Monday, March 7, 2022

The Morning: Preventing this war

What might have done it?

Good morning. We look at why the West didn't try harder to prevent the invasion of Ukraine.

A Ukrainian soldier running to the site of an attack near Kyiv.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Kuwait's lesson

Was there any way to prevent the horrific war in Ukraine? Recent history offers at least a partial answer, and it's one that is also relevant to the future of global stability.

But let's start with the past: In the summer of 1990, the autocratic leader of a country with a powerful military decided to take over a weaker neighbor. If the armed conflict had remained between only those two countries, the invaders would have easily won.

Instead, an international military coalition, led by the United States, quickly came together. Its leaders declared that the invasion would not be allowed to stand, because one country could not simply annex another. Within months, the invaders had been defeated.

There are certainly differences between Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1990 and Vladimir Putin's Russia in 2022. Some of those differences make Russia harder to confront, especially its nuclear arsenal. But other differences suggest that Putin's aggression toward Ukraine should have been more likely than Hussein's takeover of Kuwait to inspire an international military coalition.

For one thing, the Iraqi invasion was shockingly swift. It began in the middle of the night, and Iraq controlled Kuwait within 48 hours. Putin's invasion, by contrast, required months of buildup, accurately analyzed by U.S. intelligence agencies, giving the world enough notice at least to try to prevent it. Second, Kuwait is a small authoritarian emirate, representing few grand political ideals, in a war-torn region. Ukraine is a democracy of more than 40 million people, on what was a largely peaceful continent home to major democracies.

These factors make it possible to envision a very different series of events over the past few weeks. Once Putin's mobilization inside Russia began, a Western coalition could have sent troops to Ukraine. "He who wants peace must prepare for war," Evelyn Farkas, a Pentagon official in the Obama administration, wrote in January, calling for a 1990-style coalition. "Only a balance of military power — a deterrent force and the political will to match — can keep war at bay."

"Putin is someone who responds to brute force," Ian Brzezinski of the Atlantic Council told The Times before the invasion.

Yes, such a showdown would have carried big risks. Confronting a nuclear power is not easy. But there is a long history of successfully doing so, dating to the Cold War. (Otherwise, any country with a nuclear weapon could simply annex any country without one.) And of course the lack of a military response also carried big risks — which have now turned into terrible costs.

Thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have died. More than two million Ukrainians have fled their homes. Cities are being destroyed and nuclear plants attacked.

Given all of this, it's striking that Western allies gave so little consideration to a bolder attempt to stop Putin. They merely pleaded with him not to invade and threatened relatively modest economic sanctions (which have since become more aggressive). He scoffed at them.

The meekness of the initial Western response stems from two recent realities: the European Union's wishful pacifism and the U.S.'s failed belligerence. Together, they created a power vacuum that Putin exploited.

If that vacuum remains — if today's democracies are unable to mount coalitions like the one that defeated Hussein — future wars may become more likely.

Two problems

The American part of this story will be familiar to many readers. The U.S. has spent much of the past two decades fighting wars it did not need to fight. It continued a war in Afghanistan long after Osama bin Laden was gone and invaded Iraq long after Hussein was contained. Both decisions turned into tragic failures that "undermined the world's confidence in American intentions and competence," as my colleague Damien Cave has written.

The two wars also affected U.S. politics. Many Americans grew wary of foreign intervention. Public opinion has become so dovish that not one prominent U.S. politician called for defending Ukraine with troops. It was a rare example of bipartisan consensus in a polarized country.

This new isolationism probably won't disappear anytime soon. For both better and worse, the U.S. is unlikely to be the world's police officer in the coming decades.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, in Brussels last week.Yves Herman/Reuters

The obvious candidate to share the burden of democratic leadership is Western Europe. The region is both large enough and rich enough, as Substack's Matthew Yglesias has noted. Yet it has so far refused to do so. The E.U.'s economic output is similar to that of both the U.S. and China — but China spends 50 percent more on its military than the E.U. does, while the U.S. spends three times more.

Military spending isn't the only issue. Western Europe still had enough combined military strength to alter the balance of power between Russia and Ukraine. But the E.U. never seemed to consider sending troops to Ukraine as a deterrent. European leaders have spent so long deferring to the U.S., effectively outsourcing protection of their own continent, that they could not fathom the alternative.

Putin, as a result, assumed that Ukraine was his for the taking. It was a modern-day version of appeasement.

Since the invasion, European leaders have shown signs of shifting their approach. They have sent arms to Ukraine, and Germany and Denmark have announced more military spending. All of it was too late to prevent war in Ukraine. But the horrible reality of the war may yet alter global politics in ways that could discourage future aggression.

"So far in the geopolitical landscape, you've had one passive actor, which is Europe," Fareed Zakaria told The Times's Ezra Klein. "It would be deeply ironic, if the result of what Vladimir Putin has done has been to arouse the sleeping giant of Europe."

"If we get lucky," Zakaria said, "what we may see is the emergence of a powerful, strategically minded, national security-minded Europe that is willing to defend the liberal order, which is a huge shift in international politics."

More on the war

  • Delegations from both sides will hold a third round of talks today. Follow updates.

THE LATEST NEWS

Other Big Stories
After a tornado in Winterset, Iowa, this weekend.Bryon Houlgrave/The Des Moines Register, via Associated Press
Opinions

College students are afraid to say what they really think, Emma Camp argues.

The world is burning. Margaret Renkl still feels the joys of spring.

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss drug prices and violent crime.

Subscribe Today

A subscription to The New York Times plays a vital role in making this reporting possible. We hope you will support Times journalism by becoming a subscriber today.

A MESSAGE FROM SHOWTIME

SUPER PUMPED: THE BATTLE FOR UBER

Based on the New York Times bestseller & starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kyle Chandler and Uma Thurman, strap in for the meteoric rise and fall of Uber founder, Travis Kalanick. With a lift from venture capitalist Bill Gurley and board member Arianna Huffington, Kalanick takes a win-at-all-costs approach to forge the fledgling start-up into a multi-billion-dollar tech titan…but every surge comes at a price. Now streaming, only on SHOWTIME.

WATCH PREMIERE

SHOWTIME Logo

MORNING READS

Track your package: A company hopes to one day store urgent items in orbit.

Got points? Now is the best time to use your airline miles.

Quiz time: The average score on our latest news quiz was 8.9. Can you beat it?

A Times classic: How to stop rushing into love.

Advice from Wirecutter: This knife is the ultimate kitchen tool.

Lives Lived: Walter Mears, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter, became "moderately famous" (his words) thanks to "The Boys on the Bus," a 1973 book about campaign correspondents. He died at 87.

ARTS AND IDEAS

A plant-based world

Lactose-intolerant Americans have many more options than they once did. Grocery stores carry milk made from soy, almonds, coconuts, oats and even potatoes, and the trend isn't slowing down, Victoria Petersen writes in The Times.

Plant milks have existed for a long time. Coconut milk has been used for centuries in South Asia, South America and the Caribbean, and almond milk has been a staple ingredient in North Africa, Europe and the Middle East for nearly 1,000 years. But the growing popularity of vegetarian and vegan diets has turned them into a big business: In 2020, plant-based milks accounted for 15 percent of all retail milk sales.

"Living in a metropolitan hub like London, I have no need to be drinking cow, goat or any other animal's milk," Sarah Bentley, who runs a plant-based-cooking school, said. Her favorites: hemp milk, for its low environmental impact, and oat milk that is enriched with B and D vitamins for her son.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook
Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

Chicken and veggies aren't boring in this peppy roast.

What to Watch

Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan star in "Fresh," a (very funny) cannibal romance.

What to Read

Our critic guides you through W.H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts," and the paintings that inspired it.

Now Time to Play

The pangrams from yesterday's Spelling Bee were applicable and clippable. Here is today's puzzle — or you can play online.

Here's today's Wordle. Here's today's Mini Crossword, and a clue: Is the right size (four letters).

If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The word "insectageddon" — referring to declining insect populations — appeared for the first time in The Times recently.

"The Daily" is about Ukrainian refugees. On "Sway," a discussion about Russian disinformation.

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti, Ashley Wu and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance.

You received this email because you signed up for the Morning newsletter from The New York Times, or as part of your New York Times account.

To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences.

Subscribe to The Times

Connect with us on:

facebooktwitterinstagram

Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices

The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

No comments:

Post a Comment