Taking both sides

One advantage (and disadvantage) of flip-flopping on an issue is that whatever the outcome one ends up being both right (once) and wrong (once). On Feb 11th I argued that Putin had put himself into a position in which invading Ukraine was his only logical alternative.  I took a contrary position six days later. Then yesterday I did another one-eighty.  Today it appears as if my first (and third) takes were the right ones.

What now remains to be see is what the West will do. As has been argued here and elsewhere, much is riding on its response. A weak or ineffective response opens the door to more of the same from Russia perhaps into other of its close neighbors, from China into Taiwan, or from other rogue states who see this as a green light to take land they want by force.  While the West has threatened strong sanctions it may be that these and other "non-kinetic" approaches do not raise the costs for going to war sufficiently to either deter Russia and will certainly be ineffective in halting it once in progress.  Ukraine's forces are likely to be soon overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the Russian military at which point supplying them with weapons ceases to be useful (or feasible).    

So as far as Ukraine goes the cards have been dealt and all that remains is to see how each hand is played. The scope for variation without missteps is narrow; but assuming none are made, Zelensky's regime will be toppled, and just as it did in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1960s, Russia will install a pliant puppet government. Europe (and the US) will for a while endure higher energy prices in applying the promised sanctions. Ultimately, however, they will come to accept Russia's actions in order to lift sanctions and restore access to cheaper natural gas.  It is remotely possible that if that normalization takes long enough, Germany might reverse itself on its "no nuclear" policy and ween itself off fossil fuels but that is far from certain.  Putin will appease his oligarchs at home by making good the losses they will suffer from the personalized sanctions being discussed in the Washington, blunting their effectiveness. The Russian economy may decline but Putin's patriotic stand for "Mother Russia" will shield him from much of the domestic political blow-back.    

The larger question is what happens after Ukraine? Will the apparent unity the NATO alliance has been showing recently allow it to respond more robustly in the face of future Russian aggression? Will NATO learn the lessons of Russia's recent adventurism and act with sufficient resolve to prevent Russia from future incursions? And (as Eugene Robinson noted in today's paper) what if Trump is in power next time?  As if things weren't bad enough, that is a truly sobering thought.