I understand when ethnic Ukrainians cheer for Ukraine’s success against Russia. I understand that many people find Putin to be distasteful…a bully, a tyrant, a killer of political opponents. And the Russia he has nurtured is corrupt (although probably not on the scale of Ukraine!), with Putin himself being the ultimate recipient of much of that corruption.
But Russia is a decaying regional power, and the combination of its demographics and the loss of so many of its former colonies in eastern Europe and Asia has limited its ability to project power, and fund and man its military-industrial complex.
Its war with Ukraine is a border and cultural dispute, and regardless of its outcome the safety and security of the United States is maintained not by ensuring Ukraine’s success, but in pushing back against the onslaught of China. The Ukraine war is a rounding error, nothing more.
So when supposedly sane people suggest that America’s interests would be best served by extending our nuclear umbrella over Ukraine, and in fact facilitating Ukraine’s acquisition of nuclear weapons “without any controls on where and how Ukraine might use them,” the only response should be, “Are you f*cking insane?”
Can Biden Deter a Russia Nuclear Attack on Ukraine? Yes, if He Gives Ukraine Tactical Nukes
What Biden should instead do is tell Russia clearly that any use of nuclear weapons of any size against Ukraine will lead to U.S. provision of the same types of nuclear weapons to Ukraine without any controls on where and how Ukraine might use them. The non-proliferation mafia might howl with outrage, but the West must gear its nuclear policy toward reality, not wishful thinking or an empty façade of a treaty regimen by which revisionist states no longer abide.
This is both fascinating and terrifying. The idea that a corrupt and dysfunctional Ukraine should be given nuclear weapons WITHOUT ANY CONTROLS is irrational in the extreme. We have already seen conventional weapons sent to Ukraine appearing in other places, and the temptation for a multi-billion dollar payout for the sale of just one tactical nuclear weapon would in all likelihood be too tempting to skip for the kleptocrats of Ukraine.
And what about if they decide to use one to nuke Moscow? How would Russia respond? Regardless of one’s opinion of Russia’s justification for their invasion of Ukraine, it is a border dispute that has not expanded anywhere else. So the use of American nuclear weapons on Russian soil rationally could be seen as an American attack on Russia.
What would be next? Russia attacking American interests in the world, or perhaps a Russian nuclear attack on American soil? That is called proportionality, and it makes sense.
The writer of this idiocy is a Yale PhD, so it is understandable that he makes no sense at all, that he is a warmonger and a fool. His attitude is simply an extension of the worst excesses of the neocons from 20+ years ago, whose most fervent desire was a robust American foreign policy that included making war on anyone with the temerity to disagree with Pax Americana.
Otto von Bismarck had many intelligent things to say about the world, including his most famous quotation: “The Balkans aren’t worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” We would be well served to embrace that sentiment with respect to Ukraine, because the entire country isn’t worth the life of a single American…soldier or civilian.
[Hat Tip: “dhmosquito”]
