At
the end of WWII, we went from hot wars to cold wars that ensued until the fall
of the Berlin Wall, give or take a few years. We have been in a Tepid War ever
since, well, until last week. We just went from Tepid to Hot! Just how hot it
will get is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t take much to make a limited war a
world war.
On July 28, 1914, Cavrilo Princip, a Serbian Nationalist, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife. The fatal gunshots that rang out in Sarajevo that sunny day resulted in a world war in which 17 million people died and 25 million suffered injuries. It didn’t have to be!
Europe of that day was a conglomeration of empires with secret treaties propping them up, pledging mutual military support, with generally high regard for members of the nobility. Austria Hungary had to avenge the death of its next Emperor. Germany had to protect itself from Russia, The Ottoman Empire had to support its allies and Great Britain had to feign support for France. Historians still argue over the real causes of “the war to end all wars,” but Cavrilo gets most of the blame.
Russia invaded Ukraine last week. We now live under a new world order.
The NYT editorial, on February 24, 2022, may have said it best:
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“The magnitude of the Russian gambit is staggering. Whatever Mr. Putin’s ideas on how Ukraine should relate to Russia, whatever his grievances over Western encroachment on what he perceives as Russia’s sphere of influence, whatever his views on Russia’s place in Europe and the world, an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign European state is an unprovoked declaration of war on a scale, on a continent and in a century when it was thought to be no longer possible... There will be body bags.” |
In a speech to the Russian people, Putin proclaimed two small sections of Ukraine, Donetsk, and Luhansk, to be independent states. True, they were centers of Russian resistance, but they were controlled by Ukraine. Putin declared that it was necessary to invade Ukraine to provide for the safety of Russian nationals in those two areas. Then he invaded from the north, the south, and the east. Tanks rolled, rockets flew, troops came ashore near Odessa, airfields were bombed, cyber attacks cut off communications, and women and children fled. Every man eighteen to sixty years old was ordered to stay and fight. And fight they did, slowing the Russian advance to the capital and other major cities. Russia had the missiles but Ukraine had the hearts of its people.
Ukraine isn’t a member of the EU or NATO, so it is on its own in this battle. The rest of Europe can provide it with arms and equipment, impose economic sanctions on Russia, and wring their hands in despair, but that might not help much in the end. Putin warned the west that if they interfered in Ukraine, they would face “such consequences that you have never encountered in your history,” a clear statement that he was prepared to retaliate with nuclear weapons. On Sunday, he put the nuclear forces in a “special regime of combat duty.”
The West has cut Russia out of SWIFT,[i] the international bank clearinghouse. Without access to SWIFT, Russians can’t trade in anything but rubles, and they can’t exchange them for any other currency. They can’t bring dollars or Euros into Russia or use foreign currency to live outside the country. Switzerland froze all Russian assets in its banks, an unheard-of reversal of its claim to neutrality that has reigned for many decades. On Sunday, Europe closed its air space to all Russian-controlled airplanes, including private planes. Ukraine looks like a donut hole on the map of planes in the air. Unless a Russian wants to go to China, they are pretty much forced to stay in the country.
So what does this all mean for the future of Europe and the U.S.? It is too early to tell, but one can imagine, can’t one?
The best-case scenario has Russia realizing the error of Putin’s ways, going home, and paying for the damage it inflicted. Not likely!
Putin’s stated objective is to decapitate the government of Ukraine, take out the military, and install a puppet government that it can control. That would give Russia control over the vast mineral resources of Ukraine as well as the food production capability of the nation.[ii]
The worst-case scenario is that Russia sees how easy it is to take over one former soviet state and then it decides to take over another former member of the Soviet Union. That means an all-out war on the continent. China is watching how the U.S. responds to Russia. That will give Beijing a hint to how we would respond if it tried to take Taiwan by force.
NATO’s[iii] members are bound by Article #5 which calls for collective defense: if one country is attacked, it is considered an attack on all member states and that all members will come to the aid of other members. The only time Article #5 has been invoked was on 9/11/2001. An invasion of Poland, or the Baltic countries would put NATO at war with Russia. It would put the U.S. at war with Russia.
The rub, of course, is that you have another world war. Today’s military equipment is too sophisticated to allow for fighting like past wars. Simply knocking out a few satellites brings down the internet worldwide; a bit of computer hacking brings down the electric grid, a bit more shuts down the bank ATM machines. Rockets can still reach the U.S. mainland in less than thirty minutes. Are we ready for that?
Are we ready to send hundreds of thousands of troops and armament to the European continent? Are we ready to reinstitute the draft for both men and women? Are we ready to …?
I don’t like Hot!
[i] SWIFT is the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications located in Belgium.
[ii] Ukraine’s vast resources include large amounts of uranium and other minerals. Today 42.6% of Ukrainian exports go to the E.U.
[iii] NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) consists of 30 member states, most of Western Europe and Canada, and the U.S.
