The first time I have seen a coherent discussion of this administration and what it needs as a strategy.
Well worth the reading of the article.
Continued……………
Toward More Robust Engagement?
Struggling to contain IS and curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not to mention follow through on its commitment to reorient U.S. global strategy to the Asia Pacific, the Obama administration has been slow to recognize the seriousness of the Russian revisionist challenge currently playing out in Ukraine. That is, Russia’s actions aim not just at carving up Ukraine, but at upending the post-1991 settlement in Europe, while checking the expansion of European norms, values, and institutions.
What happens in Ukraine has a larger significance for the United States than the administration likes to acknowledge, because at the end of the day, Russian intervention is less about Ukraine per se than about establishing new parameters for relations between Russia and the West. Moscow is unhappy with what it perceives to be its exclusion from Europe’s post–Cold War security system and is at once seeking to prevent the expansion of that system closer to its borders (through intervention in Ukraine) and to weaken it from within (through a range of financial, energy, media, and other tools deployed within the European Union). Underlying this entire offensive is a growing conviction among the Russian elite that Russia, along with the rest of the former Soviet world, is inherently incompatible with the liberal democratic West and that these two cultural-civilizational blocs are locked in a long-term struggle for influence across Europe and Eurasia.
Though Ukraine is not a NATO member and the United States has no explicit obligation to protect it from its larger neighbor, Washington’s hopes for both a secure Europe and a productive relationship with Russia turn on what happens in and around Ukraine. If Russia succeeds in keeping Ukraine weak and the West divided, its revisionist ambitions are likely to expand. Conversely, frustrating Russian ambitions in Ukraine is the first step toward reengaging Moscow from a position of strength, which is critical to establishing a new equilibrium in Europe. Given the stakes, Washington has a clear interest in finding a settlement in Ukraine that not only ends the fighting, but that also reinforces the secure, liberal Europe that has been a touchstone of U.S. global engagement since the end of the Cold War.
Given the scope of Russian ambitions, not to mention Moscow’s success in compromising elements of the European political and economic establishment, no effective strategy for countering Russia’s revisionist ambitions is conceivable without much more robust U.S. engagement. Washington is the only actor capable of getting the West to speak with one voice and the only one with the realistic ability to offer a hard power response to Russian military activities.
While administration officials recognize the scope of Russian actions, the need for at least limited cooperation at a time when the United States is wary of renewed overstretch has made Washington cautious about confronting Moscow directly. Outside pressure, including from Congress, as well as growing frustration with Russian intransigence is pushing the White House in a more assertive direction, even as it remains wedded to the Minsk-II agreement—of which it is not even a signatory—as the basis for a lasting solution.
Continued…………
From Kyiv to Moscow, via Washington
At least in Europe, Russia has become a revisionist power. To the extent that the United States and its allies value the post–Cold War settlement, with its embrace of liberal values and the vision of a Europe whole and free, they need to prioritize the defeat of Moscow’s revisionist aims much more so than they have done so far, starting in Ukraine. The United States in particular needs to view itself as a central player in the drama. A more prominent U.S. role would go some way toward meeting Moscow’s demand for recognition as a great power, since it is only the United States that, as a great power itself, can confer that recognition by sitting at the table to discuss a resolution to the crisis. At the same time, the United States has a far larger arsenal of tools available, not to mention the capacity to escalate the economic, political, and even (indirectly) military pressure on Moscow in a way that the Europeans are unlikely to do.
Under its least Euro-centric administration in a century, Washington has been slow to appreciate the significance of what is happening on Europe’s doorstep. In Ukraine specifically, Washington can do more through both energetic diplomacy and additional pressure (military and nonmilitary) against Russia, buying the Europeans time to address the other aspects of the Russian challenge.
Rebuffing Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine is the first, and most important, step in renewing the U.S. commitment to a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace. It is not a task that Washington can afford to offload onto the Europeans.
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