WWIII has already started in Ukraine. Europe and the U.S. should wake up. | Trudy Rubin
"The fighting is in Ukraine, but risk of World War III is real "What more could the west do about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? ""The long history of Russian imperialism shaping Putin’s war "Russia steps up attacks on key Ukrainian cities as refugees reach 1 million"""""
Ukrainians are fighting for the United States, Europe, and the world.
Local militiaman Valery, 37, carries a child as he helps a fleeing family across a bridge destroyed by artillery, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 2. 2022. Russian forces have escalated their attacks on crowded cities in what Ukraine's leader called a blatant campaign of terror. Emilio Morenatti / AP
Ukrainians are fighting for us .. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/03/world/russia-ukraine , for the United States, for Europe, for you, for me. To say, as Zelensky did, that his countrymen are fighting for “democracy and freedom” is absolutely right but may be too abstract for many Americans to grasp.
If Putin can openly threaten nuclear war to scare off NATO from halting his aggression, then much of Europe is in danger. If this deranged killer can play dangerous games with cyberattacks and nuclear weapons, then the threat extends across the Atlantic to the United States.
“The Third World War has already started,” former Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, told me via a WhatsApp call this week. Only three weeks ago, I was meeting with her in her office at the Ukrainian parliament, whose members are now on Putin’s hit list. The Russian war criminal has already sent vicious Chechen hit teams into Ukraine to assassinate its leaders .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/02/zelensky-russia-ukraine-assassination-attempt-foiled/ .
“How many states must be destroyed before the West wakes up?” Klympush-Tsintsadze asked, her voice rising.
Klympush-Tsintsadze is convinced that the West still doesn’t understand the magnitude of the threat posed by Putin, who wants to redraw Europe’s boundaries by force and uses the methods of Adolf Hitler.
A Ukrainian volunteer carries camouflage nets at a distribution center in Lviv, western Ukraine, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Bernat Armangue / AP
“I think the whole international community is still several important steps behind Putin,” she told me. “Serious sanctions should have been applied before the war. And even with all the new sanctions and promises of more weapons, they are arriving very slowly because they have to travel by road,” since major airports have been knocked out.
But what disturbs this political activist most deeply is that her country lacks air defenses. Yes, the United States and Europe are now delivering thousands more shoulder-fired Stinger .. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/world/europe/nato-weapons-ukraine-russia.html .. antiaircraft missiles. However, Ukraine lacks a surface-to-air system that can defend against Russian missile bombardments meant to destroy cities and wipe out civilians.
“For us every minute means lives,” she said. “Right now we are begging for a no-fly zone.” This is a plea made repeatedly by Zelensky. It means that Western aircraft would patrol Ukrainian skies and prevent Russian planes from attack.
That, however, would mean direct confrontation with Russia, which the United States and NATO understandably want to avoid at this moment.
Yet, as Russia proceeds in its efforts to hurt Ukraine so badly that its government will resign, President Biden and the European allies are going to have to think unthinkable thoughts. They must strategize about how to deter a leader who thinks his nukes make him impervious to Western pushback against his aggression.
- “President Biden and the European allies are going to have to think unthinkable thoughts.” Trudy Rubin -
“How many drastic miscalculations has the West made underestimating Putin and trying not to provoke him?” Klympush-Tsintsadze demanded.
This is a question President Biden and European leaders must confront not tomorrow, but today.
That’s because this ugly, unprovoked war is only going to get grimmer, as Putin tries — literally — to destroy the Ukrainian army and government by pulverizing cities to make Ukraine surrender.
But Ukrainians won’t bend. I spoke with Oleksiy Goncharenko, a parliament member whom I also met in Kyiv a few weeks ago. He represents the people of the exquisitely beautiful Black Sea port of Odesa — which is next on Putin’s hit list, as Russian amphibious landing warships loom offshore. “Nobody knows how long we can hold out,” he told me this week. “We are fighting hard, but our resources are incomparable with Russia’s.” Goncharenko has signed up with a volunteer defense unit and has been patrolling the streets.
He urges the West to sanction Russia’s oil and gas sales, which hasn’t been done yet — and, of course, also asks for a no-fly zone.
The courage of Ukrainian leaders and ordinary citizens presents Biden and our European allies with an urgent dilemma that has not yet been fully faced.
The belated surge of defense weapons to Ukraine may be too little, and too late to prevent Putin from laying waste to much of the country. These war crimes will be committed in full view of the world. And the Ukrainians will keep resisting their would-be conquerors, no matter how many cities fall.
Furthermore, he and European leaders must contemplate out-of-the-box methods to fight back against Putin, within Ukraine, and to protect other non-NATO countries. (Biden’s warnings to Moscow about not touching NATO member countries was on point, but must be more strongly reinforced.)
Oil and gas sanctions, air and missile defense systems, covert activities, even a no-fly zone over western Ukraine must all be strongly considered to stop this war criminal — and to prevent him from inspiring other dictators from following his lead.
Western efforts will be aided by the ongoing sacrifices of Ukrainians, who won’t give up fighting the Russians no matter how many cities fall.
One of my most emotional WhatsApp talks this week was with my Kyiv translator Lena Stepanova, who has moved to her mother-in-law’s small town two hours outside Kyiv. Though the town has not yet been attacked, almost every citizen is working on the war effort. Lena has joined many women in tearing up fishing nets and fashioning them into camouflage nets for tanks.
Members of civil defense prepare Molotov cocktails in a yard in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. Efrem Lukatsky / AP
Others are making Molotov cocktails by pouring gasoline into beer bottles with wicks made from rags. Or using metal wires to make antitank weapons that can be strewn on the roads.
“We have so many volunteers, we don’t have work for all of them,” she said. Schoolchildren are running around looking to wipe out fluorescent markers apparently left by local Russian spies to mark possible bomb targets. There are more men than there are guns, so local territorial defense forces are trying to seek out the spies.
Will she keep fighting back even if the Russians arrive? “Of course,” Stepanova said. “This is our country. We have no choice.”
And Americans have no choice but to help the Ukrainian resistance — to deter Putin from further threatening the world. Published March 4, 2022
Trudy Rubin I write the Worldview column that tries to make sense of the world's chaos and conflicts as they affect Americans at home.
"The fighting is in Ukraine, but risk of World War III is real "What more could the west do about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?"
Don't forget, the US didn't get into WW11 until about 2 years after it started. And didn't declare war on Germany until after Germany declared war on the US first.
There’s a new idea for a Ukraine no-fly zone. It doesn’t work any better than the old one.
By Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp zack@vox.com Mar 10, 2022, 10:10am EST
Russian MiG-29 fighter planes during an air show near Moscow in 2020. Sergei Savostyanov/TASS/Getty Images
Since the beginning of Russia’s war on Ukraine, calls for a NATO-imposed no-fly zone over Ukraine have been hampered by one big problem: Enforcing a no-fly zone would necessarily entail shooting at Russian planes and carry a significant risk of leading to a nuclear exchange. This argument has carried the day in the White House, which has repeatedly ruled out a no-fly zone or any other direct intervention in the war.
But as the war grinds on and casualties pile up, calls for a no-fly zone have grown, including in some influential circles.
Over the weekend, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) signaled openness to the idea, as have other members of Congress. On Tuesday, Politico published an open letter calling for a “limited” no-fly zone over parts of Ukraine signed by 27 leading experts .. https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017f-6668-ddc5-a17f-f66d48630000&nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000015d-a357-df20-adff-b3ff37130000&nlid=630318 , including a former supreme allied commander of NATO and two former US ambassadors to the alliance. The basic idea would be to deploy NATO assets to prevent Russian jets and helicopters from flying over certain parts of Ukraine to allow for refugee evacuation and the provision of humanitarian aid.
Calls for a limited no-fly zone suffer from the same basic problem as a broader campaign: You can’t implement one without greatly heightening the risk of nuclear escalation.
“I can only see two reasons[for proposing this]: They have no idea what they’re talking about or they’re posturing,” says Robert Farley, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky who studies airpower.
Moreover, there is no kind of no-fly zone — limited or otherwise — that would address the humanitarian crisis motivating such calls. Russia’s primary method of bombarding civilian-populated areas in this war has been artillery, not aircraft — which means that a Western intervention focused on shooting down planes would either prove ineffective or else escalate to something even more dangerous.
But the calls for a no-fly zone keep coming anyway: relics from prior wars waged under unquestioned American supremacy, unburdened by the prospect of great-power war and nuclear escalation.
Limited no-fly zones, explained
Before I explain what a limited no-fly zone is, let me explain what it is not. This:
Contra Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich’s sources, this technology doesn’t exist. Or as Dartmouth professor Jason Lyall tweeted, “This is magic. You’re talking about magic.” (Former Air Force officer and Virginia Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman put it even more colorfully: “chucklehead madness .. https://twitter.com/RepRiggleman/status/1501058654312804356 .”)
So what exactly is a no-fly zone? No-fly zones are a commitment to patrol and, if necessary, shoot down military aircraft that fly in the declared area, generally for the purpose of protecting civilians.
In Ukraine, that would mean the US and its NATO allies sending in jets to patrol Ukraine’s skies — and being willing to shoot down any Russian planes that enter protected airspace. Since Russian planes are flying combat missions in Ukraine and show no signs of stopping, any no-fly zone puts us on a direct path to a shooting war between the world’s largest nuclear powers.
Limited no-fly zones are supposed to be a way around this problem. By only operating in certain areas of Ukraine, they in theory limit the risk that NATO would need to fire on Russian aircraft to enforce their mandate.
To this end, the authors of the open letter argue that the US and its allies should only commit to protecting “humanitarian corridors” — slices of Ukrainian territory that Moscow and Kyiv have designated as routes for civilian evacuation and aid provision. Such corridors were employed in the Syrian civil war but were frequently violated by Syria and its Russian allies; Ukraine has already accused Russian forces of attacking designated areas in the current conflict .. https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-accuses-russia-of-attacking-humanitarian-corridors-as-civilians-flee-cities/ .
The letter’s authors argue that a NATO commitment to protect those corridors would not lead to direct fighting with Russia, but would effectively deter the Russians from attacking them again: “What we seek is the deployment of American and NATO aircraft not in search of confrontation with Russia but to avert and deter Russian bombardment that would result in massive loss of Ukrainian lives.”
There are some dire problems with this logic.
First, it inflates the deterrent power of a no-fly zone. The assumption that Russia would be deterred from attacking these areas by a NATO presence flies in the face of past experience .. https://twitter.com/stcolumbia/status/1501270795108196361 . After NATO imposed a no-fly zone over Bosnia in 1993, its jets had to shoot down Bosnian Serb aircraft .. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-03-01-mn-28577-story.html .. that flew into the protected airspace. It is hard to imagine that President Putin’s Russia is significantly more afraid of confronting NATO than the vastly inferior Bosnian Serb forces.
Second, setting aside shootdowns of Russian planes, securing even a “limited” no-fly zone would likely require NATO to go on offense. As the Atlantic Council’s Damir Marusic points out .. https://wisdomofcrowds.live/the-ugly-truth-about-no-fly-zones/ , anti-aircraft batteries in Belarus and Russia have enough range to cover the entirety of Ukrainian airspace. Unless NATO pilots wanted to fly with the constant fear of being shot down, they would need to take those out. Attacking Russian territory, like shooting down their planes, is, of course, an act of war on Russia.
Third, a no-fly zone would in fact do relatively little to protect Ukrainian civilians. One of the more striking features of the Ukraine conflict to date has been the surprisingly limited role of Russia’s air force .. https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations , which has flown only questionably effective missions in Ukrainian airspace. Russia has still bombarded civilian-populated areas, but has primarily done so using artillery rather than airstrikes. A no-fly zone might not even solve the crisis of Ukrainian civilians being pummeled by the Russian military.
All of these factors cast doubt on the desirability of any no-fly zone, limited or not.
There is, in short, no such thing as a “limited” no-fly zone in Ukraine. Either NATO is using its forces to deny airspace to Russian jets, or it is not. And if the US and its allies engage in such a mission, the logic of the mission inevitably militates toward war with Russia — with all of the risks of nuclear escalation that entails.
Ukraine and the “unipolarity hangover”
So if even a limited no-fly zone is obviously dangerous, why are some leading experts and members of Congress entertaining it?
For one thing, there’s no denying that the situation in Ukraine is horrible. The suffering on the ground and the appeals for intervention from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who just desperately wants NATO to help protect his country from a Russian invasion — have struck a chord.
But part of a no-fly zone’s appeal in Washington is grounded in a particular post-Cold War instinct. One helpful way of thinking about this comes from Nick Miller, a professor at Dartmouth who studies nuclear weapons. Miller warns that some American foreign policy thinkers suffer from what he terms a “unipolarity hangover .. https://twitter.com/Nick_L_Miller/status/1499775813180399617 ,” defined as “a condition where the afflicted advocate policies feasible against weak adversaries but possibly suicidal against major power rivals.”
Americans, to extend the metaphor, became drunk on power after the fall of the Cold War, becoming convinced that it could and should intervene in faraway conflicts to protect civilians and enforce its vision of global order. This led to campaigns shaped by liberal interventionism and the war on terror .. https://www.vox.com/22639548/911-anniversary-war-on-terror-liberal-interventionism , such as the missions to stop mass killings in Kosovo and topple Saddam Hussein.
In the kind of wars that have preoccupied America for most of the post-Cold War period, policies like a no-fly zone made a certain kind of sense. Given the relatively rudimentary air forces and defense of America’s opponents, it was not difficult for the world’s leading airpower to seize control over the skies with few major risks. The question was not whether the United States could accomplish this goal, but whether it should.
When faced with a nuclear-armed major power, be it a rising China or even a militarily inferior Russia, the low-cost logic behind a no-fly zone doesn’t apply. American planes would have to contend with serious air defenses; regime change operations run a major risk of triggering nuclear annihilation.
With the “could” question largely foreclosed for these reasons, the “should” question no longer even comes into play. Yet Americans afflicted with a unipolarity hangover do not recognize this reality. They are still operating in a world of shoulds rather than coulds, one where the United States really can “do something” in the major conflicts of the day without risking unacceptable consequences.
This is not a question of morality versus interests, as foreign policy choices are so frequently framed. There is no coherent moral view in which it would be better to stop Russian planes from bombing Kyiv while significantly raising the risk of a nuclear war. Kyiv is, notably, located on planet Earth.
The poverty of the arguments for a no-fly zone in Ukraine, together with their continued prominence in public discourse, points to how many Americans still have unipolarity hangovers. Things would be better if they could sleep it off.
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