I’m not officially back to this blogging business until tomorrow, but the news that America has agreed to allow Russia to annex Ukraine in return for Russian cooperation over the Iran nuclear talks is too big to ignore:
It goes like this. Vladimir Putin’s Russia makes nice over an Iran nuclear deal. It is helpful in every way. A recent headline on a piece by my colleague David Sanger read, “Role for Russia Gives Iran Talks a Possible Boost.” In return, the United States turns a blind eye to the big Russian military build-up on the Ukrainian border and in areas under the control of Moscow-backed rebel separatists.
I am not suggesting there is any such formal Iran-Ukraine trade-off between the Obama administration and Putin. I am suggesting that the Russian leader has a keen eye for American weakness and an exquisite sense of timing. The abrupt flaring of new fighting in eastern Ukraine, and the abrupt Russian readiness to help on Iran ahead of the Nov. 24 deadline for nuclear talks, are not a mere coincidence. They are part of a Russian strategy and, for now, the United States is playing along.
Well, OK, you got me. It’s not “news” so much as it’s Roger Cohen’s theory. But it makes sense, because there’s no way that America wouldn’t rush headlong into World War III over the hypothesis that Vladimir Putin wants to annex all of Ukraine unless we were getting something in return for our acquiescence, right? I mean, sure, it’s been clear that we weren’t prepared to get militarily involved in Ukraine from the minute Euromaidan started, but now there must be a new reason for the continuation of that policy, I guess?
(I’m digressing here, but can anybody explain to me why, apart from the armchair psychiatrist “he wants to rebuild the Russian Empire” theory (which may be accurate but is purely speculative at this point), Putin would want to annex all of Ukraine? He’s already got the prime beachfront property, and he might have designs on the heavy industrial areas, but annexing the rest of the country just gets him millions of very angry Ukrainians, including a bunch of neo-Nazis, an economy that is actually in worse shape than his own, and another hopelessly dysfunctional political elite to go with the one he’s already got. What’s the appeal?)
Anyway, my favorite part of columns like this is how they implicitly bemoan American weakness in not standing up to Russia without ever attempting to explain what “standing up to Russia” would actually look like, apart from the economic pressure that’s already being applied. Cohen’s effort in this regard is lazy even within this genre:
In response to Putin’s hammer, the West has expressed concern. The United States National Security Council spokeswoman has said, “We are very concerned.” The European Union has called the reports of convoys of heavy weapons “very worrying.” Concern and worry do not stop a hammer. Poroshenko’s requests to Obama for substantial American military assistance should not have been rejected.
Oh my, of course! What was I thinking? We should supply large quantities of advanced heavy weaponry to an incompetent and/or corrupt political establishment whose military hasn’t distinguished itself in low-level fighting against rebel militias, to say nothing of a full-scale invasion by a major military power. Because that’s the kind of smart policy that works every time we try it.
Assuming the records survive, future historians are going to have a heck of a time explaining “punditry” as it existed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. And the thing is, among the cadre of pundits who should have lost their jobs over the Iraq War, Cohen is actually one of the better ones.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 