So, Putin has decided that the threat was not enough; he is executing the threat.  I was wrong.  I thought that at most Putin would be content to move into the Donbas, to set up a pile of bargaining chips for negotiation with the West.  Instead, he has launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine. I have argued repeatedly over the years that the West, and particularly the US, bears a heavy responsibility for provoking Russian revanchism.  I have no reason to retract any of that.  But my skepticism over US alarmism during the current crisis was clearly misplaced.  The Biden administration’s warnings that Moscow was preparing an invasion were accurate.

Whatever the crimes and misdemeanors of US foreign policy, nothing remotely justifies Russia’s brutal and reckless act of aggression. Brutal because civilians will suffer and die—already, Ukrainians are crowding into subway stations to avoid Russian bombs.  Reckless because the dangers of escalation are considerable.  Michael Klare sketches a worst-case scenario that is scarily plausible:

…[American] generals are making plans for US combatants to assist Ukrainian soldiers in guerrilla operations against Russian invaders and to resupply Ukrainian forces from bases in adjoining NATO countries—moves that could easily result in American casualties and/or provoke Russian attacks on US/NATO staging areas, resulting in an escalating cycle of reprisals and counterattacks until American forces are engaged in a full-scale war with Russia.”

It’s hard to see what the US can do right now other than what the administration is doing—preparing sanctions that will hurt everybody.  Calls for a return to diplomacy from the peacenik left now ring hollow—Putin has essentially said that it’s too late for diplomacy, not only by invading, but by officially recognizing the independence of the breakaway Donbas regions.  You can withdraw troops; you can’t as easily withdraw recognition.

I still think that this crisis might have been avoided had the US made a good faith attempt to accommodate Putin’s legitimate grievances. Thirty years of the arrogance of American power helped create a dangerous menace in Vladimir Putin, but that doesn’t make him any the less dangerous.  We have to deal with the Putin that we have; there’s no easy way to go back.