The Western ballyhoo about the danger of Russian occupation of Ukraine is preposterous. We can sleep soundly, the Russians will not attack. They did not abandon their obsession with reconquering as much as they can of the defunct Soviet empire. But they cannot expect any gain from an adventure in Ukraine.
It is not simple to overrun a country nearly as large as France with a population of more than 40 million people. Granted, the invaders can mobilize pretty girls in national costumes who would greet them with flowers and (according to East Slavic tradition) with bread and salt. In the worst of cases, they can import the girls from Russia. They can also find collaborators but hardly enough to run the administration and the economy. Especially, they cannot find collaborators among leading politicians whose reputation and popularity would secure broad support. Also, they can do nothing to placate citizens through raising poor living standards, finishing with omnipresent corruption, and proving that they offer a brighter future than the establishment they would defeat.
The previous regime fell in the wake of mass unrest precisely because its government sought a partnership with Russia. The people who overturned it expected massive help from the West. They are deceived but not enough to take for liberators the soldiers of a country that occupies part of their territory and backs separatists who wage armed struggle against their fatherland.
The Ukrainian army nearly collapsed in early 2015. Since then, it has been re-equipped and it gained combat experience in battles against separatist forces. It is no match for the Russian war machine. But it is in a position to put up a fight and inflict losses the adversary cannot easily sell at home.
Last but not least, by occupying Ukraine the Russians would maneuver themselves in the very situation they want to avoid at all cost. Namely, they would have a long common border with member states of NATO. When all is said and done, the Russians are likely to know better than the West that they are well advised to stay with the status quo and continue to keep in check Ukraine simply through continuing to support the separatists. This is why it would be self-defeating to occupy only the self-styled breakaway republics, which Russia did not even take the trouble to recognize diplomatically.
Western hullabaloo about the imminent war is reminiscent of the self-confident omniscience of a general staff that acts upon information fabricated by its own propaganda department. Be that as it may, when it will be obvious even for excited politicians and journalists of the West that the Russians are not going to invade Ukraine, Western politicians will credit themselves with the feat of frightening away a dreadful enemy, talking a dictator out of his dark schemes, and preserving world peace. They will score this victory cheaply, without stationing troops in a foreign country for twenty years and without spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a venal government and on an army unwilling to fight. Hopefully, this triumph of democracy will help to forget the success of the undertaking to export its blessings to Afghanistan.
It will be the first earthshaking victory of democracy in the last decades. And, with a bit of bad luck, also one of the last ones.
Rittersporn makes some rational arguments as to why an invasion of the Ukraine would not make sense. Comparisons of the invasion of Crimea with the betrayal of Sudentenland notwithstanding, do you really want to ignore Putin’s KGB psychological profile that says he underestimates the consequences of the risks he takes on? In short, it would be a mistake to assume Putin would weigh Rittersporn’s arguments.
The best case I’ve seen against the idea that Russia will invade Ukraine (and precise–why can’t more people be this precise?), but I’m not buying, at least not in whole.
There’s a very good piece by Michael Kofman at War on the Rocks (“Putin’s Wager in Russia’s Standoff with the West”) which considers the fact that Russia choosing *not* to do anything will look weak in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of the Russian populace–and there is a high likelihood Putin will do something, no matter how reckless, rather than face any degree of humiliation. There have been rumours circulating for years regarding an increasingly feeble mind within an aging body battered by the stress of public service and unending paranoia (and I also suspect too many judo bouts).
The costs of occupation will certainly be high–but so was Vietnam for the US, and the Johnson administration chose to look tough over looking acquiescent, at least according to that note from the Pentagon Papers.
I’m a big Michael Kofman fan myself. He has indeed presented a most persuasive case for why Putin is likely to invade Ukraine (based on his sophisticated understanding of Russian troop deployment dynamics–the best I have read anywhere.
But in contrast to your guesses about the state of Putin’s mind, I find Kofman’s reasoning more persuasive when he states in the article you mentioned that “…Moscow is eyeing using force to change Ukraine’s strategic orientation in an effort to create its own cordon against Western influence.”– a goal I personally find quite legitimate but certainly high risk/dangerous.
The author says that Russia will border with NATO in any case. Maybe this is exactly what the leadership of the Russian Federation is trying to avoid? Let’s take on faith the statement of the Financial Times that the Kremlin seeks to connect Ukraine to the Union State. To this should be added the requirement of the Russian Federation from the withdrawal of NATO to the borders of 1997. What happens when these two components are added together? It turns out that not only the Baltic States, but also the whole of Eastern Europe will be outside the NATO bloc. A kind of “sanitary cordon” is being formed between the western borders of the Russian Federation-Belarus-Ukraine and Western Europe, which will separate the two forces. This is the goal of negotiations, and if they fail, then who will pay attention to psychological portraits when Herr Haushofer speaks?
I am afraid that I am not really off the wall.
Don’t trust Wash’ton and the others if they babble that it can still happen before the olympic circus is over. Why not before Ramadan? Or after the next Hannukha?
With all the best wishes,
gtr
And yet Russia attacked.
Half empty. I was off the wall to believe that the Russians behave rationally. For all that, a victorious blitzkrieg did not take place and for the moment being the Ukrainians don’t seem to greet enthusiastically the Russians, there is no puppet government in sight and the Ukrainian army is fighting instead of listening Putin who calls on it to topple the government. I score one point or two on these scores.
I will give you that. The Ukrainians are resisting valiantly and have forced Putin to the table.
Dear Gabor,
Glad to read you and I hope we meet again sooner or later.
Well…
Since the biblical prophecies that can be dated to after their fulfilment, it is always better to explain why something happenned after if happenned than predict.
I gave it a shot too though:
https://theunpopulist.substack.com/p/along-with-ukraine-putin-is-destroying?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cta&s=r
Best,
Avi