U.S. Support For The Ukraine Is Lukewarm

Russia is massing 100,000 troops on Ukraine's border in a transparent attempt to annex much of the eastern part of the Ukraine which has been controlled by pro-Russian rebels backed not quite officially, but not quite covertly either, by the Russian government. Russia seeks to add this territory to the Ukrainian territory that it acquired in its swift military imposed annexation of Crimea in 2014, which is still not widely recognized in the international community, before Ukraine or any other country could put up a fight.

The U.S. reaction to this conflict has been sympathetic to the Ukraine's plight, but it hasn't committed itself to decisive action to defend its former Soviet ally either.

Several thousand troops will be sent to NATO member nations in Eastern Europe to reassure allies anxious over tensions surrounding Ukraine. The U.S. has said it will not deploy troops to Ukraine in the event of conflict there.

President Biden has approved the deployment of about 3,000 additional American troops to Eastern Europe, administration officials said on Wednesday.

The troops, including 1,000 already in Germany, will head to Poland and Romania, the Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, said. Their purpose will be to reassure NATO allies that while the United States has no intention of sending troops into Ukraine, where President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been threatening an invasion, Mr. Biden would protect America’s NATO allies from any Russian aggression.

“Its important that we send a strong signal to Mr. Putin and the world that NATO matters,” Mr. Kirby told reporters at a news conference. “We are making it clear that we are going to be prepared to defend out NATO allies if it comes to that.”

At the moment, Russia is threatening Ukraine, not Romania or Poland. But Mr. Putin has made clear his distaste for both NATO and the post-Cold War redrawing of the map of Europe, which put former Soviet republics and satellite countries in the West’s foremost military alliance at his doorstep.

The president’s decision comes days after Pentagon leaders said that Mr. Putin had deployed the necessary troops and military hardware to conduct an invasion of Ukraine. 

From the New York Times.

Germany, which depends upon Russia for natural gas supplies, has also been unwilling to that a firm stand against Russia's aggression, while the United Kingdom, which is less economically dependent upon Russia, has supplied arms including anti-tank missiles to the Ukraine.

Rebel controlled Eastern Ukraine and Crimea are the most ethnically and linguistically Russian parts of Ukraine that were included in it at a time when Ukraine was just one more top level regional government in the Russian majority Soviet Union until it became an independent country with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and Crimea was something of an afterthought, added to the Soviet Republic of the Ukraine after the rest of its territory.

Politically, the Ukraine is divided, more or less, on an East-West continuum, with the east being more conservative, pro-Russian, and anti-Western, and the West being more similar politically to the Eastern European countries that have joined NATO.

If these transfers had been accomplished through a diplomatic agreement, the West would have supported this as a way of affording these regions self-determination. But as it happened, Russian involvement in Ukraine violated a sovereign nation's boundaries and territory by means of unilateral military force, signaled an unwillingness of Russia to abide by international law and norms, and marked an effort by Russia to rebuild as much of the Soviet empire as it can manage through aggressive military actions contrary to the rule of law.

Russia is no longer a communist country. Instead, it is a partially democratic Republic with a corrupt kleptocratic capitalism run by newly emerged oligarchs, that supports a militaristic nationalism, has reestablished its historic alliance with the Russian Orthodox church that had been suppressed during the Soviet era. The end of communism produced intense economic malaise and triggered a wave of deaths of despair that seriously lowered the life expectancy of Russian men. But thirty years later, Russia's economy and state capacity have consolidated and recovered somewhat, although still probably to a point below that of its Soviet peak compared to other world powers.

Russia, with only about half of the population of the former Warsaw Pact of the Soviet Union and its tributary Eastern European states, simply couldn't support the Soviet Union's former military might, and wasn't helped by having key parts of its defense industry based in the Ukraine disassociate itself with Russia's military-industrial complex which now had it in its cross-hairs. 

Russia's national political leader, Vladimir Putin, is a demagogue and an autocrat, who hasn't quite fully achieved the totalitarian dominance of some of his Soviet and pre-Soviet predecessors. But he has shown now qualms about riding herd on the democratic process domestically, and breaking international law to achieve his ends. 

One of his greatest achievements to date has been to win a war against insurgents in Chechnya, previously an autonomous region within Russian rather than at the Soviet level, who were not granted to independence despite having perhaps the most legitimate grounds to deserving it of any former Soviet polity. He did so by convincing rebel leaders to become his personal allies in exchange for special treatment as his personal enforcers in disordered Russia.

For most of the last thirty years, Russia has had a hollow military of ill maintained major weapons systems and ships, and sailors and soldiers at a low level of readiness. But one of Putin's signature policies has been to rebuild Russian military might on a more sound footing, and he has had significant successes on that front, which he is now seeking to utilize for his political advantage in foreign affairs.

Russia has been active ruthlessly asserting itself, often militarily, overtly or covertly, in what it sees as its sphere of influence in numerous former Soviet countries.

In this context, the U.S. response to Russian aggression, not just by Biden, but by his predecessors, Presidents Trump and Obama, has reeked of appeasement. It looks like Biden is inclined to continue on that path.

This approach also begs the question of why the U.S. spends so much on its own military. If it actually had the resolve to engage in near peer military conflict with Russia, some of its massive expenditures might make sense. But if the U.S. isn't actually going to use the military might it has spend so much of its treasure to acquire when a real conflict that calls for those kinds of resources finally arises, it is hard to know why the silent sacrifices that our nation made to buy those military resources was worth it.