I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you received this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up below. Take advantage now of a 20 percent discount, celebrating one year of Truth and Consequences.
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Last night, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine. Make no mistake: it is an unmitigated tragedy and one that will likely cause grievous and needless suffering for the Ukrainian people, who have done nothing to deserve their current fate. I’ve written a piece this morning for the New Republic, which I’m summarizing in part below, along with some additional thoughts.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a tacit acknowledgment of failure by Vladimir Putin. Russia’s multi-year policy of coercing and bullying Kyiv, which began with the seizure and annexation of Crimea in 2014, has failed. Russia’s hopes of keeping Ukraine in its sphere of influence, without the use of military force, have been dashed.
The best explanation for how we’ve reached this point is Ukraine refused to give in to Russian coercion. When faced with the choice of subjugating its destiny to Russian diktats or going to war to defend its independence and sovereignty, Ukraine chose the latter. It is Ukraine’s intransigence that ultimately backed Putin into a corner. There wasn’t just the issue of backing down and looking weak. To not invade Ukraine would have meant accepting that Kyiv’s drift into the West’s political orbit was inevitable and unstoppable. Going to war was the only means left at Putin’s disposal to prevent it. But ultimately it is unlikely to work. Unless Putin is willing to occupy Ukraine for potentially years, if not decades to come, he has lost his neighbor to the West.
Since Putin’s policy relies on not just defeating Ukraine militarily but also politically, I expect this war to be brutal and vicious. To succeed, Putin needs to, in effect, decapitate the Ukrainian leadership and install a pro-Moscow puppet regime. I desperately hope that I’m wrong here, but if this war is fundamentally about keeping Kyiv in the Russian sphere of influence, then the only strategy that makes sense is one of brutal subjugation of pro-Western forces in Ukraine.
Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine will reverberate for years to come. Tough international sanctions are coming, and Russia’s economy (and the Russian people) will pay the price. But even worse will be the hit to Moscow’s international reputation. Russia is now a pariah state, and its leader persona non grata. So long as Putin remains in charge, Russia will be on the outside looking in when it comes to being a member in good standing of the international community.
The Republican is a broken and pathetic excuse for a political party. Over the past several days, the former president of the United States — and leading contender for the 2024 Republican nomination — has called Putin’s moves “savvy” and an “act of genius.” His acolytes in the Republican Party have blamed President Biden for the Russian decision to invade. Biden is working on assembling and maintaining an international coalition to oppose Putin’s moves and impose sanctions on Moscow. Meanwhile, he’s being undercut at home by the same group of Republicans who successfully shielded Trump from accountability after he was caught trying to hold military assistance to Ukraine hostage to his political ambitions.
Will Republicans condemn Trump’s appeasement of Putin? Will they acknowledge that the former president’s refusal to hold Putin accountable for his intervention in the 2016 election and his blackmailing of Zelensky were disastrous decisions that emboldened and encouraged the Russian dictator? Hah! Instead, they will spend the next few days telling Americans that Biden’s “weakness” is what made war happen.
Keep an eye on China. If there is one positive takeaway from this crisis, it is that while Putin is attacking the rules-based international order … the rules-based international order is attacking back. The NATO alliance and America’s European allies have remained vigilant in seeking to punish Russia for its actions. Other countries are following suit — like South Korea and Japan, which have gone further than they did after the seizure of Crimea, condemning Russia and embracing a tough sanctions regime. In the short term, this is all to be expected.
The bigger question is whether that willingness to punish Russia will remain when those sanctions blowback on them. Already oil prices have spiked, and one can expect domestic anger across the US and Europe will grow as consumers are forced to pay more at the gas pump. The biggest question, however, is what will China do? An effective sanctions regime will rely, in large part, on the willingness of Beijing to join the rest of the international community in punishing Russia. If China is not on-board, Russia will still pay a price, but it will not be as significant as it could be.
I spend a lot of my time talking to foreign policy pundits and never before have I been confronted with the shock and dismay that I saw last night. Putin’s actions are so irrational and so divorced from sensible strategic thinking that no one is seemingly able to make heads or tails of it. Even those who expected an invasion to occur are still stunned by this turn of events. This is a deeply disturbing moment in international affairs and while I don’t expect the US to get involved or the crisis to spread beyond Ukraine’s borders it is a sad and needlessly tragic moment.
Musical Interlude
For the last month or more every news report that I read or watched on the situation in Ukraine reminded me of the sentence that ended several chapters in Tom Robbins book Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. However, the Russian invasion is so frightening and sobering that quoting it here would be flippant and callous. It's sobering because up until the very last, there was a glimmer of hope that diplomacy would work; it's failure depresses me. The frightening part is what is likely to happen to tens of thousands of Ukrainians. For them, times truly are desperate.
I keep hearing arguments that the Biden administration/NATO should have negotiated more robustly with Putin in the preceding months. That they should have taken Ukraine joining NATO off the table, and formally given them Crimea. From what I've read, it seems like Putin had made up his mind but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Could the West have done more to stop this?