It may make no tangible difference, but no responsible Western leader should seek now to escalate the crisis. Even in the Bush administration, the Cold War nostalgics lost the debate:
A faction around Vice President Cheney would embrace the view of Russia as an enemy and attempt to recruit ex-Soviet states such as Georgia and the Ukraine against them. Yet this faction would never dominate US policy. During the Georgian War of 2008 Rice remained committed to the partnership, blaming the Georgians for provoking the crisis and urging them to accept Russian terms for mediation, even going so far as to imply Cheney’s responsibility for the crisis.
Jacob Heilbrunn observes that Obama “has few tools at his disposal to compel a change in Russian behavior”:
[T]he main constraint on Putin’s freedom of movement in Ukraine will be that it’s dangerous for him to enmesh himself in a prolonged war in Ukraine. If he seeks to occupy the eastern Ukraine, all bets are off–Ukraine is not Georgia. It has 200,000 troops–ten times, Elke Windisch notes, as many as Tbilisi did. And it is calling up a million reservists. Still, Ukraine would be unlikely to be able to withstand a full-scale Russian invasion. Its tanks, for example, consist mostly of fifty-year-old Soviet era T-64s. The real trouble would come in occupying Ukraine. It would likely become not only a geopolitical but also a military nightmare for Putin, on the order of Iraq or Afghanistan.
Rather than threatening Putin, Obama should continue to seek to offer him an exit strategy–just as Putin offered him one out of Syria. By all accounts, this is what Obama is seeking to do. Such a course won’t satisfy the nostalgic cold warriors in Washington, but it would defuse a conflict that should not be allowed to jeopardize the West’s relations with Moscow.
Kaplan suggests a specific way forward:
Perhaps Obama could offer assurances that he won’t offer Ukraine membership in NATO (that’s not a live issue anyway), nor will he push to revive the plan for Ukraine to join the European Union. This latter pledge would be a big deal:
The protests were set off when Yanukovich cancelled plans for a formal association with the EU, after Putin lured him back into Moscow’s bed with a $15 billion aid program. In exchange for these assurances, Putin would call off his shock troops, recognize the Ukrainian parliament’s ouster of Yanukovich (whom Putin never liked anyway), and allow Ukrainian elections to go ahead this May, perhaps under international observation. Obama could present the deal as a victory for democracy (the Ukrainian people will decide!). Putin could swallow the deal, believing that a pro-Russia candidate might win (legitimately or otherwise). In any event, the Ukrainian politicians will have been shown what Putin could do if they get out in front of their skis again.
Well, here’s hoping. But that happy scenario does not seem consonant with the emotions roiling the Kremlin as we speak. Here’s the balancing act Beinart recommends:
The U.S. and its European allies should do everything possible to strengthen the government in Kiev politically, economically, and maybe even—clandestinely—militarily. And they should think creatively about what kinds of economic and diplomatic measures might hit the Russian elite where it hurts, with the hope of at least stopping a Russian conquest of all of eastern Ukraine. That such efforts may undermine Russian cooperation on other issues, like Iran and Syria, is a risk the West will have to take.
But the Obama administration will also have to tell Kiev’s revolutionaries that while it supports a unified, democratic Ukraine, it does not support an anti-Russian Ukraine. Russia will not permit it, and at the end of the day, the United States cannot protect Ukraine from Russia’s wrath. It’s a bit like Finland’s dilemma during the Cold War or Taiwan’s now. Even if Ukraine regains control over its domestic affairs, it will never enjoy complete control over its foreign policy. The U.S. has a moral obligation to support democracy and self-determination. But it also has a moral obligation not to make promises it can’t keep.
