Why NATO Should Prepare to Fight for Ukraine

When the Vietnam War began in earnest in 1965 I was 18 years old, and like most Americans, I accepted that it was necessary to stop Communist aggression.  Within three years I had changed my mind, and decades later, in the 1990s, I wrote a book on how that catastrophic mistake had come about.  I supported the first Gulf War in 1991 because it had a clear, limited objective and had the support of nearly the entire world, but I was very skeptical about our attempt to pacify Afghanistan and I totally opposed the decision of invade Iraq in 2003.  Regime change to fight dictatorship and terrorism clearly failed there, and it failed once again in Libya and in Syria.  Nor is this all.  I was skeptical about the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, and a month ago I would have welcomed an agreement to have Russia stand down its troops on Ukraine’s border in exchange for a pledge by Ukraine not to join that alliance.  Now, however, events have completely changed my perspective.  In my opinion, the NATO alliance should be planning and preparing to intervene to defend Ukraine, certainly with air power and perhaps with more than that.  They must not do so without a thorough estimate of their chances of success, but if such an estimate reaches a favorable conclusion, they should go right ahead.

As I have written elsewhere, the Russian invasion will be a turning point in the 21st century.  If Putin succeeds we will be living in a world where great powers can send troops across their borders (or across water) to extend their territory and influence.  Longtime observers believe that Putin covets all the territory of the old Russian Empire—including the Baltic States, Finland, and Poland, as well as huge territories in the Caucasus region and Central Asia.  The Baltic States and Poland now belong to NATO, but how can we expect Putin to believe that NATO will actively defend them if it shies away from confronting him in a much larger and more significant country?  The Chinese government will also undoubtedly be emboldened to attack Taiwan—which appears much harder for the US to defend than Ukraine is right now.  How will South Korea and Japan view their alliances with the US if Taiwan falls?  

Analogies to the western powers’ delayed response to Hitler’s moves in the 1930s are certainly appropriate—and they make intervention now even more sensible.  To have fought for Czechoslovakia in 1938 would have been a largely symbolic act—it would almost surely have fallen rapidly to Hitler, and could only have been liberated after a very long war.  Poland in 1939, for which the British and French did go to war, could offer only a few weeks’ resistance.  Ukraine, however—a much larger country with an area the size of Texas with over 40 million people—is putting up heroic and effective resistance against the Russian Army, and might even be able to prevail without NATO intervention.  Russia, clearly, was not ready for combat on this scale—and NATO intervention could easily provide the coup de grace.  I personally doubt very much that Vladimir Putin would survive a military defeat.  The nation that declared itself the leader of the free world 75 years ago should not depend on a Ukrainian victory or a coup in Moscow to achieve a critical objective.

To intervene NATO would have to face the risk of nuclear war squarely, just as Eisenhower and Kennedy did over Berlin and in the Cuban missile crisis.  Putin, like Khrushchev in those days, has made nuclear threats—but even at the height of the Cold War, nations contemplating their use generally realized that there is only one critical issue regarding them—the need not to have one dropped on one’s self.  If Putin has in fact put Russian nuclear forces on alert, then the West should do the same. Eisenhower and Kennedy understood that the US could not appear to fear nuclear war more than its adversary.  It remains insane for anyone to cross that threshold.

Nothing has done more to destroy the domestic prestige of the US government than the failed wars of the last 57 years.  So scarred are we by bad wars that we may not be able to recognize a better one.  To lead NATO as it saves Ukrainian independence and dramatically shifts the world balance of power would be the biggest international victory the US has won in at least 30 years, and give our own people renewed pride in our nation.  It would also take advantage of an entirely new spirit in Europe, where Germany is drastically increasing defense spending and the Finns and Swedes now want to join NATO as well.  Intervention, to repeat, must not be undertaken before a thorough assessment is complete.  If it can be successful, however, it would secure the most significant military outcome since 1945—and one that the world desperately needs.

ps.  This is I think the most important commentary I have written in the 17 + years of historyunfolding.com, and I wanted it to appear in a major publication.  I sent it to three such: two of them rejected it without real explanation within a couple of days and the third has declined to reply at all.  None of them, as far as I can see, has published anything else taking a similar point of view.  I have thought a lot about what this means and may write about that later on.  Meanwhile, I hope readers will share it as widely as possible.