Russian Aggression Towards Ukraine Ripples Through Washington
The White House is huddling with congressional staffers and leadership as the situation between Russia and Ukraine threatens to erupt at any moment.
The Biden administration will hold two classified briefings today for congressional leadership aides and committee staff on the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, with the Russian military buildup continuing on that embattled nation’s eastern border.
Administration officials are working on briefings for all members of the House and Senate, but that will have to wait until Congress returns next week. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have both called for full-chamber briefings. The Pentagon has put 8,500 troops on standby for possible deployment to Eastern European allies and Baltic nations amid increasing Russian hostility. Other NATO allies are moving air and naval assets to the region as well.
In the wake of the botched withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, expect that Congress is going to be on heightened alert when it comes to American involvement in Eastern Europe. There have been calls for preemptive sanctions on Russia. Some members of Congress are already calling for Russia to be ejected from the SWIFT banking system, the facilitator of worldwide financial transactions. The House and Senate are both working on legislation to help bolster Ukrainian defenses and punish Russia ahead of what President Joe Biden has called a likely invasion of its neighbor.
A Biden administration official gave us some insight at executive branch engagement with Capitol Hill on Ukraine and Russia during the last six weeks as the crisis has unfolded:
→ Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman have spoken to nearly 20 lawmakers in the last week and have further calls planned this week.
→ On Dec. 7, Biden spoke to the “Big Four” – the party leaders in the House and Senate – about Ukraine and Russia. Biden also met with the bipartisan Senate group that just returned from Kyiv Jan. 19.
→ National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has held six briefings for members, including leadership and national security committee chairs and ranking members. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday that he’d recently spoken with Sullivan.
→ There have been nine interagency briefings for the national security committees and eight briefings for leadership, committee and personal office staff.
This will all pick up even more if Russia invades or Biden decides to commit U.S. troops to the Baltic states or Poland.
And at some point, Biden may have to consider a national address on the Ukraine crisis. The president commented extensively on Ukraine, Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the situation in Eastern Europe during his nearly two-hour press conference last week. However, this situation is quickly taking on a whole new level of gravity with the potential deployment of U.S. forces to the region. Biden will deliver his State of the Union on March 1, so that could give him an opportunity to talk about the political climate in Eastern Europe and what he sees as the shape of U.S. involvement.
While the possibility of a direct U.S.-Russian military confrontation remains low, the stakes here are huge. Ukraine’s fate as an independent nation hangs in the balance, as does the future of 40-million plus Ukrainians. Europe hasn’t seen a potential military action on this scale since World War II. A Russian invasion would place enormous pressure on NATO, especially as German officials seem lukewarm about a possible showdown over Ukraine. On the Hill, Republicans have little trust or faith in Biden’s leadership, publicly or privately.
Neocons gotta neocon.
If you’re going to note malicious activity, the stock markets of both Russia and America are where it’s at.
Or maybe you’d just like to note that America is expecting Cyberattacks, on key infrastructure targets, including our power grid.Report
If the Europeans can’t muster solidarity over this I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do. It’s still a coin flip whether half of them care more about short term cheap gas than the sovereignty of a nearby state on their continent. Germany in particular has completely embarrassed itself and shown its hand as the 2nd tier, inconsequential power it is.
I also think the only way Russia will ever consider Ukraine an independent country is if the Ukrainians can actually fight them off, including by bleeding them dry during a military occupation. But that also gets into Ukraine’s own internal ethnic divisions and convoluted history as either part of Russia or a closely held client of Russia. There’s a real case to be made that if they can’t do it themselves with at most limited assistance that their population as a whole just doesn’t want actual independence badly enough. No one can do it for them.Report
“Short term cheap gas”
… I’m sorry, greenhouses are going dark this winter.
That is “gas at any price” and “we can’t keep the lights on with critical, food-producing industries.”Report
Link?
Really it’s a result of their own internal policies of shutting down nuclear, and failure to use the value of their consumers to geopolitical ends, thereby making them more dependent on Russia.Report
http://www.hortidaily.com/article/9360503/gas-crisis-hits-european-greenhouse-industry-as-lighting-gets-more-expensive/
**Conflict of interest Disclosure**Report
Yeah, if Merkel hadn’t panicked and shut down their nuclear sector after Fukishima Germany would be in a much better position to respond to this mess.Report
There’s that, and there’s also the fact that they’ve treated Gerhard Schroeder as a normal elder statesman instead of a lobbyist for Russian gas interests.Report
Right; this is exactly what overreach looks like.
Things that might has seemed plausible in 1991 are less plausible by 2001 and even less so in 2011 and beyond. Most of what we’re witnessing are policy assumptions that haven’t really been updated since the ’90s. Ukraine is a good example of overreach in 1994 when they first investigate NATO, then as their position deteriorates they escalate through 2002 –> 04 –> 14 –> 17 by the 20’s there’s no path forward.
H.W.’s (in-)famous ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech in 1991 set’s the blob in motion against a Ukrainian ‘bridge’ state that was thought to offer a ‘gateway’ to and from Moscow. While I’m not an HW fan, the one thing I do appreciate more than anything else is that he was in charge between ’88 and ’92 as the Soviet Union started to crumble. There are too many unkowns on what he might have done if re-elected in 92… but one hopes he might have manged the Great Yeltsining better than Clinton’s team.
So overreach looks like 1990’s foreign policy ‘dreams’ without the 30-years of bridging the culture and power gaps into a manageable – dare I say – detente where the Ukraine is a Russian gateway to the west which would have been the maximal achievable goal.
The ‘danger’ that folks have warned about since I was a kid doing foreign policy was always that NATO has no good strategic or tactical counter to Russian ‘small incursions’ of conventional power… it has always been set-up as the Bridge in Moria.Report
Yes. The whole thing is built on the assumption that Russia would either be in such permanent disarray that it would never re-assert itself in its historical outer provinces or become a friend, or at least not an enemy, through nothing more than wishful thinking.Report
Up until 1994 Ukraine was a nuclear weapons state. They traded that for agreements from Russia and the West that we’d back them.Report
Yep. They got a bonafide Memorandum signed by the US, Russia and the UK.
Which is worth exactly what it sounds like. Should’a put a Treaty on It is how the song goes – not that they would have gotten one.
There were a lot of things going on in the 90s around the dissolution it was in Ukraine’s interests to get rid of their nukes at the lowest possible price. Possibly too low, but Ukraine got what it wanted… money, removal of nukes it couldn’t use or protect, and space to navigate a possible future as sovereign state – space that they arguably have not used well. But space, money, and nuke removal they did get… so fair bargain for 1994.
I suppose you’re going to suggest we have to protect American prestige abroad? I’ll cut to the chase and say, no we don’t. Our influence and power remain exactly what we need it to be where we want to exert real influence and power. Ukraine isn’t one of those places and it doesn’t impact other places because it is hard power not prestige which would protect those places. Ukraine, if anything risks exposing those interests to under deployment of actual power.Report
This is a good point. The West may have overplayed its hand but Ukraine has played its very poorly. Maybe the real answer is to let the eastern 3rd of the country become a bigger, de-militarized Transnistria II. But I guess too much face would be lost for that at this point.Report
Russia won’t allow it to be demilitarized.Report
When people talk like this I always have this image of Hyman Roth carving up a cake of Cuba.Report
Heh, look my preference is not to be involved in this game. I never would’ve extended NATO passed East Germany. Or at least not without some sort of really good plan for how Russia fits into the process. Remember a huge driver of this is that George W. Bush just kind of announced out of nowhere that we wanted Ukraine in.
But let’s also be real about the boundaries of what is today called Ukraine. Its been changing hands between different powers for 1000 years, and has multiple times in the last 100. They got a few decades to turn it into something more sustainable and coherent but have not been able to do it.Report
This
is probably the driver for this
Report
Probably so! I mean, look at Belgium and how ungovernable it is. They’re just lucky that post war they sit geographically in a spot of peace, prosperity, and friendly neighbors with aligned interests.Report
Why don’t we talk about America the same way?
Like, the southern portion of California has a large population of ethnic Mexicans and the border has been changing hands as recently as 1850 so really, San Diego and and Los Angeles are rightfully within Mexico’s sphere of influence.
Or y’know, Taiwan.Report
Do you really not know?
But sure, if Mexico can take it from us they can have it. My guess is that most of the American citizens of Mexican ancestry would rather be here though. Probably the non-citizens too for that matter, but that’s a whole other issue.Report
No no, I know exactly why Americans view the dignity and rights and sovereignty of other people as debatable.
But now this puts a different spin on those outraged articles about China demanding that American universities and private firms kowtow to their political demands.Report
Chip, respectfully, what are you even talking about?
There’s been a low level civil war going on in Ukraine since 2014. Arguably the ‘pro-Western’ faction currently controlling the government (which you’re bizarrely talking about in terms of ‘self-determination’) is in power because of a US-backed coup. That coup happened in large part because the previous government picked a deal with Russia over a deal with the EU. Obviously that’s just scratching the surface. But I have to ask, are you interested in this topic or are we doing the jeremiad on the sad state of the American people?Report
There has been a civil war going on in China since 1949, and the breakaway province of Taiwan exists only by American imperialist meddling.
The “civil war” is Russian incursion into a sovereign nation. By no stretch of imagination do the Ukrainian people want to become a Russian province.Report
Should using nukes be on the table?Report
I’m highly skeptical that any American has a good sense of what the Ukrainian people want (and which ones exactly?). Even if we did we don’t have the ability to give it to them. Our assumption that we do know these things is a big reason the crisis has escalated.Report
I think the massing of 100,000 troops on their border is the primary reason this has escalated.
And this itself seems evidence that the Ukrainian people would need to be forced into an arrangement with Russia.Report
We do, They do… it’s constantly being done. Who do you think the guarantor of the Southern US is? Nato? The OAS?
If/When Mexico is in a position to exert influence over those areas they will – as long as there’s a benefit to Mexico greater than the cost.
Or, y’know, Hong Kong.Report
I am pointing out that they exchanged their nukes for a piece of paper. If they still had them, even old nukes would presumably be a serious game changer.
As for what we should do, idk.Report
Ukraine has never been a nuclear state.
The Russians staged nuclear missiles on their territory but the Ukrainian government never had the codes or any way to control them.Report
The hard step in nuclear weapons creation is making the material.
If you’re sitting on top of many tons of material and your only hampering factor is you can’t use the electronics it’s attached to, replacing the electronics shouldn’t be that hard for a country.Report
This is flatly false.
This is like saying Germany can easily confiscate the American Pershing missiles and simply reprogram them.
There’s more than just “electronics” involved.Report
We would be wise to use every tool short of getting into a shooting war to dissuade Tucker Carlson’s pals from invading. Unchecked aggression among countries is toxic to building a better world. Eastern Europe is not our most critically important strategic area but Freedom Lover Putin wants leverage over Western Europe.
Some of this makes me want to find all my old russia hating conservative friends from college to how many are now super pro russia getting to invade whoever they want. My guess all of them are hot for russian tanks now.Report
Putin is a strongman who takes what he wants. Conservative white men admire that because its all they have left in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural world.Report
Not gonna disagree. The affection for a Strongman dictator is also tied to his super duper Christianity which doesn’t make the hard on some conservatives have for him any better.Report
This time will be different from last time, the time before that, the time before that, the time before that, the time before that, and the time before that.
It will, instead, be like the time before that.Report
So if i’m figuring correctly this means if Russia invades it will be like the failed Winter War in Finland, Soyuz, the 1988 Olympics, the McDLT and jeans being popular in Russia.Report
Hey, so long as we’re fighting them over there so we’re not fighting them over here, I’m good.
Think about the children!
I sure hope that Eastern and Central Europe hasn’t recently grown dependent on Russian energy!Report
Well at least the last sentence isn’t generic buzz phrases.
Yeah, still prob not good to give the russians to many freebie’s they get to invade.Report
Well, I hope our job of policing Europe works as least as well as our job of policing the rest of the world.
I hope that the Russians recognize our moral authority!Report
More generic words. Know anybody who is Ukrainian?Report
I don’t, no.
I understand that you can see Russia from your house. How many Ukranians are telling you that you hope that Biden risks war on their behalf?Report
I really hope that Biden, who rolled over neocon squealing in leaving Afghanistan (botched my Aunt Sally), has the wits and fortitude to ignore their squealing in Ukraine. If the Europeans have enough solidarity and will to adhere to truly fearsome sanctions for such behavior then a military intervention will be unnecessary and if the Europeans don’t have the necessary solidarity then a military intervention will be pointless.Report
I don’t think European solidarity is as necessary as all that.
They weren’t in solidarity during the Balkans war, or the Soviet invasions of Eastern Europe or even WWII.Report
It isn’t necessary if they don’t care about what happens to Ukraine. It is necessary if they want to make the economic sanctions painful enough to have a chance at preventing it, but that will require sacrifices.Report
If the Europeans are not willing to endure some economic pain to penalize Russia for getting frisky with Ukraine then there’s utterly no rationale for American troops to be sent there. If they are willing to do the same then there’ll be no need for American troops to be sent there. There’s nothing in Ukraine that’d be worth what truly strong sanctions would cost Russia.Report
If the Ukrainians really want freedom, let them spend 20 years fighting a gruella war against a second rate world power like the Afghans did.Report
I will say Putin has overplayed his hand here and backed himself into a somewhat uncomfortable corner.
I assume that he was engaged mostly in brinkmanship in an attempt to distract his populace (even dictators have to worry about keeping the mob happy) and to get the US and the EU to lighten the sanctions, as it’s really cutting into the oligarch’s fun — they didn’t steal all that money to be stuck spending it in Russia. It’d be like Jeff Bezos suddenly being stuck entirely with the resources, entertainment, and shopping options of a rural town in Oklahoma — and no mail order. And clearly no desire to invest in infrastructure. All that money, nothing to do and nothing to buy.
Unfortunately, given his recent past actions, all he’s done is convince half the EU (including the UK) to finally do the one thing Ukraine wanted — sell them anti-tank and anti-air missiles. The first set has already arrived.
Russia would, of course, have air superiority over Ukraine in any war that didn’t involve third parties — but now that air superiority is going to be paid for in downed jets and helicopters. Worse yet, the ground campaign has gone from “Haha! I HAVE TANK!” — basically a rout of Ukrainian forces because there wasn’t a lot they could do against a column of tanks — into a long, hard, EXPENSIVE slog for Russia — because any Russian tank that exists where a Ukrainian platoon can set up within 600m (ie: any city, any highway with trees, etc) is a dead tank. And Ukrainian infantry is quite likely to fight Russian infantry, and do so on fairly equal skill and effectiveness levels — plus having the home field advantage.
Russia is still quite likely to win, but the cost — money, political capital, and blood — has gone up drastically. And gets higher with each new shipment of Stingers and NLAWs the Brits are sending (seriously, the Brits are sending their GOOD man-portable anti-tank weapons, not old Cold War stuff. It’s fire-and-forget, self-aiming after locking onto the target, and single use. Aim for three seconds, fire it, drop it, run away. Good odds of one dead Russian tank).
I don’t know what Putin was thinking. Did he expect nobody in the EU would decide to sell Ukraine modern anti-tank weapons if Russia started getting aggressive, the one thing they’ve been asking for for years? (It was anti-tank weapons that Trump was using to try to leverage Ukraine into making up dirt on Biden). Putin certainly lived through Afghanistan, and Ukraine has a standing military to supply and is right there, not halfway around the world.
Did he think the EU and US would fold and end sanctions? Just ignore him trying to go back to wars of conquest?
He moved so slowly, giving everyone enough time to counter him, that I’m stuck wondering if he’s just gone senile, didn’t expect the EU/UK/US to do ANYTHING, or doesn’t plan to invade (which would be millions of dollars spent for…nothing but a loss on the world stage, which is VERY unlike him).
I think he gambled on the EU folding on sanctions, or outright ceding Ukraine to avoid the problem, or staging enough EU troops to make backing down sellable. I don’t think he, at all, thought “What if all they do is give Ukraine enough boom stick to make it HURT, but not enough for me to back down and save face?”Report
I think your analysis is shrewd and likely right, but it doesn’t mean Putin can’t get what he wants domestically out of this:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/25/europe/ukraine-nato-russia-coverage-tv-media-cmd-intl/index.htmlReport
I like the thrust of where you’re going with this. So how do we know if you’re right? I’d assume that if you’re right we’ll see the Russians maintain their current posture but continually put off pulling the actual trigger on invading? Or could Putin go for some kind of mass irregular invasion of the border areas? Obviously the Ukrainians could probably repel that kind of incursion right but maybe Putin could keep the bodies hidden from the Russian public like he did last time?
If you’re right then the correct course of action is to sell/give more weapons to the Ukrainians and then stand pat. Not, for the love of God(ess?) to send or commit foreign troops to the theater. The status quos is something the west can live with and, indeed, win with going away as long as it lasts a long time.Report
Well, he either backs down now that the size of the bloody nose has gone up — or he commits, and it costs him 10 or 20 times more than he expected.
Each day he waits is another shipment — the UK moved really fast on the first shipment of NLAWs, but at least three neighbors are shipping stingers and other man-portable anti-tank weapons, and more are expected to arrive over the coming days.
I mean his options are narrowed for invasion — he either goes full bore (tanks, airplanes, helicopters, etc) and takes serious, serious lumps — that will hurt him domestically, both with the populace and his political rivals — and likely gets bogged down for weeks or longer as Ukrainians take advantage of being able to kill his armor to turn it into a grueling occupation and blender.
Imagine Afghanistan or Iraq we’d supplied the insurgents with weapons capable of taking out our tanks (and clearly our APCs) before we’d invaded, with a population that had a real will to fight, because they rather like their current government and don’t like Russia’s. He doesn’t have the advantage he had with his last land grab, nor the political cover.
I think committing EU or US troops escalates the stakes significantly — but might give him cover to back down. Or might make it impossible domestically. Sending weapons, though — doesn’t give him any cover, but raises the price without bringing in the specter of all-out warfare between the EU and Russia (and without the WMD issue).
All I know is unless the Ukrainian military is a total paper tiger, or otherwise seriously compromised — or I suppose unless he has some very clever sabotage plans to neutralize them — his telegraphing his moves did nothing but give his opponent sharper teeth, and the possibility of making it so bloody as to send the Russians home.
Had he just invaded without warning, he could have used the tanks to steamroll any particular problem and likely caused the Ukrainian military to rout — hard to fight against tanks with rifles. Fighting against OTHER guys with rifles, because you blew up their tanks? Different story, morale wise.Report
I think this way overestimates what he needs to win. He’s already halfway there. All that needs to happen is for him to create a semi-frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine, the same way he has in the break away provinces of Georgia. No matter what anyone says there’s no way Ukraine can join NATO and probably not even the EU as long as there is a Russian incursion. In the former, as soon as Ukraine ratified the treaty, all other allies would be bound to go to war with Russia which is not going to happen. Ukraine then reverts to its role as a dysfunctional buffer zone between Russia and the West. It does not need to be totally annexed.Report
All true, but if he accomplishes that and the larger polity of Ukraine rapidly becomes Russia-phobic because of those antics then in the medium to long term it’s a huge loss for Russia. If Ukraine’s growing hostility to Russia also allows it to start shaking the bugs out of the lousy mattress of their internal governance and they become significantly less corrupt and scholeric then it’d be an even more enormous problem for Russia.Report
It’s certainly possible that it wouldn’t be sustainable forever, but I’m not sure it has to be for Putin. He’s already almost 70. And time does fly. Those break away parts of Georgia have already been in their frozen state for more than half the time they were under the control of the Georgian government.
Which isn’t to say that the Ukranians couldn’t make things very uncomfortable for Russia, especially if sentiment hardens against them. But how long it might take for that to result in a settlement of some kind is anyone’s guess.Report
To put a finer point on it, if he thinks he can keep Ukraine out of NATO/the EU for, say, 30 years without too high a cost, I would think he does it. And who knows what the situation is in 30 years. Maybe the security situation is radically different. Maybe NATO won’t exist, or won’t exist as we know it. Maybe the EU has gotten stuck in its own legitimacy problems and is no longer able to negotiate as a bloc. Or maybe the situation is basically the same but it’s all someone else’s problem now.Report
Russian troops bleeding to hold onto an occupied Ukraine, not to mention the initial MUCH higher cost (rising each day) in blood and treasure for taking it is a serious price to him politically.
The cost/benefit analysis for Putin gets worse daily. When he could rout the Ukrainian military by brutally abusing armor and air power, the costs were much lower. The costs have risen sharply, the benefits have not changed.
Russia’s economy isn’t that great, and his hold on the populace isn’t ironclad, and he has domestic rivals — including the kind that would happily poison his tea and take his spot. He’s not immune to a coup, or an uprising of some sort.
Every tank or airplane he loses is a massive, massive expense he can’t really afford. Every lost life runs the risk of angering the populace rather than pacifying them, and gives his opposition (both the kind we like and the kind that are just like him) another knife to use.
My biggest worry is the cost of not invading, domestically. It may simply not be possible, without staging EU troops in Ukraine proper, to drive the cost of invading higher than the cost of backing down.
But it may be that putting EU troops into Ukraine RAISES the cost domestically, by making him look weak against the enemy he’s railing against.
Which I suspect is the real calculus behind everyone’s moves — trying to raise the price of invasion without raising the price of backing down. After all, he is in an uncomfortable box — everyone is trying to make the “back down” choice the cheapest, but no on is sure how he’s pricing things — or how those around him are.
Throwing what seems like token military aid at Ukraine (man portable missiles) is the sort of thing he can gloss over domestically if he decides to back down. There were no overt military moves, he’s not backing down in the face of EU or NATO troops, and the average citizen isn’t really going to realize why even a thousand modern anti-tank missiles in the right hands can turn an invasion from “cakewalk” to “costly slog”.
Raising the cost of invading without raising the cost of backing down.
But it’s all guesswork and political models and I’m certain game theory and trying to read Putin’s mind and the minds of ever domestic rival he has.Report
But what I’m saying is he doesn’t have to try to annex/occupy the whole country if the goal is to keep Ukraine out of NATO and the EU. He will just follow the model he has in Georgia. In this case he would use enough force to create an ethnic Russian enclave in the Donbas. The government in Kiev will never accept it but may not have the ability to take it back. NATO will never agree to inherit that situation, and probably neither will the EU, which achieves Putin’s goal.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about on the EU troops stuff. There’s no such thing as EU troops. No NATO country is going to risk an actual shooting war with a nuclear armed adversary over that country. It’s an insane idea.Report
Troops from any EU or NATO country. Ukraine is getting a lot of support from neighbors (and the UK), and while the US has promised no boots on the ground, the US has plenty of nearby airbases.
I don’t think he has enough local support to create a situation like he did in Georgia, especially since Ukrainian citizens not only are sick of kleptocratic government but have seeing some success in finally cleaning up some of it, so having an even more obvious set come in via the sword, not the ballot, is likely to foster even more resentment.
He doesn’t — if he ever did — have a shot at a sort of fairly bloodless (as far as invasions go) take-over. No coups, no swift blow, no subversion and sell-out.
The political situation means he’s gonna have to use guns, and not a relative handful of them. He’s gonna have to go pretty old school.Report
Looks like Croatia has withdrawn its troops from NATO forces.Report