Anne Applebaum’s writing for The Atlantic has been superb these recent months, and her piece today really brings the Ukraine tragedy into a moral and strategic imperative: a victory for Ukraine is “the only acceptable endgame”.
DailyKos is doing some of the best work anywhere on the Internet in telling us each day what’s happening in Ukraine, and what it might mean, as the Ukrainians do all they can to defeat Russia’s invasion, destruction and slaughter.
We all — pretty much all Americans paying attention to the conflict, excepting some odious fringe of right wingers — we all want victory and peace and sovereignty for Ukraine. Appelbaum puts forth the “Why”— and argues it well. I encourage you to take a few minutes to read her words.
Excerpts:
Russian planners expected the entire war, the conquest of Ukraine, to last no more than six weeks. More than half that time has already passed. There must be an endgame, a moment when the conflict stops. The Ukrainians, and the democratic powers that support Ukraine, must work toward a goal. That goal should not be a truce, or a muddle, or a decision to maintain some kind of Ukrainian resistance over the next decade, or a vow to “bleed Russia dry,” or anything else that will prolong the fighting and the instability. That goal should be a Ukrainian victory.
There are many voices, here and elsewhere, saying that what’s really needed is a compromise that allows Vladimir Putin to “save face.” Saying that because Putin is using threats of nukes or chemical weapons, he must be semi-appeased. Met halfway, in his wanting conquest of all of Ukraine. Give him a chunk of it. Because the stakes are too high.
But is that true?
How should the West respond? There is only one rule: We cannot be afraid. Russia wants us to be afraid—so afraid that we are crippled by fear, that we cannot make decisions, that we withdraw altogether, leaving the way open for a Russian conquest of Ukraine, and eventually of Poland or even further into Europe. Putin remembers very well an era when Soviet troops controlled the eastern half of Germany. But the threat to those countries will not decrease if Russia carries out massacres in Ukraine. It will grow.
Instead of fear, we should focus on a Ukrainian victory. Once we understand that this is the goal, then we can think about how to achieve it, whether through temporary boycotts of Russian gas, oil, and coal; military exercises elsewhere in the world that will distract Russian troops; humanitarian airlifts on the scale of 1948 Berlin; or more and better weapons.
The specific tactics will be determined by those who best understand diplomacy and military strategy. But the strategy has to be clear. A month ago, nobody believed this war would matter so much, and I’m sure many people wish it did not. But it does. That’s why every move we make must have a single goal: How does it help Ukraine win?
“It’s not our war” was something we might have been able to say three weeks ago. Not now.
Way back on January 3, when we Americans were all focused on Omicron Covid and our own domestic political tensions, Applebaum authored a piece titled “The U.S. Is Naive About Russia. Ukraine Can’t Afford to Be.” It was a sobering read, but not many paid attention to it. The US is no longer naive about Vladimir Putin. Applebaum was right then, and she’s right now. Putin, and Russia as ruled by him, must be defeated in Ukraine, and that must be the shared goal between Ukraine, Europe -- and America.