The U.S. and Ukraine: The long game wins

The events of the last few weeks in Ukraine have proven ugly for the Russian Federation and the venomous half-wit that runs the place.

The Russian army has been stymied at every turn and are now in retreat across both fronts. Mr. Putin has instituted a draft, the result of which is the flight over the border of better than a quarter of a million young men. The money is drying up, and so too are their options. In recent weeks, they have been reduced to terrorism, that favorite last-ditch tool of autocrats - shooting missiles at playgrounds and other civilian targets.

But Ukraine seems to have hit the leadership jackpot with Volodymyr Zenlenskyy. When the Russians surged over the border, Zelenskyy refused to be cowed. With the nation at his back, dressed in a flak jacket and headed to survey the front, he turned down an offer to get out while he could and demanded bullets instead.

The US and the democracies of Europe have long memories of Russian territorial ambitions. The cold war is not long gone and the enemy is much the same. Our strategy is one that directly recalls what George Frost Kennan’s “long telegram” advocated: Russian aggression must be met by containment and the threat would die by degrees. This became the guiding force for American policy for 50 years. Political Science research has demonstrated many times that democratic systems are slow to go to war and democratic systems must have the people behind them to make war. Tyrannies do not.

Russia is a tyranny.

In a recent interview with CNN, President Biden characterized Mr. Putin as a “rational actor” who “miscalculated.” But this is only half true. He is rational only within the cramped confines of a dictator working for a criminal oligarchy who controls the real levers of power. This belies “miscalculation.” Mn Mr. Putin’s little world there was no room to say “no.”

The malignant circle of ravenous sharks that first coopted Mr. Putin to front their mafia-style operation are growing more impatient and restive every day. Cabals like that one need to be fed, constantly - like the killer fish, if they are not moving forward constantly, they are starved of oxygen and slowly suffocate in their own evil toxins.

The confrontation taking place in Ukraine is momentous. It is democracies waging a conflict with dictatorship. And it is important. Russian behavior over the last 100 years has taught us that they would not stop with the Ukraine.

When this showdown started, it looked very much like a vastly mismatched battle between a small, under-supported state and an iron-willed Godzilla. But increasingly, with massive western support, the Ukraine war now looks like an economic, ideological and military struggle between the western democracies and a failing, collapsing dictatorship that closely resembles, in most important ways, its precursor the USSR. We beat them too, but we have to hang on.

As the Russians and their oil-producing allies tighten the net, Europe’s gas prices are going to go up. Heating fuel will be scarce this winter and the price of nearly everything else will rise. There will be a ripple effect and we will not escape it. Higher prices in Europe may mean austerity measures, which means less of a market for our own goods with economic repercussions here.

As Kennan advised in 1946, “[g]auged against Western World as a whole, [the Russians] are still by far the weaker force. Thus, their success will really depend on degree of cohesion, firmness and vigor which the Western World can muster. And this is the factor which it is within our power to influence.”

In Ukraine, the U.S. has to play the long game. Like a mugging, the short game is for the quick and fleeting successes of despots.

Democracies play for keeps.

R. Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics at Florida Southern College and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: The U.S. and Ukraine: The long game wins