The Moving Finger Writes:
Ukraine Situation Reveals Global Power Vacuum
If you see a bully threatening to beat up a smaller kid in a second grade playground, why spread the alarm to others? If you are stronger than the bully, all you have to do is tell him he will have to fight you next. And you shouldn't reveal beforehand what rules of engagement you will follow. Those bulges in my pocket just might be brass knuckles, but you will have to wait and see. Nor do you need to tell others, and poker players will tell you not to. But if you aren't strong enough to beat up the bully, then telling others makes more sense. You hope others will join you in threatening collective action against him. But in Ukraine we've already scoured the neighborhood and come up with only very tepid collective will in Europe for serious deterrance.
Quite to the contrary. The Germans would rather keep getting natural gas from the Russian pipeline. The French want an all-European response; thanks, USA, but no thanks. Even the Brits are no longer knee-jerking in our direction. Fox News years ago joined the kiss-up-to-Vlady domestic crowd; no help here at home. It's enough to make you think we need to bow out gracefully, but if we do there will be a huge domestic price to pay in an election year.
US policy makers are in an unenviable position. The unpunished treason scoundrels like Giuliani created a few years ago in Ukraine raises the visibility of Ukraine in the US, particularly among Democrats. The cause of Ukranian freedom seems to fall into a moral category: poor Zelensky, almost blackmailed by Trump, now about to be knocked off by Putin. Can't we do something about it with the most powerful military in the world? On the other hand, with Europe looking the other way as troops surround vital areas of Ukraine, just what license does the US have to protect a nation that is not part of our system of allies? Does this, after Afghanistan and Iraq, warrant another expensive war with only token support from our allies? The nation seems to be in a dovish mood about foreign wars now that the most significant wars are internal. Or, in fact is this really an internal issue?
The Biden administration appears to have been acting, at least in public, as though this were an international issue. But as an international issue, once again, the Biden administration has found itself isolated at home and abroad by foreign policy--the last time was Afghanistan. Ukraine has uncovered an uncomfortable question, one which the Biden administration (or either political party) refuses to share honestly with the public: how far has the US fallen in the pecking order of nations in the past few years?
Roughly speaking, if you believe, as Xi's and Putin's actions (in Hong Kong, South China Sea, Ukraine, and election meddling with the US) suggest they believe, that the emperor has lost its clothes, then a reasonable conclusion is that only neighborhood bullies can resolve neighborhood squabbles. Ukraine is a pretty good test of this hypothesis: there is no longer a global godfather looking over the shoulder. The rules of the game have changed along with the balance of power.
American political discourse has not yet permitted this question to be aired here. The language of international politics in the US still, insistently, relies on the unspoken assumption the US has the power, should it find the will to exert it, to create order out of the darwinian jungle. The Biden administration is still stuck with this assumption, and acts as though everyone still believes it, long after powerful interests asked quietly whether it is still a viable assumption. Ukraine is a clear and powerful metaphor, and testing ground, for the shape of international power in our globe today. It should not be, but domestic politics has made it so.
Should Biden's approach to Ukraine end as badly as the retreat from Afghanistan, the image of the US as an international power will be irrevocably lowered. Power is not something measured in dollars, no matter how much Mark Zuckerberg would like you to think so. It consists of one's relationships with others, and these, in turn, depend to some extent on the images one projects. Trump projected an image of obsequious subservience to Putin. That did not go unnoticed in the dark alleyways or glittering palaces of our global neighborhoods. Biden's approach so far has been to ask others to stand with him against Putin to uphold the American international order, reshaped in the wake of 911. His lack of success so far, and his stubborn unwillingness to be candid about it, suggests volumes about the viability of that order. The stakes are high.
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