whole premise for this series, I am like 99% of Americans in not having extensive first-hand knowledge of Ukraine (or in my case, even Russia) as a ballast for strong views. That is why I was grateful for guidance from Tom F, and others like him who have thought for decades about these issues.
But we do seem to be left with an "all options are bad, and some of them are even worse" situation. The US cannot sanely intervene with direct military forces, as everyone has noted. And by not going that it recognizes that evils and carnage will continue to pile up. I won't list other options at the moment, because again I would just be guessing.
I find #3 particularly intriguing. To what end? Because it will be Putin's end sooner or later, as well as an end at least near term to the Russian threat to the EU. So far, this situation is resolving into Putin's worst nightmare: a reunited--and effective!--NATO and a re-energized EU, not to mention all the liberal democracies around the world piling on. The invasion is going to push funding and development of alternative energies because even US Republicans now must be beginning to see (whatever they say out loud) that dependence on fossil fuels is an existential threat to every nation. All of Xi Jinping's antennae have to be standing straight up with regard to his plans for Taiwan. So...Is Joe Biden really long sighted enough to have orchestrated this? If so, I seriously underestimated him.
Very good points, and questions. And, yes, we are just beginning to see the ripple effects of this change: on Russia itself, on European connections (and military and diplomatic plans), on the imperative for renewable energy (will get into this more, soon), and for calculations about Taiwan.
We can all remember a few weeks ago when the standard pundit line was, "Oh, with Putin about to roll into Ukraine, Xi Jinping has just received the go-ahead for Taiwan." I've long argued that the differences between the PRC/Taiwan situation, vs Russian/Ukraine, are more striking than the similarities. But the similarity of how war plans can go awry must be sinking in among the PRC leadership.
I think Crimea and Donbas should have the major say on what happens to them. (I have no idea what they want.) And I love the notion that Biden baited Putin. I don't know much about gangster behavior, but Putin certainly fits the mold. Bush2's comment about seeing Putin's soul--I'd be very embarrassed if I were Bush2.
Bush should have been very embarrassed at the time he said it. It seems that Putin played the religious Bush by telling him a story about how the cross his mother gave him was the only thing that survived a fire in his dacha. It seems to have been that story which made Bush think Putin had a decent soul. By all accounts Condi was not happy that he said that and neither was Cheney.
Yes, one of many moments that has slipped from proper historical notice is GWB's comment about Putin's "soul." Biden may have gotten a more accurate view thereof.
I would say it’s the media that has allowed that pathetic incident to slip from historical notice. They prefer to pretend the outrageous actions of the Bush administration didn’t happen. I have been surprised that only one analysis I have seen said that Putin likely justified his plans to use a false flag operation in Donbas to justify his invasion by comparing it to Bush’s false claims about Saddam’s involvement in 9-11 and having WMD. And no one I have seen has pointed out the parallel to Bush and Cheney thinking the Iraq invasion would be a cakewalk and that we would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people.
This has happened with other things the Bush administration did. Much of the media pretends that Republicans only started using voter fraud as a way to help them win elections after Trump took over the party. It was the Bush administration that got away with firing its own US Attorneys for refusing to bring bogus voter fraud cases against Democrats.
I have hesitated to say this, Jim, but I disagree vehemently with the notion that President Biden baited Putin into his Ukrainian "operation" and cannot imagine anyone might have considered this a good idea. The loss of Crimea and the bloody stalemate in Donbas notwithstanding, the slow but exemplary transformation of Ukraine and the Baltic states plus the risk of escalation whether accidental or not defies any Machiavellian calculus on the part of our leaders whether here in the US or in Europe.
I also want to thank your brother, Tom, for sharing his youthful exploits and his more recent and thoughtful reflections of the current situation in Russia. As for pragmatism, I concur with your conclusion that there are no "good" - not to mention obvious - answers or options to this tragedy as it unfolds or even how it might have been avoided - not to mention prevented...
I am confused by this reader comment: “ And unlike Clinton or Trump, he was prepared to stand up to him and call him out.”
Which Clinton does that refer to? Putin only came to power during the last months of Bill Clintons’ presidency and Hillary was well-know for her hard line stance against Putin when she was Obama’s Secretary of State — the hardest of any in that administration.
I will to that contributor and ask for clarification on that point.
One or more comments somewhere in the posts suggested that Putin could conceivably have been satisfied with less. I wish that somehow he could have been nudged in that direction, instead of being provoked (if indeed he was).
I agree with Tom Fallows take on point #1: pragmatism over abstract principles. Surrendering Crimea and Donbas is dramatic but what about halting NATO and Ukraine declaring itself neutral before the invasion. Talking about the 'right' for nations to join NATO is not in anybody's definition of self-determination! I think several conventional wisdom have perverted viewpoints. Does Russia's invasion really overturn the post Cold War 'liberal order.' Hardly. the US invasion of Iraq and regime change in Libya already violated the law of sovereignty. The Balkan Wars of the '90s upset the boundaries of Europe. Second, the constant charge by commentators that Russia wants to reconstitute it's empire is over-reach. Most of the former Warsaw Pact nations are already pledged to NATO. Russia has nukes and that's about it. Ukraine/Russia is fundamentally a border dispute not a geopolitical earthquake. It's frankly a failure of that "international order" that this dispute has gotten this far and a sad day for Western leadership.I
Just because those countries are member of NATO doesn’t mean Putin doesn’t want them back under Russian control as most Russian experts believe. Until recently Putin had good reason to believe that NATO was weakening and that if someone like Trump were to get elected in 2024 it might well be dismantled.
Yes. IMO, he misjudged the situation. NATO did not have a lot to do last 25 years. But a ground-troop invasion of another European nation? That's it's raison d'être.
As noted before, I have no good "answer" for any of this. All options now are terrible.
The notion that we provoked Putin seems credible from the analysis. But then how do we live with the underside of what we set in motion? Talk about do the ends justify the means...
As noted in the whole premise for this series, I am like 99% of Americans in not having extensive first-hand knowledge of Ukraine (or in my case, even Russia) as a ballast for strong views. That is why I was grateful for guidance from Tom F, and others like him who have thought for decades about these issues.
But we do seem to be left with an "all options are bad, and some of them are even worse" situation. The US cannot sanely intervene with direct military forces, as everyone has noted. And by not going that it recognizes that evils and carnage will continue to pile up. I won't list other options at the moment, because again I would just be guessing.
I find #3 particularly intriguing. To what end? Because it will be Putin's end sooner or later, as well as an end at least near term to the Russian threat to the EU. So far, this situation is resolving into Putin's worst nightmare: a reunited--and effective!--NATO and a re-energized EU, not to mention all the liberal democracies around the world piling on. The invasion is going to push funding and development of alternative energies because even US Republicans now must be beginning to see (whatever they say out loud) that dependence on fossil fuels is an existential threat to every nation. All of Xi Jinping's antennae have to be standing straight up with regard to his plans for Taiwan. So...Is Joe Biden really long sighted enough to have orchestrated this? If so, I seriously underestimated him.
Very good points, and questions. And, yes, we are just beginning to see the ripple effects of this change: on Russia itself, on European connections (and military and diplomatic plans), on the imperative for renewable energy (will get into this more, soon), and for calculations about Taiwan.
We can all remember a few weeks ago when the standard pundit line was, "Oh, with Putin about to roll into Ukraine, Xi Jinping has just received the go-ahead for Taiwan." I've long argued that the differences between the PRC/Taiwan situation, vs Russian/Ukraine, are more striking than the similarities. But the similarity of how war plans can go awry must be sinking in among the PRC leadership.
I think Crimea and Donbas should have the major say on what happens to them. (I have no idea what they want.) And I love the notion that Biden baited Putin. I don't know much about gangster behavior, but Putin certainly fits the mold. Bush2's comment about seeing Putin's soul--I'd be very embarrassed if I were Bush2.
Bush should have been very embarrassed at the time he said it. It seems that Putin played the religious Bush by telling him a story about how the cross his mother gave him was the only thing that survived a fire in his dacha. It seems to have been that story which made Bush think Putin had a decent soul. By all accounts Condi was not happy that he said that and neither was Cheney.
Very interesting. Thanks!
Yes, one of many moments that has slipped from proper historical notice is GWB's comment about Putin's "soul." Biden may have gotten a more accurate view thereof.
I would say it’s the media that has allowed that pathetic incident to slip from historical notice. They prefer to pretend the outrageous actions of the Bush administration didn’t happen. I have been surprised that only one analysis I have seen said that Putin likely justified his plans to use a false flag operation in Donbas to justify his invasion by comparing it to Bush’s false claims about Saddam’s involvement in 9-11 and having WMD. And no one I have seen has pointed out the parallel to Bush and Cheney thinking the Iraq invasion would be a cakewalk and that we would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people.
This has happened with other things the Bush administration did. Much of the media pretends that Republicans only started using voter fraud as a way to help them win elections after Trump took over the party. It was the Bush administration that got away with firing its own US Attorneys for refusing to bring bogus voter fraud cases against Democrats.
And many thanks to Thomas
Thank you very much Jim, for allowing us this insight and background from Thomas.