I'm having a bit of trouble deciphering Bret Stephens' latest column — "Bring Back the Free Word" — which in large part I agree with. But some parts bewilder me. His gist:
The best short-term response to Putin’s threats is the one the Biden administration is at last beginning to consider: The permanent deployment, in large numbers, of U.S. forces to frontline NATO states, from Estonia to Romania. Arms shipments to Kyiv, which so far are being measured in pounds, not tons, need to become a full-scale airlift. NATO troops need not, and should not, fight for Ukraine. But the least we owe Ukrainians is to give them a margin of deterrence that comes with being armed before they are invaded, along with a realistic chance to fight for themselves.
The longer-term response is to restore the concept of the free world.
What’s meant by that term? It isn’t just a list of states that happen to be liberal democracies, some bound together by treaty alliances like NATO or regional trading blocs like the European Union.
The free world is the larger idea that the world’s democracies are bound by shared and foundational commitments to human freedom and dignity; that those commitments transcend politics and national boundaries; and that no free people can be indifferent to the fate of any other free people, because the enemy of any one democracy is ultimately the enemy to all the others. That was the central lesson of the 1930s, when democracies thought they could win peace for themselves at the expense of the freedom of others, only to learn the hard way that no such bargain was ever possible....
[I]t would be foolish to think that the loss of Ukraine would mean nothing to the future of freedom elsewhere, including in the United States.
Perhaps you share my bewilderment. He argues that "NATO troops need not, and should not, fight for Ukraine," as NATO fought for Afghanistan, since the 9/11 attack on the U.S. invoked NATO's Article 5 provision. So let us agree with Stephens on the inadvisability of NATO's military involvement in Ukraine, where no such Article 5 obligation would be in effect.
Yet Stephens then goes on — correctly, I think — to argue that "the free world is the larger idea that the world’s democracies are bound by shared and foundational commitments to human freedom and dignity; that those commitments transcend politics and national boundaries."
By "transcending" politics and national boundaries via "foundational commitments," Stephens thus confusingly readmits the advisability, or at least the acceptable possibility, of NATO's involvement, does he not?
Then, from Stephens, the even more bewildering kicker: "[I]t would be foolish to think that the loss of Ukraine would mean nothing to the future of freedom elsewhere, including in the United States."
Is that not a subtle exhortation for the U.S. — no matter what NATO does or doesn't do — to deploy troops in Ukraine? After all, if a Russian invasion threatens "the future of freedom" in the U.S., that, in itself, is something of a casus belli. (It's also something of an exaggeration, although a long-game argument could be made in its defense.)
And what are we to think of his incontestable assertion that "no free people can be indifferent to the fate of any other free people, because the enemy of any one democracy is ultimately the enemy to all the others"?
My point, which may help to clear up my bewilderment, is this. Certain neocons of late, say, of the early Bush era, seem to be creeping with exceptional caution toward a vocal position of U.S. military involvement in Ukraine. But they were burned — and burned badly, in Iraq — so their advocacy is tepid, nearly indetectable.
I wonder, though, just how tepid it will remain, should Putin begin to make easy work with a Ukrainian invasion. (Which appears inevitable. Putin has labored for two decades to create "a far different fighting force" from that which once embarrassed Russia. He has "overhauled [it] into a modern sophisticated army, able to deploy quickly and with lethal effect in conventional conflicts.... It features precision-guided weaponry, a newly streamlined command structure and well-fed and professional soldiers.")
Given what I believe is Stephens' correct assessment of a needed reinvigoration of the free world, could the once-burned neocons, in this particular go-around, be right? It's a question on which I'm rather unsettled.
Unsettled, largely because of a haunting op-ed published three days ago by Fiona Hill, the Russia expert who testified so fluently at Trump's impeachment hearings. Wrote Hill: "This time, Mr. Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s 'open door' to Ukraine and taking more territory — he wants to evict the United States from Europe.... Mr. Putin plays a longer, strategic game and knows how to prevail in the tactical scrum. He has the United States right where he wants it.... Barring ill health, the United States will have to contend with him for years to come. Right now, all signs indicate that Mr. Putin will lock the United States into an endless tactical game, take more chunks out of Ukraine and exploit all the frictions and fractures in NATO and the European Union.... This saga could indeed mark the beginning of the end of America’s military presence in Europe."
And that takes us back to the cherished concept of the, of a, free world, one in which "democracies are bound by shared and foundational commitments to human freedom and dignity." But what, precisely, defines "commitment"? It's a hard question.