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Ukraine is suddenly a whirlwind of activity

It was only a week ago that President Biden was asked about Ukraine and said, more or less, Meh, Putin's gonna do what Putin's gonna do. He'll be sorry in the end.

Was this some kind of diabolical reverse psychology? Because ever since then there's been a whirlwind of activity on Ukraine. Europe is desperately trying to look united and the US is talking about redeploying troops and ships and sending more weapons and everything else that makes the hawks salivate:

The Pentagon is defending its preparations in response to the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, with a top spokesman on Thursday highlighting that the United States has provided millions of dollars in weapons to Kyiv and providing new details about U.S. military forces that could deploy to Eastern Europe to bolster security there.

....The comments came as the U.S. military prepared to potentially send thousands of troops from the United States to Europe. Kirby identified for the first time that elements of the 82nd Airborne Division and XVIII Airborne Corps from Fort Bragg, N.C., the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Carson, Colo., were among an initial force of 8,500 troops that were put on high alert this week and could be among the first to go.

Other units also have been put on a heightened alert status, Kirby said. He declined to name them but said they are located at bases that include Fort Hood, Tex.; Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state; Fort Polk, La.; and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.

....NATO has a response force that includes up to 40,000 troops from member nations, including the United States....Kirby, speaking at the Pentagon, said the United States also could reposition some of the more than 60,000 U.S. troops permanently stationed in Europe.

So what is Putin going to do? His putative desire is to prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO, and the usual way to address a situation like this is for both sides to publicly remain adamant but for one side to privately provide assurances that NATO won't allow Ukraine to join for, let's say, at least a decade. Or two decades. Whatever.

This worked great to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis,¹ so why shouldn't it work to defuse the Ukraine NATO Crisis? Well, Putin isn't Khrushchev, for one thing, and the world isn't on the brink of nuclear war, for another. So Putin may figure he has more room to act tough.

We'll see. But Putin sure is moving cautiously for a guy who supposedly wants to put the USSR back together. Maybe he's just waiting for his troop deployments to be completed?

¹JFK privately agreed to remove missiles from Turkey if Khrushchev removed his missiles from Cuba. Publicly, Kennedy was a hero for standing up to the Soviets, but six months later he quietly removed the missiles from Turkey, just as promised. It was decades before anyone knew this was how things went down.

23 thoughts on “Ukraine is suddenly a whirlwind of activity

  1. Justin

    War is good for business. Just ask the CEO of Raytheon.

    “ Raytheon CEO says Yemen war is good for business after its weapons were used in deadly Saudi airstrike
    Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes told investors this week that the corporation expects to “see some benefit” from the recent escalation in the war in Yemen, calling it one of several “opportunities for international sales.”

    Hayes’ comments come after the Saudi-led coalition used a missile manufactured in the US by Raytheon in an airstrike on a migrant detention center that killed more than 80 people last week, Amnesty International reported.

    Amnesty’s finding that a Raytheon missile was used in the attack also further undermines the coalition's already dubious claim that it was not responsible for the strike.”

    Ukraine is the mother lode. Bring it on. Send 100,000 US Troops and make some real money.

  2. Special Newb

    Isn't the story that the missles were going to be moved from Turkey anyway so he didn't actually lose anything? Also because he beat Kruchev this started the decline of K's power that would result in his ouster 5 years later.

    Anyhow, the headlines I read this morning sounded like Putin was talking a bit smaller about invasion.

    1. Ken Rhodes

      I suspect Khrushchev could have stated the opposite story--since he was going to pull the Cuban missiles anyway (he didn't trust Castro and Castro's trigger-finger temper), he got those Turkish missiles removed without actually losing anything.

      Also, this Cuban crisis was followed closely by negotiation of the Test Ban Treaty with the U.S. and the U.K. That was surely a triumph for both Kennedy and Khrushchev, as well as the U.K.

      I think Putin believes in the policy of "Speak loudly, and brandish your big stick." Compared to Khrushchev, Putin is a two-bit imitation.

  3. Special Newb

    Also we shouldn't make promises regarding Ukraine without checking with the Ukranians. That's a big contrast point between US and Russia so far.

  4. Kalimac

    "the world isn't on the brink of nuclear war"

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists thinks it is, but then they always think it is.

    1. golack

      Because we always are kinda there....

      The number of close calls avoided because of Soviet officers breaking protocol and being rational human beings was scary.

      1. aldoushickman

        Apparently at one point, the Soviets were building an automated nuclear response system (upon receipt of certain types of early warning detection signals, the system would automatically launch a special ICMB whose job would be to beam launch instructions down to the other weapons systems) until some Soviet officers caught wind of it and demanded there be some human decisionmaking built in.

        Which actually highlights something rather concerning about Putin. The Soviet Union was an institution, with institutional players interested in the longevity of the institution (or at least, in their own longevity). Putin's Russia is very different--a place ruled by a gangster-king. Would you trust that Putin, near the end of his life (either biological or political), wouldn't start a nuclear conflict to go out in a blaze of history and revenge against the West? I can't say that I 100% would trust him on that.

        1. golack

          The US fostered the move of nuclear weapons from the ex-Soviet states to Russia to keep them safe from criminal gangs and terrorists....hmmm....

  5. Brett

    I think this is about reassuring the NATO countries near Ukraine that whatever happens with Ukraine, we're ready to stand and defend them. They're moving troops east, but not into Ukraine itself.

  6. iamr4man

    The way I understand it Putin won’t invade (if he chooses to do so) until after the Winter Olympics. Apparently it would piss off Xi if he and Putin doesn’t want to do that. So they’ve got about 3 weeks to prepare/diffuse this thing.

    1. Altoid

      Also I've seen comment that the ground isn't frozen quite enough yet for heavy armor, needs about another 3 weeks. I don't know if that's so or not, but it's easy to imagine that ordinary civil roads can't support major maneuvering and wouldn't necessarily be ideal approaches. Assuming that's ultimately what Putin would end up doing, which seems to be anybody's guess at this point.

  7. mistermeyer

    As I understand it, Kennedy agreed to remove missiles from Turkey that -were already slated for removal.- Important point there...

    1. Ken Rhodes

      Yes, and I'm sure that Khrushchev would have told you that he agreed to remove missiles from Cuba that he had already decided to remove anyway, and in return he got those U.S. missiles in Turkey removed, which had long been an important objective to the USSR.

  8. Punditbot

    The U.S. should support Ukraine with weapons and materiel. But first, Ukraine should provide us with oppo research on Ron DeSantis. Time for someone to make another "perfect" phone call.

  9. ChasB

    Might it be Putin just wants a higher price of oil? Brent is already up to $90. What about $150/bbl? CA gas at $6/gal this summer at $150/bbl.

  10. leftabroad

    Putin's obsession is only marginally about NATO. He knows that NATO is not going to attack Russia and it is not about NATO membership for Ukraine - which he also knows won't happen any time soon. It is that his regime cannot abide a democratic and successful Ukraine that would be in stark contrast to Russia. That is why he has been at war with Ukraine for 8 years, doing everything to destabilize the economy, use cyberattacks and propaganda to demonize Ukrainians, invade and change the borders of a European country and write essays about how Ukraine is not a country and its people are just Russians with a funny accent. NATO is only a small part of his underlying fear.

  11. kenalovell

    I rather suspect Putin has no grand master plan. He's simply an opportunist, applying pressure to see what opportunities might open up. Presumably he's decided the cost of annexing Crimea and effectively the Donbas region was tolerable, so now he's seeing what else he might be able to get away with for an acceptable price. The worst that can happen for him is a continuation of the status quo. It's not like he has a powerful domestic opposition eager to accuse him of being Biden's puppet.

  12. Maynard Handley

    "This worked great to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis, so why shouldn't it work to defuse the Ukraine NATO Crisis?"

    Well, because James Baker lied to Gorbachev about "not one inch", that's why.
    https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

    The argument about exactly who promised what after WW2 remains murky, but the story of what happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall is now crystal clear. The US (and more generically NATO and "the West") made a set of promises, then broke those promises within about two years, simply because they could get away with doing so, not in response to any provocation by Russia.

    Putin may be a terrible fellow, I have no idea. But in this particular respect, he is amply justified in not trusting anything NATO says under any conditions.

  13. D_Ohrk_E1

    Well, Putin isn't Khrushchev, for one thing

    Yeah, but I think you missed the most critical part of the comparison: TRUST.

    What does Putin have to lose by going back on his word in 3 years? Nothing. In fact, he could keep playing this game and bring everyone back to the table to install a new 10-year ban, effectively making it a 13-year ban right up until he does it again in another 3 years.

    See, I think the consensus analyses are all wrong.

    He's periodically testing the appetite of specific world powers, grabbing whatever he can at each opportunity. If we show a weak resolve to stand between him and X, he will nibble at the edges of X until we push back. At that point he knows he's reached the limits of what's tolerated at the moment.

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