Rumors of war over Ukraine

All of a sudden - or at least so it probably seems to most news consumers in the US and Europe - there's hair-raising talk in the press about a confrontation between the US/NATO and Russia over Ukraine.

BBC News provides this summary, Why tensions are rising with Russia 11/20/2021:

In the geopolitical jockeying among Russia, the US, and other powers in Europe, the rumors of war over Ukraine are happening simultaneously with the confrontation with Belarus and Poland, also along with Latvia and Lithuania, which haven't gotten as much attention as Poland in the international news.

There is a useful discussion on this between Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig, the latter of which is mainly taking a knee-jerk hawkish position (usually a very safe stance for people operating in the foreign policy Blob), while Ashford is notably more pragmatic: Is Russia Preparing to Invade Ukraine? Foreign Policy 11/19/2021.

Their discussion includes the key role that Russian energy business plays in this situation, which plays a key role in Russian relations with both Ukraine and Belarus, and which also gives both Russia and the EU (particularly Germany) an incentive to avoid political and especially military escalation in either place. But Putin's government also has practical reasons to see benefits in saber-rattling, as well.

Ashford notes:

... on the upside, [Belarusian President] Lukashenko is also his own worst enemy. In addition to the migration crisis [he staged on the borders to Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania], he started to suggest last week that he might cut off oil and gas shipments to Europe. This week, he announced an unplanned three-day “maintenance” stoppage on the Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian oil to Poland.

But I don’t think he’s going to get very far with this ploy. Putin’s response to this suggestion last week was to tell reporters that any move against pipelines carrying Russian energy to Europe would “risk harming ties between Moscow and Minsk [Belarus].” The Russian state depends on energy revenues — and on being a reliable supplier. If Lukashenko tries to disrupt that, I think he’ll find his support from Moscow drying up faster than the Polish oil supply. [my emphasis]

A lot of the mainstream commentary on Russia that I see doesn't give enough weight to Russia's status as a petrostate, a situation which is simultaneously a big blessing and a big curse.

Anatol Lieven of the pro-realism/pro-restraint Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote about the Ukraine issue of the moment in Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem in the World The Nation 11/15/2021:

Since the Ukrainian revolution and the Donbas rebellion of 2014, successive Ukrainian governments have vowed to recover the Donbas — by force if necessary. Despite a ceasefire in 2015 that suspended full-scale war, probing attacks and retaliations by both sides have led to repeated clashes, as in March and April of this year. Successive US administrations have expressed strong support for the Ukrainian side and for future NATO membership (so far blocked by Germany and France), though they have stopped short of promising to defend Ukraine militarily. ...

Only the most insane of US politicians and commentators actually want to go to war with Russia in Ukraine. But as the outbreak of World War I demonstrated, leaders who do not intend to go to war may stumble into a situation in which they are unable to stop or turnback.

Do I need to add that in the era of Donald Trump, Paul Gosar, and Kyle Rittenhouse, the phrase "most insane of US politicians" is not empty hyperbole? After all, one of those three was still President this time last year, actively plotting a coup to remain in office after losing the Presidential election.

The consequences of a direct US-Russian clash in Ukraine would be catastrophic. A full-scale conventional war would have the strong potential to escalate into nuclear war and the annihilation of most of humanity. Even a limited war would cause a ruinous global economic crisis, necessitate the dispatch of huge US armed forces to Europe, and destroy for the foreseeable future any chance of serious action against climate change. China might well seize the chance to conquer Taiwan, leaving the United States to face a war with the world’s other two greatest military powers simultaneously. Finally, given the huge superiority of Russia’s armed forces over Ukraine’s, the very limited number of US forces in Europe, and the deep unwillingness of European countries to confront Russia militarily, the strong likelihood is that Russia would win a limited war in Ukraine, seizing much more Ukrainian territory and imposing a shattering humiliation on the US and the West. [my emphasis]

If the latter seems like a terrifying scenario, that's not least because the existence of nuclear arsenals in the US and Russia has the potential to make any direct military confrontation between the two powers a potential humanity-ending event. See Cuban missile crisis. And the lesser-known but probably even closer call, the Able Archer incident.

But this is also the kind of calculation that foreign policy analysts should be making, looking as realistically as possible at the threats, options, stakes, capabilities, priorities, and alternatives in a situation.

Even states that may be otherwise closely allied and sharing similar political and economic systems can't be indifferent to each other illegally seizing territory, as Russia clearly did by occupying and even annexing Crimea in 2014, which is legally part of Ukraine. Spain and the UK generally get along very well and are both members of NATO, but Spain still wants Gibraltar back. Argentina and Great Britain have generally good relations, but Argentina still claims sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands to the Brits). In both cases, the weight of international law is against Britain. But this doesn't mean that either Argentina or Spain are likely to go to war with the UK. Although Argentina made a disastrously unsuccessful attempt at it in 1982.

But Ukraine is not a member of NATO. And the US has no mutual-defense treaty with Ukraine. And it seems unlikely as a practical matter that Russia would accept NATO membership for Ukraine, Georgia, or Belarus. No less an authority than George Kennan famously warned in 1997, when the first post-Cold War NATO enlargement (outside the former East Germany) was being actively considered, "expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era." (A Fateful Error New York Times 02/05/1997)

But in 1997, Cold War triumphalism was in full bloom.

Speaking of nuclear weapons, it worth remembering that when the Soviet Union broke up, they had such weapons stationed in Ukraine. As Gerhard Wettig writes (Gorbatschow-Reformpolitik und Warschauer Pakt 1985-1991; 2021):

Die Unabhängigkeit des ukrainischen Staates schien sowohl durch das generelle Bekenntnis zur Unverletzlichkeit der Grenzen als auch speziell durch eine Garantie seines Territoriums gewährleistet, die Russland als Gegenleistung für die Übergabe der dort stationierten sowjetischen Kernwaffen zusagte.

The independence of the Ukrainian state seemed to be guaranteed both by the general commitment to the inviolability of the borders and specifically by a guarantee of its territory, which Russia promised in return for the transfer of the Soviet nuclear weapons stationed there. [my translation, my emphasis]

This is what made Russia's annexation of Crimea and the support of separatist mini-republics inside it a particular blow the nuclear nonproliferation. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the US/NATO armed intervention in Libya in 2011 sent a similar signal, since both had agreed to give up their programs to develop "weapons of mass destruction."

So why would the leaders of North Korea, India, Pakistan, or Israel agree to give up their nuclear weapons if they see that existing nuclear powers refuse to honor their pledges to respect their territorial integrity?