The war that Republicans are dragging the U.S. into

The Atlantic's Tom Nichols, a former professor of strategy at the Naval War College, has some thoughts on "If Russia Wins," and they aren't pretty. The briefest possible synopsis:

The destruction of Ukraine would begin with some kind of cease-fire offered by a Ukrainian leadership that has literally run out of bullets, bombs, and bodies. The Russians would signal a willingness to deal only with a new Ukrainian regime ... that would exist solely to save whatever would be left of a rump Ukrainian state in the western part of the country while handing everything else over to the Kremlin.

The Russians would then dictate more terms: Ukraine would have to destroy its weapons and convert its sizable army into a small and weak constabulary force. Areas under Russian control would become, by fiat, parts of Russia. The remaining thing called "Ukraine" would be a demilitarized puppet state, kept from integration of any kind with Europe; in a few years, an internal putsch or a Russian-led coup could produce a new government that would request final union with the Russian Federation. Soon, Ukraine would be part of a new Russian superstate.

Putin would be tempted to extend his winning streak and try one last throw of the dice, this time against NATO itself. He would not try to invade all of Europe; he would instead seek to replicate the success of his 2014 capture of Crimea—only this time on NATO territory. Putin might, for example, declare that his commitment to the Russian-speaking peoples of the former Soviet Union compels him to defend Russians in one of the Baltic states. The Kremlin would then sit on this piece of NATO territory, daring America and Europe to respond, in order to prove that NATO lacks the courage to fight for its members.

I seem to be encountering a lot of irony lately, for sure enough, here it is again. If they get their way, House and Senate Republicans who've been demagoguing U.S. support of Ukraine as a step toward war with Russia would ultimately be the ones who do drag us into a European war. In a reversal of logic, something with which Republicans are unfamiliar, their withholding of Ukrainian aid would be Step One, weakening its military to the point of collapse and forcing a Ukrainian surrender.

Then would come Putin's encroachments on NATO soil — on allied soil. At that point the U.S. would have no choice but to engage, both in defense of its allies as well as its own military assets in Europe, which, notes Nichols, would be among the casualties. 

In addition to being vacant of logic, Republicans never think even two steps ahead; they're far too busy burying themselves in the one — rabble-rousing for immediate electoral gains. That may work in politics, but foreign affairs are a different creature altogether. Its affairs and the policies addressing them require foresight above all, which Republicans simply are not interested in. Thinking does nothing to secure that one extra vote. 

Almost unbelievably, after advancing the Ukrainian aid bill in the Senate, Republicans have returned to bickering about it and demanding more than just tweaks to it, like — brace for the aforementioned "almost unbelievable" — including border-security language they just voted down. "You’ve hurt the cause of Ukraine by trying to shortchange the debate on the border," said Lindsey Graham, one of the border shortchangers. "You may get this bill passed without any border, but it’s going nowhere in the House."

Added Rand Paul, the bill's most proficient slow-walker in the Senate, "I will insist on every minute and every day of it. I want to be here a week, because I want to talk about what a disaster the bill is and what a mistake it is to send our money to other countries before we fix our own problems here." Ukraine's disaster and its implications for U.S. national security escape him, and he too had just voted against fixing "our own problems here." 

I never write that one event or another is plain unbelievable, stripped of "almost," since clearly we do believe the event occurred or is occurring. But congressional Republicans are inching me into a state of disbelief, defined as "the inability to accept that something is true or real." For it is nearly unfathomable and utterly unacceptable that a major U.S. political party can really be so truly stupid. 

Comments

[VoiceOfReason]

The Republicans are banking on a Trump win and a speedy US exit from NATO (clearly now illegal, but when has that ever stopped Trump from doing anything?), after which they will hand Putin all of Europe on a silver platter. He's their boy. They'd hand him the US if they could figure out how to do it while blaming the Democrats.