I’m afraid I have to disagree with Tucker Carlson. He’s been telling Americans that there is no reason for us to become involved in the dispute between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Ukraine.
Actually, there is a reason and it’s a very good one. Namely, we promised the Ukrainians that we would have their back. And remember, the very same people who are just a short while ago calling Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan precisely that, mostly because we’ve reneged out a promise to the Afghan people that we had their back, are the ones who are now telling us we should do precisely the same thing to the Ukrainians.
Why is keeping our promises important? Because it is in our strategic interest to do so.
Even if… Even if… the claim that keeping Russia out of the Ukraine isn’t of itself a strategic interest for the United States, I would argue that keeping our promises is, if we ever expect other nations to act based on our promises to them. We damage the level of trust other nations have in US when we don’t keep our promises.
It’s easy enough to conclude with this administration’s recent actions that a trusted America is not on the roadmap for Biden, under whom that strategic interest, that trust, has already suffered. We already have leaders around the world who are saying, and with some justification, that the United States foreign policy cannot be trusted that its leaders are fickle and often as not, cowardly.
And yes, of course there are a number of drawbacks to entering into an open conflict with Moscow.
I don’t deny that there are a large number of rather hawkish voices coming from the defense industry. It’s easy enough to assume that their motivations there are keeping their companies profitability up. But those voices are going to be constantly present anyway. And frankly I discount the majority of them out of hand for that reason.
I’m as uncomfortable as any Birkenstock wearing tree hugger about that situation. That said, however, those concerns pale in comparison to losing the trust of the rest of the world even further than we already have under the feckless leadership we now have.
And that leadership raises another point. Responding with Force to Vladimir Putin’s aggression in the Ukraine would certainly benefit Biden and his administration by distracting attention from the absolute domestic disaster that has administration has shown itself to be. It also does a fair job of distracting attention from the facts surrounding the millions of dollars that Biden is family and the clintons among others have removed from Ukraine. I certainly agree that we shouldn’t give Biden that opportunity.
With all that said however, I’m going to point out to you that the choices before us are not quite as binary as some would make it. This is not a situation between starting a war with Russia or letting him walk all over the Ukraine.
You see, at this point I have extreme doubts that Putin is going to move on Ukraine. Why I think that way is rather straightforward.
First of all I don’t think he’s that stupid. Perhaps more importantly a couple of wise old sayings come to mind.
* The sword of Damocles is only useful until it falls.
* Rattling a saber makes noise, drawing it does not.
If Putin we’re going to make a move on Ukraine he’d have done it quite a while ago. But he won’t do that. He’s hoping and working toward gaining concessions at the negotiating table and he’s holding out a chair for Joe Biden and company to sit down at the table.
Putin knows Biden is perceived as a weak leader and Biden knows it as well. Putin also understands that in reality Biden is no friend of the Ukraine, for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.
All Putin has to do is provide a means by which Biden appears to be some kind of able negotiator. To accomplish that, Putin has to alter his negotiating strategy to allow Biden to save some face and look like he was some kind of able negotiator to get some of the concessions that he wants. Putin is an old hand at this stuff he knows how the game gets played and he plays it well.
