The foreign affairs thread

[Schneed10]

This thread would be a lot more interesting if we actually talked about the issue intelligently instead of bickering about how Trump would have handled it or how it's Biden's fault. Anybody have anything intelligent to offer about the actual situation?

I can't claim to be smart but I'll at least try...

There's the obvious historical ties between Russia and Ukraine and Putin wanting to restore what he looks at as a Russian state with pro-Russian sentiment (that he refuses to acknowledge is now more pro-European than it is pro-Russian).

But his bigger endgame is to back NATO away from Russia's borders and shrink its influence as the guarantor of security in Europe. He's particularly upset at the Baltic States having such a strong NATO presence and he wants to see force deployments in the Eastern part of NATO's sphere scaled back.

So this is brinksmanship. He has amassed troops near Ukraine like this before, back in April, and he pulled them back after a few weeks. Now he's doing it again and it's primarily motivated by trying to bring NATO to the table.

It's entirely possible though he moves into Ukraine and actually takes some of the territory just to show that he's not to be dismissed.

But amassing troops at the border also has another effect: instilling fear in Ukrainian citizens. In a nation that has a pro-European majority and a pro-Russian minority, fear can be a powerful motivator to shift the votes of the citizens to acquiescing and voting for a pro-Russian government again, next time an election comes up. If NATO and the US doesn't take action to secure Ukraine and make those citizens feel safer, with the might of western defenses supporting them, the votes of the people can easily drift towards Putin.

Biden has fumbled his statements but he needs to be taking strong positions that we won't just enact strong economic sanctions, but he needs to credibly threaten Russia that the United States and NATO will defend whoever they see fit. Now is a good time to send a carrier group into the Aegean Sea.