Was Russia’s Invasion Preventable?
6 Questions to ask about U.S. Foreign Policy in the lead up to the conflict in Ukraine
Senior Cato fellow Justin T. Logan says, “The US military cannot — and will not — come to Ukraine’s aid.” If there is no role for western intervention now, we might ask what we should have done differently to avert the current conflict in Ukraine?
As usual, restraint and insight are rare commodities in Washington D.C. (at least outside of the walls of the Cato Institute).
Justin and I went deeper than the superficial narratives and media coverage and hear the truth you won’t find on cable news — with depth you can’t find on Twitter or social media. Listen to the full show, or catch the highlights below:
Here are six questions to ask before claiming that the war was inevitable:
1. Do we still need NATO?
Bob Zadek: If NATO didn’t exist would there be a need for it given the size and strength of Russia compared with the size and strength of Western Europe? Putting aside the United States — focus only on Europe.
Justin Logan: In my view, the answer is no. I suspect that citizens in the Baltic states or in Poland would vehemently disagree with me, but we live thousands of miles away from one another and our countries have different interests.
Western Europe has a GDP and a population that is many times larger than Russia’s. Its military power, particularly in fighting a notional defensive war — a Russian invasion — is more than adequate to match Russian aggression.
If we didn’t have NATO today, no — from an American point of view, there would be no reason to invent one. It’s not the case that Russia would be a cute cuddly teddy bear. I think it would act like most major powers act, which is to say it would tend to bully its neighbors and to have an outsized sense of its desires and its security, as major powers have done historically.
Thucydides said “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” That’s a little severe for my taste.
Thucydides said “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
But that fundamental fact is true: Ukraine is just a smaller, weaker state than Russia and, living on its border, is subject to Russian prerogatives in a lot of places that we don’t like them. That’s just a fundamental fact of international politics. It’s very hard to obviate.
2. What’s the Worst Case Scenario for Europe?
Bob Zadek: What is the worst case that Western Europe would have to fear if there were no NATO today?
Justin Logan: This is pretty close to the worst case. It’s an invasion of a sovereign country. Let’s just call it what it is. They certainly view it as defensive, but we should also say that they massed almost 190,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders and then invaded it from the north, the east and the south.
We learned some important facts about how the Russian military operates and those facts lead you to see that it doesn’t have a prospect at conquering Poland, let alone plunging into Western Europe through the Fulda Gap or something like we used to fear in the 1950s. Russia is a major power. It has thousands of nuclear weapons. It has an enormous territory, so it has to be in the realm of major powers.
This is very much in keeping with the kind of behavior that you see by major powers. If you look at an image of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization today, it is like someone’s spilled a pot of ink. You can credit that apprehension in Russia without, saying that they’re doing something defensive. It’s reprehensible, and it’s clearly a violation of international law, but the question is how to deal with reality.
There’s been a tendency to say, “Well, Russia, shouldn’t fear NATO, or Russia should do this…” Those are irrelevant questions. The questions are, what sorts of ideas are we dealing with? Is there any way to be transactional with this state? To haggle, to say, “Look, Ukraine is a sovereign country and we support its sovereignty, but it’s maybe not going to become a member of NATO.
That was true before the war happened. It’s definitely going to be true after the war. So the question is on the alter of what principle did we sacrifice Ukraine? The tragedy is that we may in fact wind up not having won anything for Ukraine.
“The tragedy is that we may in fact wind up not having won anything for Ukraine.”
To what end is this war being fought and could the west have done anything to forestall it?
3. Does Russia have a reason to feel insecure?
Bob Zadek: Russia’s not crazy in feeling a bit insecure. That’s not irrational on their part — is it? Their enemy is growing and moving closer. Is that too simplistic?
Justin Logan: No, and I’m not the only one who thinks it’s accurate. The former Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence, Bob Gates, wrote in 2014 that he felt trying to get Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was really a step too far and an affront to what any Russian leader would view as dangerous to Russia. What’s sometimes viewed as this provocative apology for Russian misbehavior has been a widely circulated belief in the upper echelons of the American foreign policy establishment for decades.
Bob Zadek: All of my life I would have, knee-jerk, considered Russia to be an enemy. They are certainly, more than ever in the eyes of the American public, an enemy.
What is there in Russian foreign policy that makes them an enemy of the United States as opposed to a country with a different belief system?
We’re past Khrushchev pounding his shoe at the UN and saying, “we will bury you.”
Justin Logan: They really don’t represent a security threat to the United States. The Russians are not going to invade; they’re not going to bomb the United States. Given that we have made ourselves the central fact in European security affairs for the last 65 years, it is clear that the Russian invasion of Ukraine endangers that project. Partisan identification of Russia as an enemy has gone up significantly among Democrats and gone down significantly among Republicans because of the 2016 election and the perception that Donald Trump was this sock puppet for Russia. It’s become securitized in American politics that every domestic political problem for the Democrats is attributed to Russia.
“It’s become securitized in American politics that every domestic political problem for the Democrats is attributed to Russia.”
And there’s a more quiescent, view of Putin the right. I would just ask, is it a security threat to our way of life, to our ability to buy and sell goods from overseas, to our ability to live in safety, to any of these things?
To my mind, the answer is no, but if you want to put yourself at the very center of the European security architecture, then yes, it starts to look much more like a serious security problem for the United.
4. Couldn’t we replace NATO with an EU “Third Force”?
Bob Zadek: Has NATO lost track of the fact that it was a mutual defense pact? Is that need of NATO filled adequately by the EU?
Justin Logan: NATO’s mission as a military alliance could be met by the EU. There’s two fundamental distinctions between NATO and the EU. The first and most important is that the United States is in one and not in the other. In military terms, that matters a lot. The other is that NATO is a security organization and the European Union is not. There were efforts in the 1990s to develop what they used to call a “third force” in Europe — a collective security organization among states that were both members of NATO and the European Union. The United States historically did not like this idea because we like having influence [in Europe].
From my point of view, that’s shortsighted. It’s not as though we’re going to create a monster in Europe. They’re not going to attack us.
“The United States historically did not like [the] idea [of a European security organization] because we like having influence [in Europe].”
But because NATO was viewed as this crucial vehicle for exerting American power in Europe, we worked assiduously to stifle security competition among European states, because we wanted those countries to be stuck with us in NATO so that we could have influence over their policies.
Only in recent years have you seen the glimmers of change in Washington, in an era where we’re supposed to be pivoting to Asia and dealing with China — a country that is larger in economic terms than the Soviet union ever was. There has been the beginnings of some thinking that a European, autonomous defense capability wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
5. Would Putin have responded to a commitment to keep Ukraine out of NATO?
Bob Zadek: Was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine preventable by a different United States foreign policy?
Justin Logan: The unfortunate reality is we will never know. Vladimir Putin has been remarkably consistent since at least 2007 that the further expansion of NATO would be viewed as a threat by Russia in particular to Ukraine. No Ukraine in NATO, no Ukraine in NATO, no Ukraine in NATO.
The response from NATO itself as well as from the United States independently was to say, “We’re not going to commit to anything.”
They were saying, “Ukraine doesn’t meet the criteria right now. We all know that. You should know that.”
On the other hand, last October, the U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, was in Ukraine urging them to make needed reforms so that they could become a member of NATO. Russia sees us speaking out of both sides of our mouth.
We should have been willing to commit that Ukraine is not going to become a part of NATO for 25 years.
Does that obviate the security concerns about its alignment? It’s possible that the answer is no, but this war has gotten much uglier over the last 10 days, and I think is likely to continue to get uglier. This is a war that we should chalk up as being potentially unnecessary, but that we’ll never be able to prove one way or the other because of the diplomatic approach of the west and the U.S. More generally.
We may wind up with a political result for Ukraine that is worse than one that could have been produced via diplomacy.
6. What can we learn from past U.S. foreign policy errors?
Bob Zadek: What are the bullet points of mistakes in American foreign policy, and what are the lessons to carry into the future so that they don’t happen again?
Justin Logan: First is to not tell countries what their interests are. Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that he views further NATO expansion as a threat to Russia, and our response has been to say, “Well, you shouldn’t feel that way.” That’s not a good basis for conducting foreign policy. The world exists apart from our prerogatives on the interests of others, and Vladimir Putin has been remarkably consistent on this point that he was willing to fight about it. All last year, as these forces were massing around Ukraine, he said it over and over and over again.
“You have to deal with the world as it is not as you wish it might be.”
You have to deal with the world as it is not as you wish it might be, especially in an area where you’ve made very clear, publicly and internally, that you’re not going to fight for the country. Don’t act like you’re going to fight for it. Last year we had Anthony Blinken the Secretary of State and Joe Biden talk about an “ironclad commitment to Ukraine sovereignty, and territorial integrity.” That doesn’t look like a very smart thing to have said with the benefit of hindsight. Don’t say things that you’re not going to follow through on; don’t assert your own interests in places where they don’t exist; and don’t ignore other actors’ assertions of their own interests in places that they appear likely to exist.
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