Much of geopolitical thinking is still rooted in the horrors of the 20th century. The land grabs of Hitler and Stalin, the tremendous death toll and human costs scarred humanity for generations and for good reason. Poland, for example, lost 20 percent of its population between them during WWII. Ukraine was starved out (See the film Mr. Jones which vividly depicts it and the fake news campaign of Stalin) under Stalin. Millions perished and millions more were enslaved under the Soviet system until the Berlin Wall fell in 1991.
It was natural, then, that the West should oppose Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine- his attempt to pull it back into the Russian orbit last
February. As it did with Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the world community was correct to respond by
opposing the incursion into another country’s sovereignty. The invasion was ordered by Vladimir Putin,
the hated autocrat of Russia, hated even worse because U.S. Democrats had blamed
Putin for meddling in the 2016 election, and impeached Trump over “Russian
collusion,” which was never proved. Still,
Ukraine would be his third venture outside his borders, after Georgia in 2008, and
Crimea in 2014.
As someone that grew up with people that fled the Soviet
bear claw, I am well aware of the terror and pain Russia is capable of
inflicting on its neighbors. Many of the
parents and grandparents of my friends were put in detention camps, deported in
boxcars, beaten, shot, and hunted like animals.
Putin is a bad actor and I have no sympathy for him.
Yet, I have a great deal of skepticism around Volodymir Zelenskyy
and Ukraine.
First of all, Ukraine is a deeply corrupt country, and has
been since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Hunter Biden clearly did not get a board position on the Ukrainian
energy company Burisma because of his energy expertise. Further, Zelenskyy has banned the opposition
party, and shut down the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The U.S. is not making the world safe for
democracy in its support of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy himself became a media darling from the very
beginning of the conflict.
“Churchillian” was the word most used to describe him. There were lots of media photos purportedly
showing Zelenskyy in trenches in his battle fatigues, defying the powerful
Russian army. At first, it was
effective. But then Zelenskyy started
showing signs of overplaying his hand.
Instead of pleading for help, he started making demands. He did an ill-advised photoshoot for Vogue
magazine belied a lust for international fame and attention, as did his photo
ops with various members of Congress, and his recent visit to the Golden Globe
Awards. His wife went on a $40,000
shopping spree in New York. The worst
incident was when Zelenskyy asserted that Russian missiles had landed on Polish
soil and demanded a response from NATO.
The missiles turned out to be Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles. Zelenskyy
has raised eyebrows by pitching economic development and mentioning BlackRock
and Goldman Sachs—you know, the guys that helped engineer the crash of
’08. All of this has been bad optics. People that talk about investing in a war
torn area as an “opportunity” like those that spoke about the pandemic as an “opportunity”
sets off a flashing yellow.
Another factor that raises some suspicion is his background
as an actor, with ties to the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab. This puts him in the same class with AOC and
Greta Thunberg. Zelenskyy is skilled at
manipulating an audience.
Yet another issue that raises eyebrows is the amount of aid
the US has given Ukraine in the form of cash and weaponry --$50 billion or so
in 2022. With that much of a blank check
flowing into a corrupt country, asking where it is all going is a legitimate
concern. Yet, when Rand Paul threatened
to hold up funding over an accounting for it all, he was denounced as an
obstructionist. We do know that some of
it ended up with disgraced bitcoin pioneer Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt
company. There are rumors that Zelenskyy
has helped himself to a healthy helping of taxpayer dollars. The massive amount of additional debt that
the U.S. has to shoulder leaves our government open to the obvious charge of
why we are spending so much money to defend another nation’s borders when our
own southern border remains wide open. Zelenskyy is like the pro bono litigation
client. Since he’s not spending his own
money, he has no incentive to come to the table and settle.
Finally, there is the geopolitical problem that I have been
most worried about—Russian-Chinese collusion.
One of the primary reasons for Nixon’s visit to China in 1969 was to
triangulate against the Soviet Union.
China and Russia should be natural antagonists but our clumsy foreign
policy has created allies of them. The
Molotov Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between Russia and Nazi Germany demonstrated
that countries don’t have to like each other to become allies—at least
temporarily. But the reality is that
Russia and China have held joint military exercises and have publicly
acknowledged their alliance. It is not
far fetched to think that Xi and Putin agreed that Putin would continue to
prosecute the war in Ukraine with Xi’s help and support. The Ukrainian war is draining the U.S. treasury and armaments, and the Biden
Administration drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. To make matters worse, the Administration
began to discharge warriors that refused the jab. To fight a war, you need money, energy, armaments, and skilled people—and under the
Ukraine commitment and because of our own missteps all four have dwindled. The
U.S. simply does not have the industrial base to ramp up quickly to fight a
major war against a peer competitor. To
top it off, our military command seems to be more interested in deterring
“white rage” and having an environmentally “green” force than in deterring an
aggressive China.
It seems there are no good guys in this drama. And there
have been no articulated objectives.
Zelenskyy has, at various times,
asserted that regime change is his ultimate goal. At others, it is to push every Russian out of
Ukraine, even Crimea. There has been no
real push to broker a peace deal.
Secretary Blinken seems more absent than Buttigieg was on his paternity
leave. Henry Kissinger is advocating
NATO membership with Ukraine. Yet, Russia
remains a nuclear power, and has threatened their use.
What is to be done?
The West is sending tanks—Germany is sending Leopards and the US
is sending M1s, and this represents a substantial escalation. Yet, there seems to be no consensus on a
satisfactory outcome. Is it to roll back the current aggression? Push every Russian out of Ukraine, including
Crimea? Topple Putin? Unless there is
back channel talks we are unaware of, Secretary of State Blinken is as
disconnected and absent in this as Buttigieg has been in every transportation
problem this administration has faced. There
is no diplomatic effort to stop the killing and the protesters for peace that
we saw in 1991 and Vietnam have aged out, and the New Left ironically has no
interest in finding a peaceful solution.
How long will it be before Putin does resort to a nuke, or American
advisors and trainers get killed? At the
very least, before another dollar is spent, we need to understand the
objectives and must get an accounting for all of the money.
With at best ambiguous players in this awful scenario, and
no end game in sight, Xi can only rub his hands together in glee as the West
drains resources away.
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