20 February 2022
False hopes for conflict resolution.
Today, President Biden convened the National Security Council with regards to the crisis in Ukraine. This weekend, things escalated quickly as ceasefire agreements were broken and Russian-backed separatist groups began shelling Ukrainian urban areas. In other words, Russia started a war. On Friday, Biden said that he is “..now convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the decision to invade Ukraine, but emphasized that room for diplomacy remains.” Really? Now, you’re convinced? The entire history of Putin’s leadership, crisis in Crimea in 2014, or Putin’s outright stated goals didn’t get you there?
It feels like we have been playing the same game over the last couple of weeks whereby Russia moves in more troops or demonstrates their intent to invade in some way, and we sort of just shake our fist and offer some sense of hope of a diplomatic solution. I enjoyed the way Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put it stating, "We don't need your sanctions after the bombardment will happen and after our country will be fired at or after we will have no borders, or after we will have no economy ... why would we need those sanctions then?" he said. Through the West’s clear inaction, it would seem as though we are almost willing to let Russia invade, and we can fall back on some sort of narrative to depict that we did everything that we could and Putin is simply an unreasonable crazy person. Mind you, this will come at the risk of who knows how many NATO (including American) lives in whatever this land war comes to be.
As of today, Secretary of State Blinken noted that “President Joe Biden is willing to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘at any time, in any format’ if it will help prevent a war”. Blinken also said on Sunday that the US did not want to unveil the sanctions ahead of time because that would "allow Russia to try and plan against them." Let’s get this straight, Russia quite literally has Ukraine surrounded and is actively bombing them, and our response is that we’re willing to talk and we still have some secret sanctions (none of which have worked yet) in our back pocket? Is it just me, or does it feel like Russia is ten steps ahead of us?
I don’t know what the next week is going to entail, but I can assure you that we will be reacting to Russia's moves and continuing to put in a mediocre effort to prevent the next land war in Europe. That sounds dramatic, but like most things, the status quo seems like not a big deal, until it is.