Alexander Vindman offers his (conventional) observations on the Ukraine crisis

Alexander Vindman, the former National Security Council staff member made famous by Donald Trump's shameful treatment of him, has an op-ed on US policy toward Ukraine, and gives a bullet-point version of it in a Twitter thread.

A prosperous Ukraine buttressed by American support makes an authoritarian Russia unviable in the long term.

— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 10, 2021

od nor bad in itself. But he is clearly arguing for a very active foreign policy that aims not just at defending international law and European security interests but at changing the current regime in Russia.

In the broad sense, any critic of Putin's authoritarian, oligarchic regime would prefer to see a different kind of government in Russia. And not all those critics would agree on what type would be most preferable.

• So my first cautionary point here is: We need to remember that US regime change operations have a very dubious record. See: Cuba, Venezuela, to take just two examples. Even the "success" stories like Iran 1954 and Afghanistan 2001 don't all show a promising outcome.

In fact, since 1979 our regime change efforts in Afghanistan has been the gift that keeps on giving: Shabnam von Hein. Afghanistan opium trade booms since Taliban takeover DW News 10.12.2021.

• Also, just how "unviable" do we want to try to make the government of nuclear-armed Russia?

It may even convince the Russian people — who share a culture, history and religion with Ukrainians — to eventually demand their own framework for democratic transition.
To be sure, this doesn’t happen overnight. A generational investment is necessary to realize such a vision.

— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 10, 2021

• I also like to think that effective examples of democratic government are contagious. There's plenty of evidence to make that argument. Here it's worth remembering that the Arab Spring which began with demands for democratization in Tunisia spread to other countries. But I wouldn't argue that the results were unambiguously successful or even nesessarily a net benefit to the NATO countries. I hope in another 10 or 20 or 50 years, people will look back on the Arab Spring as an important turning point that led to successful democratic government. But they don't provide reasons to be glib about their short-term success, particularly for a US looking to promote regime changes.

But Vindman does make his main focus the strategic role of Ukraine as an independent country, which doesn't have to mean a democratic one:

The big issue at stake: the vital role a free & sovereign Ukraine plays in advancing U.S. interests against those of Russia and China.

Statements that U.S. interests end at NATO’s borders have only emboldened Mr. Putin to ignore international norms.

— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2021

• China does have investments in Ukraine which could potentially clash with those of Russia. But it's also not clear that China sees Russian influence in Ukraine as simply bad for Chinese interests. Or that China would see a Ukraine more aligned with NATO, or one with a government that Russia dislikes, as in itself bad for China's interests.

And Vindman makes this argument:

The more important issue to consider is that negotiations with Russia should be dealt with at the level of European security. These talks should devise off-ramps that alleviate both European and Russian security concerns.

— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2021

This is a good example of diplo-speak which we often see in analyses addressed to the foreign policy "blob". And there's nothing inherently wrong there, either. Here, this is a roundabout way of saying that Russia is making the issue of Ukrainian membership in NATO (and the EU) an issue around Ukraine. But since the Western negotiating position understandably claims that an independent country's decision to join NATO. But all parties involved know that the NATO membership issue is a real issue at stake here for both NATO and Russia, whatever diplomatic smoke either side may want to blow around it.

The discussions of Ukraine often include a sequencing in which Ukraine would first join the EU, which in theory would be less threatening to Russia than NATO membership, before a later acsension to NATO could take place. But what is not mentioned enough in the public reports and discussions is that EU membership includes a mutual-defence comittment: “If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with article 51 of the United Nations charter".

Russia's control of territory within Georgia and Moldova, and even more drastically in Ukraine with the annexation of Crimea, is a very real practical barrier to the entry of any of those countries to the EU as well as NATO. Mutual-defence commitments mean agreements on the territory to be defended. If a country with some of its territory controlled by Russia joins either the EU or NATO, it creates an explicit commitment to defend the agreed borders of the member country. How that could be done in those cases without a willingness to engage in direct conflict with Russia is not clear. We do have diplomats in order to come up with creative workarounds on such things. But that is far from an easy one.

Russia's support of separatist "republics" in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine is a real and legitimate issue. Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea is even more so. In the case of Crimea, it is a serious problem for nuclear nonproliferation, because Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in its negotiations with Russia for independence in exchange for a Russia commitment not to engage in military aggression against Ukraine.