Putin aims beyond Ukraine. Checking him right now is crucial.
The U.S. can deliver military equipment, apply legal pressure and announce step-by-step sanctions to have a chance at deterring Russia.
by By Wesley K. Clark
Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark is a former NATO supreme allied commander. He is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations.
A week of talks in Geneva between the United States and Russia ended in an impasse. The United States stood firm on its principles, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat of a major invasion of Ukraine remained.
But the United States need not wait for a return to the table before strengthening its deterrence against Russian military action to match the full scope of what is at stake. This crisis is about Putin’s aim to regain Russia’s grip on the territories of the former Soviet Union and control the states of Eastern Europe; it is about his intent to overturn the entire system of rules-based international order that the United States helped create after World War II. The risks of not doing more now are greater than the risks of ratcheting up deterrence.
The Russian forces staging or available to be used against Ukraine — perhaps as many as 175,000 — are wholly modernized and capable of dominating Ukraine’s defenses using a combination of overwhelming air attacks, long-range rocket fires and rapid maneuvers by specially organized teams with tanks, infantry, mobile artillery, air defense, engineers and electronic-warfare capabilities. Mounting assaults from multiple directions, including through the difficult terrain of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, these forces could threaten Kyiv in a few days, seize Ukraine’s coastline and drive Ukrainians into the forests or urban areas to fight a guerrilla-warfare type defense. Sleeper cells of Russian assassins and terrorists are probably already staged and ready to assist in undermining Ukraine’s defenses.
Most important, from the Russian perspective, has been their modernization of nuclear and chemical weapons. Putin says his hypersonic missiles and underwater long-range nuclear torpedoes will deter any serious NATO intervention, but in their war games, they practice using theater-range nuclear weapons should NATO nevertheless intervene. Despite its ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia has developed and used new chemical weapons such as Novichok, and he could be expected to employ these against Ukraine, either for assassinations or perhaps against Ukrainian strong points or stubbornly defended urban areas.
With this kind of power, an all-out assault on Ukraine could have a devastating psychological impact on NATO nations, inducing fear and defeatism, even as the United States would be trying to lead in imposing economic sanctions as punishment. . .
The better way to deal with the Russian threat to Ukraine and the international system is to deter it now, rather than punish it later. It is a challenge to U.S. leadership, but surely risking charges of overreaction or provocation beat having to deal with the aftermath of Russian military action in Ukraine.'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/01/14/ukraine-russia-sanctions-nato-talks/
= new reply since forum marked as read
