The past several years have been like none other in recent history for the U.S. Between a once in a century pandemic, political partisanship which has pushed the nation to the brink, mass protests in the name of social & racial equality, and gun violence reaching epidemic proportions, much of the focus on threats to the safety and security of the nation have been justifiably focused on the domestic front. This does not mean that threats emanating from other nations of the world have gone into hibernation, however. The outset of the Biden administration was plagued by questionable decision-making and policy choices as the world watched the U.S. abandon its’ mission in Afghanistan, only to have all the strides of the previous two decades of warfighting be overturned and lost within a matter of weeks, but despite this relative foreign policy black-eye, things were about to become much more dire with the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the beginning of 2022.
Since the end of World War II, world order was split in spheres, with the then-Soviet Union and the U.S./Western European allies entering a Cold War, underpinned by an apocalyptic threat of global nuclear annihilation should one of the two superpowers threaten the other. The end of the Cold War because of the collapse of the Soviet Union was hoped to usher in a new era of global peace where people could live without fear of nuclear Armageddon, especially as Russia seemed to flounder and be a shell of the once formidable Soviet Union. The rise of Pres. Vladimir Putin was cause for concern, though he was still largely viewed as a dinosaur who refused to accept the reality of the world-at-large and Russia’s place within it. This notion began to be challenged via increasingly aggressive Russian maneuvers and operations against neighboring sovereign nations, such as the invasion of Georgia and the invasion/annexation of Crimea, a part of Ukraine which is of significant military strategic importance, all while the U.S. and NATO stood by and offered no real resistance. Once Putin realized the world was not willing to offer significant intervention, his grander plans were largely green-lit and many analysts foresaw the looming invasion of Ukraine, he only needed a raison d’etre to do so which he could sell to the Russian people. Eventually Russia began moving massive military forces into position for an invasion which most thought would be quick and decisive, though the invasion has been anything but as Ukraine has offered admirable resistance against a foe who should outman and outgun them in every way possible. It’s likely that assistance by the U.S. and NATO have been partly responsible for this as they have provided help to Ukraine via weapons, etc., though the actual fighting has been largely left to the people of Ukraine themselves with the U.S. making political threats which have had essentially no bearing on Putin or Russia. The most significant action has been via sanctions in the hope that these would choke-off the cash flow necessary to carry out a full-scale, prolonged war as we have seen take shape. The U.S. has even made serious accusations of war-crimes and genocide by Russia, and these are accusations which carry significant weight considering the genocide carried out by Hitler in WWII, and which the U.S. vowed to never allow to happen again.
If indeed genocide is occurring, and assistance/sanctions to date have not worked, what more can, or should the U.S. do? Should the U.S. get directly involved militarily speaking? Never has the U.S. and the USSR/Russia engaged in direct warfare with each other, including during the Cuban missile crisis, Korean War, Vietnam War, Afghanistan, Syria, etc., as doing so risked setting off a wider war from which there might be no return. If the U.S. were to get more directly involved, what would that look like? If the U.S. continues to allow Russia to act unchecked, then aren’t we signaling that we are not willing to risk more in the name of global peace and security? If we continue to stand aside, what is to prevent Putin from continuing forward in an effort to reconstruct the Soviet Union by invading all the independent nations who were once members, or perhaps even more than those? Would you be willing to risk a wider war which could eventually lead to the exchange of nuclear weapons, or do you think Putin is bluffing and that even he wouldn’t risk global annihilation?
Bandow, Doug (2022). “Why Russia Would Start a Nuclear War over Ukraine” https://www.cato.org/commentary/why-russia-would-start-nuclear-war-over-ukraine
Carpenter, Todd Galen (2022). “Ukraine Is a Russian Vital Interest, and Moscow Will Behave Accordingly” https://www.cato.org/commentary/ukraine-russian-vital-interest-moscow-will-behave-accordingly
Geller, Patty-Jane (2022). “Putin’s Dangerous Nuclear Brinkmanship in Ukraine”
https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/putins-dangerous-nuclear-brinkmanship-ukraine
Green, Brendan Rittenhouse, & Talmadge, Caitlin (2022). “The U.S. Is Expanding Its Goals in Ukraine. That’s Dangerous” https://www.cato.org/commentary/us-expanding-its-goals-ukraine-thats-dangerous