Daily Kos started nearly twenty years ago partly as a reaction to the war in Iraq. It has benefited both then and now with Markos’s experience in the army, and a number of Kos regulars posting about the war in Ukraine (with enormous competence).
I did not serve in the military nor do I have any direct experience with war. What I can provide is perspective based on an understanding of history and politics. One of the key lessons from history is that being a war expert does not always lead to the best outcomes.
One of the great notables of war is Napoleon Bonaparte, who became emperor of France and led the French army (with allies) to notable victories all over Europe. Even he made a mistake. He invaded Russia.
Then, there’s the sad case of Marcus Licinius Crassus, who was a Roman general and statesman. Crassus helped form the first triumvirate with Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompey. Famed to be the richest man in Rome, he was a proponent of Rome’s ill-fated invasion of the Parthian Empire.
Romans thought attacking the Parthians would be an easy victory, similar to Russia taking over Ukraine. Many of Rome’s princes went along, expecting to come back in glory to rich political careers. Crassus led 30,000 to 40,000 Roman troops into what we now think of as Iraq. The Parthians took them apart at the seams (in the Battle of Carrhae). Roman casualties were as much as 20,000, with another 10,000 captured, along with several Legionary Eagles. Rome paid an empire’s ransom in gold and other treasure to get their princes and eagles back.
As a footnote, the Parthian Empire did, eventually fade, to be replaced by the Sasanian Empire, and later Iran. We don’t think too much about the Parthians, but in their day they ruled an enormous space, maybe 2 million square miles. They controlled the Silk Road, between the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty in China. They were able to control that huge territory partly because they built a network of roads, allowing them to send troops to fight almost anywhere within their empire. They also had a set of relay stations for passing messages, where one horseman would hand off a message to another one for the next leg of the journey. News at the border could be relayed to the capital in about a week or so.
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
So, with some historical perspective, what can we say about the war in Ukraine?
Stupid, Stupid Mistake
Vladimir Putin made a stupid, stupid mistake invading Ukraine. I don’t think I need to justify that statement. But if you look at the results, you can compare them, even thus far, with Carrhae.
Not only was this a military mistake of epic proportions, it was an evil act. He committed a crime of aggression.
I’ve already suggested a plausible response to this in Stopping a Crime of Aggression. In that article, I suggested:
- Ukraine should charge Russia before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the crime of aggression.
- The ICC should rule in Ukraine’s favor, declaring Russia’s invasion a crime of aggression.
- The U.N. General Assembly should use this result to demand an immediate end to the war and to demand Russia deliver Vladimir Putin to the ICC for trial.
Really, the key to making this work is the part where the General Assembly pitches Russia out of the UN. This makes it possible for the Security Council to refer the matter to the ICC. (Admittedly, this assumes you can even change the U.N., and that a sufficient number of countries are willing to go along.)
I hear the U.S. is now working to remove Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council. (See here in the WSJ). That’s not good enough. Russia needs to be tossed out of the U.N. Invading another country is against the U.N. Charter. Didn’t anyone notice?
You are not obligated to be nice to these people. You aren’t obligated to observe diplomatic protocol when a country sends an armed mob into another to rape and pillage.
People complained when President Biden told the truth: Putin cannot remain in office after committing a crime of aggression, especially one this horrendous. Biden was not obligated to be polite. He was not obligated to observe protocol.
That’s like if the mafia sends thugs to wreck your home. You are not obligated to say, “Y’all come back now!” when they leave. What you are obligated to do is to whack the last one out the door with a baseball bat.
So, no, Russia shouldn’t be on the Human Rights Council—because they don’t belong in the U.N.
As a follow up, I think the UN Charter should be altered to remove the USSR as a permanent member of the Security Council (with their veto power) and replace them with another country. I nominate Japan to replace them, because Japan has shown for nearly a century a real commitment to peace.
If Russia ever gets its act together, and becomes a true democracy with respect for the rule of law and human rights, they could be added back to the Security Council, along with another country to balance things out. Perhaps Germany, which also seems to be committed to international peace. Or, if that’s too Eurocentric for you, we could consider a country from Africa, South America, or south Asia.
Way into the future, when that might happen, the UN can just figure it out.
How is this ever going to happen? I think the most likely scenario is a military coup in Russia, where the top leaders of their military realize Putin is destroying the Russian military with his insane attack on Ukraine and just turn him over to The Hague.
My plan, as outlined, may or may not work. A famous dictum says that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. But at least it is a plan, and pursuing it puts diplomatic pressure on Russia to end the war sooner, rather than later.
NATO Response
The media has focused a lot on the Ukrainian response to the invasion, the enormous suffering of the civilians in Ukraine, and the bravery and effectiveness of the Ukrainian military. I’m truly horrified by the endless torture and murder of innocent people at the hands of the Russians, and I am truly awed by the courage of the Ukrainians in the face of their attempted annihilation.
Of course, in the U.S. there’s always media questions about the response of the Biden Administration, and inevitable Republican criticisms. Overall, the President has shown great leadership in this crisis. I’m very impressed with his ability to keep the western world united in its response to the Russian invasion, which includes their united ability to get military assistance to Ukraine. As I’ve said elsewhere, managing allies in a time of war is well known to be one of the most difficult tasks a commander can have.
And then there are the Republican crazies and their ring leader. I could write an entire article on those people, making fun of them, but you can do that in your own heads without my help, and it would probably be more enjoyable.
None of this requires further analysis.
But we are far enough along to think about the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) response. Should it change? Is there more NATO could do and should it do it?
Yes, there’s more NATO could and should do.
Let’s start with what they should have done right from the start. As I suggested in A Stronger Response on Ukraine, NATO should have set up a safe haven for refugees in western Ukraine, where Russia was denied the right to attack. This is far short of a no-fly zone, because (1) it would not extend to the war in the east and (2) it would not require shooting down Russian planes unless they fired on a target.
But this would have made the war shorter, because it would have immediately denied Putin one of his key strategic goals, taking over Ukraine. With a safe haven in western Ukraine the only way to do that would be to attack NATO forces. Putin invaded Ukraine, not Poland. Poland is every bit as much a part of the Eastern Bloc as Ukraine, but the problem invading Poland is that it is a NATO country, and that would mean Russia launching a war against NATO.
The war is about a month further along, so establishing a safe haven in western Ukraine might be easier or harder than it was earlier. But it still would have the same strategic effect.
In addition, it would have all the other advantages I suggested earlier. Refugees would not have to leave Ukraine to get aid. This would mean less stress on EU countries. It would make it easier to resupply the Ukrainian military.
That was then, and this is now. More can now be added to this list as the war enters “Phase II”. There’s the Phase II Response.
Phase II Response
Over time I’ve hinted that I think NATO should provide more advanced capabilities to Ukraine. We’ve seen Javelins, NLAWs, Stingers, and more recently “suicide drones” sent to Ukraine.
This appears to have resulted in success halting and reversing Russian gains, especially near Kyiv. Good.
But while Russia has been waging war in Ukraine they have been obliterating civilians, wiping them out with missiles and bombs, but also hand-to-hand, sometimes with execution-style slayings. This isn’t a military operation, in the traditional sense. It’s a murderous rage carried out with military weapons. We (NATO) have to stop this.
To do that, NATO needs to provide Ukraine with weapons that will persuade Russia to leave.
To be blunt, that means weapons with sufficient range to hit Russian airfields and launch sites inside Russia itself. It means weapons sufficient to hit Russian military bases near Sevastopol and the bridge from Russia to Crimea across the Kerch Strait. It means anti-ship weapons, like Exocet and Harpoon missiles, capable of destroying Russian navy ships in the Black Sea.
I notice that Boris Johnson, UK PM, now wants to give Ukraine anti-ship missiles, In response to the request from Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Harpoon missiles used by the Royal Navy. (Harpoon missiles are made by the U.S., and Exocet missiles are made by France. Both are deployed widely among western allies.) See here in the Daily Mail, “Putin airstrike pounds Odessa fuel storage as Boris Johnson wants to give Ukraine anti-ship missiles to take out Russian warships and prevent amphibious assault across the Black Sea to capture vital port city”. The Daily Mail always has breathless headlines.
There is risk in providing such weapons to Ukraine. The Russians might get mad at us, and then what? They might call it an “escalation” and retaliate with something.
The actual escalation was Russia invading Ukraine. No response intended to eject Russia from Ukraine is an actual escalation. It’s a response to the initial provocation.
Also, this war will only end when someone wins. For Ukraine to win, Russia must suffer sufficient reduction in their ability to wage war that they have to go home. At some point, Russia will be defeated. When that happens, they will be angry and may lash out.
The only question, really, is when that will happen. The quicker it happens, the fewer people who will suffer and be killed. Giving Ukraine the ability to really hurt the Russian military and seriously degrade their ability to make war will stop the war faster. Will NATO do that?
Of course, a military response is not the only possible response. Many have called for petroleum sanctions. What about that option?
Petroleum Measures
The problem with petroleum sanctions is their collateral damage to western economies, especially the economies in Europe. According to a study by Anne-Sophe Corbeau, of the Center on Global Energy Policy, Europe typically imports about 35% of its gas (pipeline and LNG) from Russia. This is on the order of 150 billion cubic meters per year. How Deep Is Europe's Dependence on Russian Oil?, 14 March 2022.
Most of Russia’s oil also goes to Europe. Around 70% of Russia’s crude oil and petroleum products go there. (In 2016, for example, about 5.2 million barrels per day of crude oil and condensates, plus 2.4 million barrels per day of petroleum products went to Europe.) Russia exports most of its crude oil production, mainly to Europe, November 2017.
More recent figures show the EU gets about 40% of its natural gas, 27% of its crude oil, and around 47% of its solid fuels, such as coal, from Russia.
Given these facts, a total ban on Russian fossil fuels would be severely damaging to the economy of Europe.
However, there is another measure the EU should consider, and that is a stiff tariff on Russian fossil fuels, creating a penalty for using them (and an incentive to find alternatives).
My proposal is that every country importing any fossil fuel from Russia agree to impose a new, 20% tariff on those imports as a result of the war. The proceeds from that tariff should go strictly to paying the costs of repairing the damage to Ukraine caused by the Russian invasion.
Obviously, Russia can never restore the lives of those its military forces have killed. But in addition to the actual costs of rebuilding all physical damage (infrastructure, buildings, furnishings, belongings, and other costs), this fund should also include payments to families who have lost relatives and payments for medical costs of those injured in the war.
The 20% tariff should remain until all the costs of Russia’s invasion are recouped and used to restore Ukraine.
This gives Russia immediate incentive to stop fighting and withdraw from Ukraine.
And yes, I mean withdraw from Dunbas and Luhansk and Crimea, too. If Ukraine wants to conclude its own treaty with Russia about the fate of these regions, more power to them, but the tariff should be premised on complete withdrawal.
Bringing It Home
Those are all considerations outside the U.S. But the war has implications for domestic politics, as well, and we should discuss those implications.
As noted on The Brief, the weekly podcast by Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld, the war in Ukraine is a war between democracy and autocracy. The Republican Party is at war here in the U.S., trying to stamp democracy out.
It is important for every Democratic candidate to remind the public of that fact. We are no longer in a civilized tussle over political values, like we might have been in the 1950s. The Republican Party is not a legitimate political party. They don’t have the good of the country at heart. They are working in every place they have power to stamp out democracy.
Go look at my article, Department of Justice Performance Evaluation, where I look at the fifteen problematic laws passed in 2021 in Republican dominated states intended to interfere with the right to vote.
Just last week, a federal judge in Florida struck down several aspects of one of these laws. See Judge calls out and strikes down parts of Florida's new voting law as ‘unconstitutional’ by Rebekah Sager.
And note that the DOJ wasn’t party to this suit. It took the League of Women Voters of Florida and the NAACP to challenge the law.
In order for this to work, Democrats need to put more pressure on the Department of Justice to pursue cases against the states trying to stop democracy so Republicans can win. (More segments in my series on the DOJ are under development. Stay tuned.)
And, as Markos and Kerry also pointed out, the entire Republican culture war takes on a new meaning in light of the Ukrainian invasion. What the Republicans are trying to do—book burning and attacks on LGBTQ citizens and attacks on abortion rights and taking away the right to vote—are all the same fascist policies so popular with Putin in Russia. It’s as if the Republicans and Putin were singing from the same hymn book. Democrats need to use the Republican culture war against them.
Summary
I’m not an expert on war. Neither are any of the experts on war. What will happen in a war is outside anyone’s actual control.
In 415 B.C.E., Athens sent a huge expeditionary force to attack Syracuse in Sicily. (More at Sicilian Expedition on Wikipedia.) They had been fighting the Spartans for around 15 years in a massive encounter now called the Peloponnesian War. Syracuse allied itself with Sparta, and the powerful in Athens thought destroying Syracuse could help them win decisively.
According to Thucydides, the great historian of the war, the Athenians sent this expedition primarily because “they longed for the rule of the whole island”, meaning Sicily. (From The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan, page 254.) According to Kagan, the Athenians were “greedy, power-hungry, and ill-informed about their enemy”.
The prospects for success looked good, and in fact, a city in Sicily (Segesta) offered to underwrite the expedition to the tune of sixty talents of coined silver (enough to keep sixty warships in operation for a month). Unfortunately, fate and incompetence doomed the expedition. Of those who went on the expedition, Thucydides writes, “only a few of many came back home”. (Kagan, page 322.)
Within a few years, Athenian democracy was overthrown. The Peloponnesian War continued until 404 B.C.E., when Athens surrendered to Sparta, after a prolonged siege. Sparta appointed their own rulers for Athens, the Thirty Tyrants.
So, you may take my suggestions as just yet another input into what should be done. They should be evaluated for their own merit, not the merit of their (occasionally) humble author.
Those suggestions are:
- Use existing international law and organizations to declare the war illegal and demand the surrender of Vladimir Putin to the ICC.
- Set up a safe haven in western Ukraine for refugees.
- Send weapons that will give the Ukrainians a decided strategic advantage sufficient to knock the Russian military out of the war.
- Put tariffs on Russian fossil fuels and use the proceeds to rebuild Ukraine.
- Tie the Republican Party, its candidates, and its pundits to the anti-democratic forces who are now tearing Ukraine apart.
At the cosmic level, this is a battle between good and evil, between democracy and autocracy. I believe the suggestions above are the steps to winning that war.