{"id":3879,"date":"2022-05-01T19:31:32","date_gmt":"2022-05-02T00:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whia.us\/?p=3879"},"modified":"2022-05-01T19:36:34","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T00:36:34","slug":"ukraine-is-now-americas-war-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whia.us\/en\/3879\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine Is Now America\u2019s War, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Robin Wright<\/strong>
\nMay 1, 2022<\/strong>
\nNew Yorker<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

America has crossed a threshold in Ukraine, both in its short-term involvement and its long-term intent. The U.S. was initially cautious during the fall and winter as Russia, a nuclear country with veto power at the U.N. Security Council, amassed more than a hundred and fifty thousand troops along the Ukrainian border. It didn\u2019t want to poke the Russian bear\u2014or provoke Vladimir Putin personally. Two days after long convoys of Russian tanks rolled across the border, on February 24th, the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, still claimed that America\u2019s goal\u2014backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid\u2014was simply to stand behind the Ukrainian people. The White House sanctioned Russia\u2014initially targeting a few banks, oligarchs, political \u00e9lites, government-owned enterprises, and Putin\u2019s own family\u2014to pressure the Russian leader to put his troops back in their box, without resorting to military intervention. \u201cDirect confrontation between nato and Russia is World War Three, something we must strive to prevent,\u201d President Joe Biden said, in early March.<\/p>\n

Yet in just over nine weeks, the conflict has rapidly evolved into a full proxy war with Russia, with global ramifications. U.S. officials now frame America\u2019s role in more ambitious terms that border on aggressive. The goal\u2014backed by tens of billions of dollars in aid\u2014is to \u201cweaken\u201d Russia and insure a sovereign Ukraine outlasts Putin. \u201cThroughout our history, we\u2019ve learned that when dictators do not pay the price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and engage in more aggression,\u201d the President told reporters on Thursday. \u201cThey keep moving. And the costs, the threats to America and the world, keep rising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having basically run out of appropriated funds, Biden has asked Congress for thirty-three billion dollars\u2014for new military, economic, and humanitarian support\u2014in the latest of several packages for Ukraine. \u201cThe cost of this fight is not cheap,\u201d the President acknowledged. (As Politico noted, the new aid is about half the size of the entire Russian defense budget\u2014and also more than half of the U.S. State Department\u2019s annual budget. Over the next five months, U.S. aid to Ukraine will average more than two hundred million dollars a day.) The investment, Biden said, was a small price \u201cto lessen the risk of future conflicts\u201d with Russia.<\/p>\n

For Putin, the war in Ukraine always seemed to be, at least in part, a proxy fight with nato and its U.S. leadership. Ahead of his invasion, he publicly expressed deep paranoia about the military alliance and its further expansion into countries once aligned with the Soviet Union. He also brokered a five-thousand-word agreement with the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to form a de-facto alliance of authoritarian regimes. They jointly opposed nato enlargement.<\/p>\n

Biden tried to resist that framing. At the start of the invasion, the U.S. invoked the principles of sovereignty, a democratically elected government, and territorial integrity. During the past week, however, Ukraine\u2019s existential crisis has increasingly appeared to be America\u2019s war, too. On April 24th, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took a train with blacked-out windows into Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and symbolically reinforce American support. The stealthy trip reflected the increasingly ambitious U.S. goal. \u201cWe want to see Russia weakened to the degree it can\u2019t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,\u201d Austin told reporters, near the border in Poland. Blinken said, \u201cWe don\u2019t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Austin assembled defense leaders from more than forty countries\u2014well beyond the nato framework\u2014at Ramstein, a U.S. base in southwest Germany, to co\u00f6rdinate support for Ukraine. Austin, a retired general involved in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, announced the formation of a new coalition of \u201cnations of good will\u201d that will meet monthly to \u201cintensify\u201d an international campaign to win \u201ctoday\u2019s fight and the struggles to come.\u201d In appealing for more aid, Biden said, \u201cWe have to do our part as well, leading the alliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shift may have been inevitable, given the barbarism of the war, which has claimed thousands of civilian lives, and Russia\u2019s challenge to the conventions and obligations of modern statecraft. \u201cIf this is left to stand, if there is no answer to this aggression, if Russia gets away with this cost-free, then so goes the so-called international order,\u201d General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN. \u201cAnd if that happens, then we\u2019re heading into an era of seriously increased instability.\u201d On Friday, the Pentagon press secretary John Kirby choked up at a briefing as he discussed Putin\u2019s \u201cdepravity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. has become more deeply engaged for at least four reasons. Diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia has stalled amid revelations of atrocities committed by Russian troops, notably the execution of civilians in Bucha. Moscow\u2019s early participation in peace talks never seemed credible anyway; Putin is too greedy and historically ambitious. Russia has staked claims to southern Crimea, the eastern Donbas region, and the lands between them along the strategic Black Sea. Putin is not yet ready\u2014or, perhaps, not yet under enough pressure\u2014to negotiate seriously.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has also been emboldened by the stunning underperformance of the Russian military, the largest in Europe. U.S. intelligence had originally feared that Kyiv could fall within seventy-two hours. But Ukraine held the capital, and Russian forces retreated. Washington is no longer hesitant to poke the bear. Yet time still \u201cis not on Ukraine\u2019s side,\u201d Milley reportedly told the coalition of defense leaders at Ramstein. His concern was reinforced on Thursday, when Russia struck cities across Ukraine just an hour after the U.N. Secretary-General, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, described the country as the \u201cepicenter of unbearable heartache and pain.\u201d Guterres\u2019s trip to Kyiv followed talks with Putin in Moscow. The U.N. leader, who toured Bucha, took a clear side in the conflict. \u201cThe war is an absurdity in the twenty-first century,\u201d he said. \u201cThe war is evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

The growing U.S. involvement also reflects broader fears\u2014long held among countries on or near Russia\u2019s borders \u2014that Putin\u2019s aggression will not stop with Ukraine. On April 22nd, a senior Russian military commander announced that Moscow sought \u201cfull control\u201d over eastern and southern Ukraine in part to open the way to neighboring Moldova, a tiny, landlocked country that is supportive of the European Union but dependent on Russian energy. In congressional testimony on Thursday, Blinken cited the urgent need \u201cto seize the strategic opportunities\u201d and address \u201cthe risks that are presented by Russia\u2019s overreach as countries reconsider their policies, their priorities, their relationships.\u201d Moscow\u2019s flagrant rhetoric about nuclear weapons has also increasingly alarmed U.S. officials. \u201cNobody wants to see this war escalate any more than it already has,\u201d Kirby said, on April 27th. \u201cCertainly nobody wants to see\u2014or nobody should want to see\u2014it escalate into the nuclear realm.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Biden Administration has public support for its expanding role\u2014for now. Despite war weariness after two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq, roughly two-thirds of Americans believe that the U.S. has a \u201cmoral responsibility\u201d to do more to stop the killing of civilians in Ukraine, according to a Quinnipiac poll published in mid-April. In a country polarized on most other issues, a majority from both parties agreed. Three-quarters of those polled also fear that the worst is yet to come. And more than eighty per cent believe that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. Yet the public\u2019s moral outrage \u201cstops at the water\u2019s edge when it comes to committing the U.S. military to the fight,\u201d Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac University analyst, noted. Only nineteen per cent of Americans believe the U.S. should do more even if it risks getting into a direct war with Russia.<\/p>\n

That conviction may soon be tested. The U.S. role has evolved\u2014from a reactive response to Russia\u2019s unjustified war to a proactive assertion of American leadership and leverage. Perhaps in desperation, Putin\u2019s rhetoric has become bolder. On Wednesday, he warned that he could launch a \u201clightning-fast\u201d response to any nation that intervened to thwart or threaten Russia. \u201cWe have all the instruments for this, such that no one can boast of,\u201d he said, in an apparent reference to Moscow\u2019s nuclear and missile arsenal. \u201cWe\u2019re going to use them if we have to.\u201d The war could now play out in many disparate ways. Each carries its own dangers\u2014for the U.S. as well as Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. is leading a new coalition of \u201cnations of good will\u201d as the goal expands from supporting Ukraine to weakening Russia and outlasting Putin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[142,199,128],"tags":[156,161,149,212,127],"series":[1027],"coauthors":[238],"class_list":["post-3879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-most-important-topics-en","category-top-stories","category-updates-en","tag-russian-federation-en","tag-nsc-en","tag-white-house-en","tag-ukraine","tag-usa-world-en","series-whia-synergy"],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/whia.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/broo.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/whia.us\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/whia.us\/en\/feed\/podcast\/whia-synergy","embedCode":"

Ukraine Is Now America\u2019s War, Too<\/a><\/blockquote>