This commentary is by Haviland Smith, a retired CIA officer who worked during the Cold War primarily against the Soviet Union. He now lives in Vermont.
Vladimir Putin recently said the ongoing nonmilitary intervention of NATO countries in the Ukrainian struggle, particularly the possible boycott of petroleum products, is a declaration of “economic war” on Russia.
Joe Biden recently said that Russia will pay “a severe price” if it uses chemical weapons against Ukraine.
Both Russia and the United States feel that they must “win” in Ukraine. For the United States and other NATO countries, that means maintaining the current Ukrainian regime in power. For Russia, it means installing a sympathetic regime of its own choosing.
Both sides seem committed to seeing the battle through to its bitter end.
And let’s not forget that both sides of this quarrel have the backing of significant portions of their own populations, as well as long-range, deliverable, nuclear weapons — an extraordinarily dangerous set of facts, particularly if you suspect that any of the involved decision-makers are neither moderate nor mentally well-balanced.
If we believe what we actually see on TV and the internet, hear on the radio, and read in our press, the situation shapes up roughly as follows:
- The Ukrainians are fighting a heroic battle and have pretty much stymied the Russians for over two weeks. They do not have all the weapons they could use, like aircraft and a no-fly zone, but apparently they have enough to have seriously damaged the Russians and they have amazingly managed to hold on to most of their cities.
- The Russians have been unsuccessful in their attempts to keep this a short operation. In fact, they have changed their overall tactics several times to overcome their immediate failures. More and more of their efforts have been labeled “war crimes” by international organizations because they have increasingly focused on civilian targets.
It is a general non-Russian consensus that the economic measures taken by NATO countries have seriously hurt Russia. A broad range of sanctions — including weaponizing the financial and payments system and cutting Russian financial institutions off the global financial system by kicking them out of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system — is working better than many predicted.
In addition, many American companies have joined in and closed their Russian operations, causing unemployment and shortages of numerous items and commodities.
These moves have created many problems for the Russian government and people. As a result, we are beginning to see growing opposition to its involvement in the war, despite the fact that thousands of Russians already have been arrested for demonstrating against it.
Things appear to be going pretty much according to expectations. In America, we are paying the price for our efforts in the form of generally higher prices on just about everything. At this moment, it seems a price most Americans are willing to pay.
The big unknown here is how the invasion of Ukraine will work out. If it goes badly for the Russians, will they use the “chemical weapons” to which Biden referred? If that happens, just what is Biden’s “severe price” and, in turn, what will that provoke?
If the Russians manage to reach their goal of having Ukraine under their control, there is a good possibility that they will be encouraged to undertake additional such adventures elsewhere along their eastern borders. That is certainly something we want to avoid.
On the other hand, suppose the Ukrainians win and maintain their current form of government. How will Russian leadership react to that kind of defeat? Is their management sufficiently stable to simply get on with life, or will they consider undertaking some sort of retaliation against the NATO countries? Under those circumstances, might their move be chemical or nuclear?
What we have gotten into here, particularly given the secretiveness and unpredictability of the current vindictive Russian leadership, is the potential for disaster irrespective of how the Ukraine war works out.
If that doesn’t argue decisively for a negotiated settlement, what could? That would clearly argue for the NATO countries to give as well as to take. Everyone has to ”win” for negotiations to be a success.
