Big Picture on Ukraine while waiting for Trump 2.0

Since all of us in Political Junkie World are waiting to see how the Trump II government will unfold, taking a Big Picture look is not a total waste of time. The two immediate crisis points of Ukraine and Israel-Palestine give Americans and Europeans a distinct sense of the world being in major flux or even chaos.

On the other hand, I’m already tired of hearing US mainstream pundits engage in their usual practice trying to define the outcome of the November elections in terms of some kind of general National Mood. Because that always winds up in unhelpful broad guesses like “alienation” or “distrust of authority.”

For the US elections, I’ll go with: Democrats voted for the Democratic brand; Republicans voted for the GOP brand adopted to the MAGA image; and some portion of the voters decided to go with the orange cult-leader. That at least points us in the direction of policy preferences, goals, the most salient interest, the influence of rivers of billionaire dark money in the campaign, and sloppy and not especially democratic habit of treating elections as spectator sports events.

When it comes to large global trends, the temptation to drift off into vague platitudes is even greater, with readily-available images like the Big Enemy Out to Conquer the World. But when it comes to setting a framework to understand major trends in international conflict, nobody is better at describing one than Stephen Walt. (His vague resemblance to Santa lauss surely helps!)

What direction Trump takes on the Ukraine war will tell us a lot about how he will approach foreign policy in the New Year. But we can start from the premise that on foreign policy Trump is, in Walt’s words, “fundamentally incompetent.” (1)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just offered this solution to end “the hot stage of the war,” as reported by the AP:

Zelenskyy’s remarks on Friday signaled a possible way forward to the difficult path Ukraine faces to future NATO membership. At their summit in Washington in July, the 32 members declared Ukraine on an “irreversible” path to membership. However, one obstacle to moving forward has been the view that Ukraine’s borders would need to be clearly demarcated before it could join so that there can be no mistaking where the alliance’s pact of mutual defense would come into effect.

“You can’t give an invitation to just one part of a country," the Ukrainian president said in an excerpt of the interview with Sky News, dubbed by the UK broadcaster. "Why? Because thus you would- recognize that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine and the other one is Russia.” (2)

The Zelenskyy proposal is essentially to retroactively declare Ukraine a NATO member since just before Russia sent regular troops into two eastern provinces in 2014 and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, which is crucial to Russia’s long-standing position in the Black Sea. And then NATO would be obligated to go to war with its own member nations’ armies to drive out the Russians. In other words, the first direct war of the United States with Russia since the Allied intervention of 1918-20 when Woodrow Wilson sent American troops as part of an Allied intervention in Siberia to against the Bolsheviks in the civil war then going on. (3)

AP further reports, “The plan is seen as a way for Ukraine to strengthen its hand in any negotiations with Moscow.” Of course, the US going to war with Russia would also have other effects. Like, inducing the Russians to vastly escalate their military actions in the war. And pushing to become more closely attached to China. Much more apocalyptic possibilities would also be strong possibilities. Making the Russia’s instantly willing to give Ukraine and the US everything they want in new peace negotiations is, uh, unlikely to be the immediate result of such a step.

Cold War to unipolar US dominance to … something new

Walt is working from a time map that includes major basic world power structures. Their exact dating will vary with taste. But basically the world went from the Cold War (1945-1989) to the “unipolar moment” in which the US was the world’s only superpower (1990-2017 or so), to today’s world in which Russia and China are power major powers alongside the US, with the latter still the single most powerful. The fluidity of the massive changes which make the exact transition moments in that periodization a bit fuzzy gives me a good chance to repeat on of my favorite Hegel quotes: “When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then a form of life has grown old, and it cannot be revived with gray on gray, but only recognized; the Owl of Minerva does not take flight until dusk.” (4)

Shifts in international politics that look clear in hindsight. But the events themselves are being made by leaders and their publics in real time.

One of the major sets of decisions Europe is facing right now is how much they should increase military spending in light of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Trump’s uncertain commitment to NATO’s mutual defense obligations. As a group and even with the level of political unity provided by the European Union, it cannot exert the same kind of power-balancing that the US, China, and Russia can. And Europe’s capability for joint military action is currently largely connected to the NATO structure, which the US dominates.

We’re seeing the downside of the risk of the NATO expansion program over the decades since 1989. Up until 2008, the US and NATO collectively assumed that the mutual defense obligation incurred by adding countries bordering on Russia. Including the Baltic republics of Estonia (1.4 mil population), Latvia (1.9 mil), and Lithuania (2.9 mil). It's not that Washington was ignoring the reality that they were making the credibility of the NATO defense commitment part of the European reality when they added those nations. But the foreign policy establishment of both parties effectively assumed that this was an expansion of NATO and US influence that would carry very little risk of having to go to war with Russia.

We should always be careful not to underestimate the incredible arrogance which is an integral part of underlying US foreign policy assumptions.

The Baltic region is an obvious place where Russia could force NATO to show how serious it is about its defense of its actual current members. There is a vital transportation corridor that runs through Lithuania to Kaliningrad, a piece of Russia that it not contiguous with the rest of the country.

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said he came up with the name “Suwałki Gap” minutes before a meeting with then-German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen in 2015 in an effort to raise alarm about the hole in Western defenses.

The worry is that in a conflict with the West, Russia could sweep into the corridor simultaneously from the east and the west, severing the European Union’s Baltic countries from their allies to the south. “It’s a huge vulnerability because an invasion would cut off Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from the rest of NATO,” said Ilves.

Such a move would also result in an immediate faceoff between Moscow and NATO’s nuclear-armed members, pushing the world to the brink of world-ending confrontation.

Ilves’ warning to von der Leyen, now president of the European Commission, was a reaction to Russia’s annexation of Crimea the year before, but his doomsday scenario has gained new credence in the wake of Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine. (5)

Trump’s current team is sending mixed public signals on its Ukraine approach. I suppose there is some possibility that it could be a carefully orchestrated negotiating ploy. “Some” in this case meaning between small and infinitesimal. Trump is much more focused on tossing out clickbait talking points than he is about practicing careful public diplomacy. (6)

Notes:

(1) STEPHEN WALT: Can We Create a Better World Order? IWMVienna YouTube channel 11/29/2024. <https://youtu.be/pxMazMZKj3U?si=BXuLQsDDjOZgiEml> (Accessed: 2024-30-11).

(2) Blann, Susie (2024): Zelenskyy says NATO offer for Ukraine-controlled territory could end 'hot stage'. AP News 11/30/2024. <https://www.aol.com/zelenskyy-says-nato-offer-ukraine-115004346.html> (Accessed: 2024-30-11).

(3) Trickey, Erick (2019): The Forgotten Story of the American Troops Who Got Caught Up in the Russian Civil War. Smithsonian Magazine 02/12/2019. <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/forgotten-doughboys-who-died-fighting-russian-civil-war-180971470/> (Accessed: 2024-30-11).

(4) Hegel, G.W.F. (1821): Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. In Gesammelte Werke 14:1 (2009), 16. Dusseldorf: Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste. My translation from the German.

(5) Karnitschnig, Matthew (2022): The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. Politico EU 06/22/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/suwalki-gap-russia-war-nato-lithuania-poland-border/> (Accessed: 2024-30-11).

(6) Zelenskyy’s diplomatic play for Trump. Politico EU 11/30/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-president-volodymyr-zelenskyy-diplomatic-play-donald-trump/> (Accessed: 2024-01-12).

Iyer, Kaanita (2024): Trump threatens 100% tariff on BRICS countries if they pursue creating new currency. CNN 11/20/2024. <https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/30/politics/trump-brics-currency-tariff/index.html> (Accessed: 2024-01-12).