US political rhetoric over the current Ukraine situation

Anne Applebaum tends to lean hawkish on issues involving Russia. These tweets fit with that pattern.

On the other hand, Tucker Carlson is a rightwing twit. So it's always worth doing a double-take when you might find yourself maybe agreeing with him on something.

On the other other hand, there's the Stopped Clock rule that even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Or, in the Rick Perry version, even a stopped clock is right once a day.

Of course, the notion that the only relevant fact in the Ukraine-Russia situation is that Vladimir Putin "just wants to keep his western border secure" is also a gross oversimplication. (Yeah, I know, it's Twitter, so what can we expect?)

Heather Cox Richardson on Facebook (12/08/2021) adds some details. (The scariest information in this excerpt is the fact that Victoria Nuland is still in the government, as an Undersecretary of State no less.)

Russia depends on petroleum exports and is currently waiting on approval from German regulators to start pumping gas through the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea. The U.S. says Germany has agreed to shut the pipeline down if Russia invades Ukraine. This puts pressure on Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who took over today when Angela Merkel stepped down, but the European Union is talking about permitting the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive branch, to sanction foreign countries without getting each country to sign on individually. Sanctions would go into effect unless a majority of the E.U. countries voted to lift them, imposing unity that would create a powerful economic weapon against Russia.

Meanwhile, Foreign Policy magazine’s national security reporter Jack Detsch tweeted yesterday that, according to Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, the U.S. is considering sanctions that could “[isolate] Russia completely from the global financial system.” That’s a threat to cut Russia out of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a banking cooperative in Brussels that facilitates financial transactions around the world. European leaders considered cutting Russia off from SWIFT after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 but decided against it because the effect on Russia would be so extreme: Russia relies on SWIFT to move its payment for petroleum exports. [my emphasis]

Russia is a petrostate. Europe is heavily dependent on oil and natural gas imports from Russia. Russia is heavily dependent on that income. The US and its NATO allies made a calculated risk in extending NATO membership to former Warsaw Pact countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia) and even to three former Soviet republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania).

Russia in response has been supporting breakaway "republics" (separatist movements) in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. They also formally (and illegally) annexed Crimea, which is part of Ukraine. This effectively prevents those three countries from joining NATO. Because joining a mutual defense treaty means agreeing on the borders to be defended. Accepting those countries into NATO without resolving the border disputes would essentially mean declaring war on Russia.

Another ugly wrinkle in this is that when Ukraine separated from the former Soviet Union, they agreed to give up their nuclear weapons stationed on their soil in exchange for Russia's commitment never to invade them. That example, plus Iraq (which had given up its nuclear program) and Libya (which the Cheney-Bush Administration touted as a success story of a country giving up their "weapons of mass destruction" program), means that the US and Russia have sent a message to non-nuclear powers: "If you have nuclear weapons, we won't invade you. If you give up your nuclear weapons ... tough luck, suckers!"

Great powers taking nuclear nonproliferation as seriously as they should would not act this way.

It would be trite to say that the current situation with Ukraine is complicated. And Ukraine is by no means the only issue in the relations among the US, Russia, and Europe. But with characters like Victoria Nuland on the case who will be only to glad to paint this is as a good-vs.-evil situation, people who aren't fond of unnecessary wars need to remember that it's complicated.