If you’ve been keeping up with the news of the war in Ukraine – the Russian invasion of Ukraine – you’ll know that in the last four or five days the Ukrainian army has made a counter-attack into territory held by the Russians for two months, and are pushing the Russians back towards the Russia-Ukraine border.
The specifics involve a fairly aggressive counter-attack north and now north-east of Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city, located in eastern Ukraine just about 25 miles from the Russian border. The Ukrainians have taken possession of that most prized of things in war: the initiative. They are now the “actor,” not the “re-actor.” They are pushing the Russians back and may well reach the Russian border north and east of Kharkov in the next few days.
The question is: what then?
This is where two very smart friends, quite independently, wondered the same thing: What if Ukraine went across the border into Russia?
Strictly speaking, they are well within the law of armed conflict to attack Russia. Perhaps, as my friends postulated, they might even seize some land, use it as a bargaining chip to bring Russia into meaningful negotiations. From a Ukrainian perspective it’s a wonderful idea, assuming they have the logistics to execute such a plan.
And assuming they can manage the possible responses of the Russians.
What might the Russians do? It’s worth noting that Putin has a very favorable image among the Russian population, most of whom support the war. And they blame the US for it. We may complain that that’s because they aren’t receiving accurate reporting on the war, but that doesn’t change the fact that the overwhelming majority of Russians support him and the war. And blame the US. It’s also worth noting that the rest of the world is hardly receiving accurate reporting on the war; everything is skewed one way or the other, hopefully what we’re seeing is less skewed, but it is skewed.
If Russia were to be attacked (note that it already has been in several drone and missile attacks), this could easily be categorized by the Kremlin as an invasion, an invasion by forces that the Kremlin has labeled – and the Russian people have bought it – as Nazis.
It’s reasonable to speculate that Russia would respond with a general mobilization and would attempt to escalate the war.
At which point President Zelenskyy would presumably come to the US and NATO and ask for substantially more assistance. To include ground and air forces.
Over the course of the past two months President Zelenskyy has been compared – favorably – to Winston Churchill. He has, with the same grim cheer, the same bulldog like determination, rallied his people and at the same time orchestrated a fairly broad spectrum of international support for his besieged country. Zelenskyy may have started life as a comedian, but he is clearly smart, aggressive and well read. More to the point, he is well studied. He has thought through much of the problem here, he understands what he is doing.
Churchill, in his memoirs on World War II, recounts how he felt after he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor. For more than two years England had faced the Germans. For the first 9 months of that war, after Germany had smashed Poland, England had fought on alone. England, and in particular Churchill, had tried everything in his “tool kit” to persuade the United States to come to England’s aid. Time and again in his memoirs Churchill talks about the need for the United States to enter the war, that only with the US behind it could England defeat Germany. In fact, only with the US in the war would the Soviet Union be able to defeat Germany.
He wrote that he had no delusion, that there were many battles to be fought, and he could not tell what would happen, but: “…at this very moment [having learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor] I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck, and in it to the death. So we had won after all.”
It would be natural for Zelenskyy to ask those around him if there was a way to bring the US fully into the war. I certainly don’t hold that against him. I wish Zelenskyy well, and I pray Ukraine emerges whole and victorious.
If presented with a plan – seize some Russian terrain and use it as a bargain chip – and he was told that it might cause the Russians to escalate, he might well perceive that there is a possible use for such an escalation as well.
But the US has a whole host of other issues to deal with. It is in the US interest for Ukraine to survive as an independent nation. But this is not our war. It is not in the US interest to be at war with Russia. It is particularly not in the US interest to be at war with Russia while trying to contain China, the real long-term threat to our nation. And it is not in the US interest to run the risk of nuclear escalation.
We need to help Ukraine as we can, but we need to make certain that we help ourselves the most. We need to look at all the issues facing the US: Russia, China, energy, food stocks, the coming recession, debt, and make certain we have enough “left in the tank” to handle them all. US interests must come first.
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