It is still too early to be sure what the Ukrainian war has in store, but it seems obvious that the Ukrainian military is putting up a bigger fight than Russia expected. We hope this latest episode of Russian adventurism is the result of careful strategic planning by Vladimir Putin and not paranoia or egomania. The downside of the latter cannot even begin to compare to the downside of the former. Nothing could be worse for the world than a mentally unstable dictator in Russia.
As time goes by, the downside for Russia is becoming apparent: Becoming a pariah state, destruction of its economy through sanctions and getting bogged down in a never-ending guerilla war that could make Afghanistan look like a picnic. And even if Russia should prevail, the cost of rebuilding Ukraine’s destroyed cities will be a huge financial burden. Even if Russia wins the war, it loses in the long run. It’s economy and reputation will suffer for decades.
It appears that for Russia to win will require massive civilian deaths and gruesome repression of dissent. This will fuel Ukrainian hatred for Russia for centuries to come and will prevent these two cultures, however similar, from ever reconciling. The English and the Scots shared a common language, but English aggression kept the two-cousin cultures from reconciling for more than a thousand years.
We hope this invasion has proven to be a wake-up call to Germany, which has failed to maintain a proper defense budget while becoming dependent on Russian gas. Global warming looks pretty minor when you are being invaded by a fascist dictator. So too the United States. Time to finish the Keystone pipeline.
The United States is right not to openly engage Russia in Ukraine. Instead, this calls for covert operations, the nature of which occurred for decades between the United States and Russia during the Cold War. The Cold War is back, and so, too, should be covert operations in Ukraine. In fact, the U. S. has been training Ukrainians at an undisclosed military base in the South ever since the Crimean invasion in 2014. It looks like we did a good job.
This war is not going down like the classic Soviet invasions of yesteryear, when the tanks rolled and the people cowed. Almost half of all Ukrainians have never known anything other than Western-style freedom. They aren’t going to live like sheep. They are furious, motivated and smart. With advanced digital weaponry pouring in from all over the world, this will be the guerilla war of all guerilla wars, no matter how many cities Russia says it occupies. The Russian soldiers will never be able to sleep in Ukraine.
Once again we see the huge downside of allowing a dictator to gain too much control over a nation. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The U.S. government and NATO have also done well by making it absolutely clear that they will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full might of NATO’s power. Any Russian invasion of a NATO country will make it clear that Putin has become unhinged. At that point, we would have no alternative than to defend and let the chips fall where they may. Let’s hope our Star Wars shield works, Russian missiles are as incompetent as its military and that our Lord is merciful.
