Some Unoriginal Comments on Ukraine

 The whole Ukrainian crisis has a certain air of madness to it. On the one hand, there are actually broad areas of agreement.  I think Americans all pretty much agree both that (1) a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be intolerable, and (2) we are nonetheless not willing to actually go to war to stop it.  Yes, I know, Tucker Carlson and some of his ilk are siding with Russia in this dispute, but I think we can safely assume that if Russia invaded on a large scale even Tucker Carlson would be hard-pressed to defend it.

So what is going on here?  Well, the Russians are insisting that Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO.  And, in fact, everyone more or less agrees that Ukraine is not going to join NATO any time soon.  In fact, under NATO rules Ukraine is not even allowed to join right now, since it has a disputed border with Russia.  But the overwhelming consensus is that we mustn't come right out and say so because to come out and say so would be to deny Ukraine's sovereign right to join any alliance it wants.  Um, don't allies also have the right to refuse any entrant the want also?

And, in fairness to our hawks, the Russians are also demanding that we kick former Warsaw Pact countries out of NATO much against their wishes, which is clearly a non-starter.

But the hawkish viewpoint is nonetheless that even though we are not prepared to risk war with Russia over Ukraine, we still have to stand up for Ukraine's right to do something that isn't actually going to happen because to do otherwise would be to concede Russia a sphere of influence in its near abroad, i.e., in the old Soviet Union.  And they tut-tut that supposed anti-imperialists seem to be willing to accede to Russian imperialism within its sphere of influence.  Of course, these fierce opponents of spheres of influence are really just saying that we should have a sphere of influence over the entire world, and that no one can ever reasonably oppose our uniform global hegemony.  

But more to the point, there are certain parts of the world that Russia sees as so critical to its interests that it is willing to risk WWIII to maintain domination. During the Cold War, those areas were known as the Warsaw Pact.  We conceded the Soviet Union a sphere of influence in the Warsaw Pact, not because we saw it as morally legitimate, but because we saw it as preferable to nuclear war.  Well, the areas Russia is willing to start WWIII over have retreated eastward by several hundred miles, but they haven't ceased to exist.  And ultimately, we are not willing to risk WWIII to prevent Russian domination over its near-abroad.  That means that Russia has a sphere of influence over these areas whether we like it or not.  

To suggest that we should not take this painful reality into account in our foreign policy is absurd.

Follow up:  None of this is to deny that we should do our best to deter an invasion.  But if there is any way to defuse this standoff without a resort to war, it will probably involve allowing Russia some sort of symbolic concession to allow them to back down without losing face.  And who can doubt that if we do reach such a resolution, the usual suspects will cry appeasement, which is their name for anything short of unconditional surrender.