The battle on the Right over Ukraine is part of a grand battle over civilization and humanity. Is it Eastern barbarism and the Hitler-of-the-week that are the great threats, or is the imperialistically woke and multicultural West the real problem?
The specifics drop out of sight, as they do in American discussions of foreign policy. But they shouldn’t. In dealing with the Ukraine conflict we have to consider what’s good for America. That would include stability in Eastern Europe, and above all no war with Russia. Otherwise, we have huge problems here. Why get involved with a couple of rather unsavory characters there?
A great deal depends on Russian goals. People say they want to recreate the Soviet Empire by force. They’d no doubt like that, but it appears that their conditions for ending the conflict are (1) acceptance that Crimea and the breakaway republics are no longer part of Ukraine, and (2) constitutional neutrality for Ukraine.
Such a result seems sensible, for them, for us, and for the Ukrainians. The Russians may view the restoration of their former empire as desirable, but they view the military status of Ukraine as a matter of national existence.
Conquest of all Ukraine would be a Pyrrhic victory for them, given Ukrainian resistance and the evident Ukrainian attitude toward Russia. And it seems that retention of the breakaway regions would be the same for the Ukrainians.
It also seems the West has no intention of admitting Ukraine to NATO. There are good reasons for that. Intelligent and experienced people have long warned that the forward NATO policy toward Russia would lead to war and the destruction of Ukraine.
Finland and Austria seem useful precedents for constitutional neutrality. Russia had no reason to do them favors. The former went to war with Russia during her most desperate hour (the Continuation War) and the later was an integral part of the Third Reich. Even so they were able to maintain freedom and self-rule at a time when Russia was in a much stronger position.
The Cuban Missile Crisis also seems a precedent. We invaded Cuba (Bay of Pigs). We then engaged in an act of war against Cuba (the naval “quarantine”) that involved threats of lethal force against Soviet shipping, because Cuba, who evidently needed protection against us, allied herself with another power.
We of course found the idea of Soviet nuclear missiles 90 miles from Key West an existential threat. The Russians found the American bases ringing the Soviet Union similarly horrifying. So the situation was resolved by trading Soviet missiles in Cuba for American missiles in Turkey.
Grenada, which we invaded, and Nicaragua, where we supported a proxy war, are also precedents for use of force by a dominant power against nearby countries that are becoming too closely connected to an adversary.
I suppose to some extent the Kosovo war is a precedent for the breakaway republics. The post-communist East has seen a number of border adjustments and breakaway regions, and in that case we used our overwhelming military force to support the effort.
None of which shows the Russians were the good guys or Americans the bad guys, then or now. But the comparisons do suggest that the “unprovoked aggression” and “violation of sovereignty” theories aren’t the best way to look at situations which have a long history. Does it make sense for us to insist at the risk of nuclear war that the Russians comply with standards we ignore?