What to do about Russia’s threatened invasion of Ukraine?  I think it altogether reasonable for the US and other Western nations to supply Ukraine with defensive weaponry to help deter Russian aggression.  But I’m glad that President Biden has said clearly that US troops would not engage in combat with Russians over Ukraine. Why, then, is he talking about sending another 8500 US troops to the vicinity?  It’s meant to be symbolic, a show of solidarity with the beleaguered Ukrainians.  But what if Russia actually did invade and the newly arrived US troops just sat and watched, per Biden’s promise not to engage?  Not very good symbolism.

A Russian invasion should be met with sanctions.  But it should be forestalled by diplomacy.  Unfortunately, a diplomatic solution is hard to see, because the US and its allies have taken a rigid stance in opposition to the Russians’ major demand: that Ukraine be kept out of NATO.

The Russians’ demand is entirely reasonable.  The expansion of NATO eastward toward Russia (but of course excluding Russia) was always a mistake.  A mistake, it’s easy to forget, that was initially opposed by much of the US foreign policy establishment.  George Kennan, the father of Cold War containment, predicted in 1998 that NATO expansion would provoke Russian misbehavior, after which proponents of expansion would “say that we always told you that is how the Russians are.” A few years later the NY Times’ Thomas Friedman lamented

Wasn’t consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?…No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we’re going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians’ throats, because Moscow is weak and by the way, they’ll get used to it.  Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we’re going to treat you like you’re still the Soviet Union.”

Of course, NATO expansion isn’t Russia’s only beef against the West.  As Jack Matlock, US ambassador to the Soviet Union under Ronald Reagan put it in 2014, the US had treated Russia like a loser since the end of the Cold War.  If you want to probe a little more into the  background to Russia’s current aggressiveness, you could do worse than read some of my own posts on the subject over the years, like this, and this, and this.

We need a grand deal with the Russians that works over all our outstanding differences, including our mutual interference in each other’s politics as well as NATO expansion. Unfortunately, the Biden administration hasn’t indicated that it has anything like that in mind.

PS After finishing this post I came across this very good piece on the background to Russia’s aggressiveness.