Your relevant disclaimers: I am not a foreign policy specialist, especially not in Ukrainian affairs. I am also not a fan of times when one country invades another, regardless of the circumstances. I don’t like war. I don’t like governments that murder dissidents with chemical weapons. I’m not here to cover how the Russo-Ukrainian war started, because either you want a generalist view (see: Wikipedia); or, you want a specialist’s - who can do that way better than I can.
I’m just a fairly regular person watching nuclear-weapons-armed powers hold a pissing contest and it threatens to drain me. So, I’m airing my thoughts for your perusal.
Beginnings
To be clear, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the initiator of all of this violence. Its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, along with its long-running gambit to break the Donbass region away from Ukraine, is unacceptable and proves that Russia would happily invade Ukraine - because it’s done it already, recently.
It’s also got a long-running track record of invading other countries: Bear witness to the Russo-Georgian war, which raged back in 2008. You know, the same year Barack Obama was elected? This isn’t new behavior out of Putin’s regime. This is their bread-and-butter.
The bottom line is that Russia is basically holding a fledgling Democracy hostage in Ukraine. I know it’s hard to find any political agreements, these days, but it sounds reasonable to believe that “Democracies are generally good” when confronted with the idea that some Fascist history-revisionist dipshit is planning to gobble one of our own up.
The Value Of Democracy
There has been a lot of talk in the political sphere about how Democracy is at stake in America. I fall into the camp of being a big believer that it is in danger; in mortal danger, in fact. Come to think of it there’s difficulty identifying when that started being a problem, as well. Was it in 2015 with the rise of Trumpist Fascism in the Republican party? Or can it be traced further back, maybe even to the Southern Strategy?
That means it’s incumbent upon us to reflect, briefly, on the virtues of Democracy: The idea that the people select their leaders, not the other way around. The idea that each person gets a vote that is, more-or-less, fairly applied to commonly-held social standards. Democracy can be imperfect - ours still has a wildly un-Democratic Senate, as well as an un-Democratic process for picking Presidents - but the idea is less about a uniform pattern of Democracy and more about the idea that, whatever form it’s implemented in, the rules are clearly understood and are followed.
The point remains: Democracy is in danger the world over, and not just in America or Ukraine. We are all in this together, and to the best of our abilities we need to act that way. It’s true that we don’t have any treaty obligation to send troops in Ukraine’s defense, so it’s pretty much unlikely that any Russian invasion will lead to us being in a shooting war with Russia; but Russian aggression of that caliber can and must necessitate a response from Democracies, both in terms of military mobilization to prevent further annexations, and in terms of economic penalties being applied directly to Russian leadership.
Imagine Being Ukrainian
It’s pretty impossible, but, try.
Your country is under siege, and has been since 2014. The Crimean Peninsula has been completely seized, and parts of your eastern states are held by Russian-aligned militants. A massive military buildup has taken place along your border with Russia and even your other neighbor, Belarus.
Your country’s energy supplies are in Russian hands, at least partially - 70% of your coal comes from your potential enemy. It’s widely known that any war will significantly impact energy availability throughout the rest of Europe, but your country could go dark or spotty right away.
You’re “looking forward,” in a purely negative sense, to the potential of an invasion and a subsequent insurrection where you will post up in a moderately-bombed building to take pot-shots at invaders; or, you’re “looking forward” to evacuating, running west with hopefully enough speed to get out before the Russians get you.
What will keep you going, either way, is whether or not the rest of the Democratic world supports you. If Russia gets away with a slap on the wrist, you’ll know you’ll never get your country back - and you’ll never be safe in an adjacent nation because they’ll be the next target. Or, maybe the international community of Democracies steps up and does whatever it can, short of sending in the troops, to support you. One positive sign in that regard is the high number of Javelin missiles sent to Ukraine - a great anti-tank weapon to blunt Russia’s armored battalions.
How To Hope For Peace
It’s easy to paint those ready to stand with Ukraine as “war-mongers” or some-such. The truth is that there are plenty of people who would happily sell Ukraine to Russia in some sort of new appeasement reminiscent of Chamberlain in the 1930’s. Russia is quite arguably the new source of a global Fascist movement, one which has imperiled the U.S. significantly. (“Russia, if you’re listening…” - Donald Trump, 2016)
Nobody in their right mind wants a war with Russia.
Or, Russia could choose to invade. Hell, odds are convincing they’d win! Even if Democracy’s resolve is high and tight, they ultimately cannot magic-away the Russian military; and if Russia’s fellow totalitarian governments in China and elsewhere choose to help their economy overcome sanctions, well, that’s all the worse.
But does Putin want to bear the cost? We’ll see. In the meantime, let’s hope for peace.
Jesse Pohlman is an independent author from Long Island, New York. He’s a recovering teacher and a Sci-Fi/Fantasy author, meaning he’s spent way too much time thinking about how nations collapse.