Day: March 16, 2022
Russians are weakening but Ukrainians need more help
President Putin today repeated the lie that he started the war in Ukraine to prevent a Nazi attack on Russia and Russians. Foreign Minister Lavrov was telling the internationals that negotiations might produce results. The Russian army is recruiting fighters from Syria and the appealing for military help from China. All these are signs of Russian weakness.
Putin has failed to convince the Russians
Most important is Putin’s continuing need to repeat his false justifications for war. Calling the Jewish President of Ukraine a Nazi is unconvincing to you and me. But Putin knows how much his citizens, with good historical reason, hate anyone labelled a Nazi. He has also tightened control over the Russian media. Many Russians may not know or believe Zelensky is not only Jewish but a native Russian speaker. Zelensky broke into Russian speaking to the US Congress today when appealing to Russia’s citizens to end the war.
Putin has failed to convince many Russians that the war is justified. The demonstrations against it have not been massive, but they are not tiny either. People who attend them risk serious penalties. The Russian “justice” system can impose penalties of up to 15 years just for calling the “special operation” a war.
Lavrov has failed to convince the international community
Lavrov is telling the internationals a compromise on Russian terms is possible. This is the same liar who denied Russia had any plans to invade Ukraine. He has even said that it has not done so. He is not at all credible. Russian demands have remained the same. Moscow wants a demilitarized and neutral Ukraine that can never join NATO as well as slices of Ukrainian territory. These the Russians want to include not only Crimea and the parts of Donbas their proxies already controlled before the invasion. None of those propositions is reasonable from the Ukrainian perspective.
Zelensky has admitted Ukraine will not be able to join NATO anytime soon, which is a statement of fact. Saying it out loud was presumably intended as a gesture to the Russians. They however don’t seem interested in anything less than a permanent legal guarantee. That proposition is a non-starter with Washington and most of Europe.
The Russian army is bogged down
The intended Russian blitzkrieg in Ukraine has bogged down. Logistical problems, poor planning, and lack of will to fight have reduced the Russian army to a siege force. It is shelling civilian areas, including so-called “humitarian corridors” it agreed would be safe. The Russian air force has failed to establish full dominance in the sky but continues to rain cruise missiles, smart bombs, and dumb ones.
Zelensky’s priority in his speech to Congress today was air defense. He admitted the no-fly zone he wants isn’t going to happen. But he appealed for fighter aircraft and air defenses instead. I suspect he’ll get what he is asking for, despite Pentagon resistance. The Poles and others seem ready and willing to transfer the stuff. It will put them at risk of Russian attack. President Biden will have to decide whether that risk is so great he wants to risk a Russian win in Ukraine.
The Russian appeals to Syrian fighters and Chinese military supplies are a clear sign that things are going badly on the ground in Ukraine. The Syrian fighters they can get for a song. They may not be worth much more. The Chinese military supplies are higher value. The US is opposing them vigorously. Ditto with Chinese help in evading sanctions, which may be more important. Russia today will likely default on dollar-denominated bonds. You only do that if you don’t have the hard currency required. Even if Moscow pays at the end of the 30-day grace period, creditors will be reluctant to risk a dime more on Russian official debt.
That doesn’t mean things are good for Ukraine
Russia’s problems don’t mean things are going well for Ukraine. The bombardment of its cities is taking a huge toll on property and lives. It would only take a lucky shot to kill Zelensky. The Russians are laying waste to the Ukrainian countryside. They are bogged down but inching closer to Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa with every passing day. Kherson is in Russian hands. They are pulverrizing Mariupol.
But Ukrainians have demonstrated they are willing to fight. They may be losing ground, but they are not weakening. The Russians are weakening, but they started out much stronger. The best that can be said for this war is that the outcome is not yet certain. The Ukrainians will need more help.
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Stevenson’s army, March 16
– Pew shows US support for Ukraine.
– NYT reports burst of centrism in Congress.
– Biden signs bill with more aid.
– WSJ reports more aid planned.
– NYT says US military wants more operations in Kenya.
Just in time for our intelligence topic in class, an old but still relevant report on how Congress handles classified information.
Yesterday Charlie also distributed this:
Prof. Cohen has a new piece in Atlantic that criticizes US policy and comments on Ukraine.The most important paragraphs are these:
The American fear of escalation has been a repeated note throughout this conflict. But to the extent American leaders express that sentiment, or spread such notions to receptive reporters, they make matters worse, giving the Russians a psychological edge. The Russians can (and do) threaten to ratchet things up, knowing that the West will respond with increased anxiety rather than reciprocal menace. We have yet to see, for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin telling the world what a wretched hand the Russians are playing militarily, and how superior ours is—a message he is particularly fit to deliver.
As for the nuclear question: We should not signal to the Russians that they have a trump card they can always play to stop us from doing pretty much anything. Nuclear weapons are why the United States should refrain from attacking Russia directly, not why it should fear fighting Russians in a country they invaded. Only a few years ago, the United States Air Force killed Russian Wagner mercenaries by the hundreds in Syria; American and Russian pilots tangled in the skies over Korea and possibly Vietnam. Nuclear deterrence cuts both ways, and the Russian leadership knows it. Vladimir Putin and those around him are ill-informed but not mad, and the use of nuclear weapons would threaten their very survival.
I disagree. Maybe we make the Russians feel better if we say we won’t fight a nuclear war with them, but we shouldn’t ever fight such a war. The entire world will be a more dangerous place if anyone ever uses another nuclear weapon in anger. So we should say it because it’s true and it’s right. And while our policy is sympathetic but not locked in to no first use, Russian policy is openly “escalate to deescalate.”
Eliot Cohen thinks the Russians won’t mind if we kill their people outside Russia’s borders. We would and we do. But we have tolerated sanctuaries, as painful and frustrating as they are, for geostrategic reasons. We didn’t want Russians or Chinese to fight us in Vietnam, or a nuclear-armed Pakistan to retaliate against attacks on the Taliban and its allies there.
Does this mean that we are telling the Russians that they have a trump card they can always play to stop us from doing pretty much anything? Not at all. We are telling them that we will NOT do pretty much anything to prevent their conquest of Ukraine. We will do many things, including providing weapons that Ukrainians will deploy in their own country to fight the Russians. But we will consciously limit our direct involvement because that is in our interests.
Nuclear weapons force all combatants to be especially careful. We should not be killing Russians anywhere in a deliberate and sustained policy. We have important security and humanitarian interests in Ukraine, but no vital national interest.Yes, Nuclear deterrence cuts both ways. It should deter both of us from climbing the escalation ladder for less than existential reasons.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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A bad 1995 idea that is worse now
An invitation to meet with Croatian officials this week has prompted me to think once more about the Bosnian Croats. I dealt extensively with them between November 1994 and June 1996 as the State Department Special Envory for the Bosnian Federation. The Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims in American usage, but many prefer Bosniaks because it lacks religious connotation) had made their peace by then. My role was to help them implement its provisions for creating a joint Federation. In parallel, the Croat Defense Council (HVO) and the Bosnian Army (ABiH) were fighting the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), supported by Serbia. That continued until November 1995, when the war ended with the Dayton accords.
The Bosnian Croats were uninterested in a “third entity”
The Bosnian Croats were a force to be reckoned with in 1995. The Croatian Army, fresh from victories earlier in 1995, backed the HVO to the hilt. That was a major factor in the successful HVO/ABiH summer offensive against the VRS inside Bosnia. Croatia controlled the Adriatic coast, through which arms shipments to the Bosnian Army had to pass (in violation of a UN arms embargo). So when we got to Dayton, the Bosnian Croats were in excellent negotiating position.
Dick Holbrooke did not make it easy. He refused to meet at Dayton with Kresimir Zubak, the President of the Federation. But still the Bosnian Croats got an excellent deal. Zubak asked for and got a tripartite presidency (Croat/Serb/Bosniak) despite the relatively small percentage of Croats in Bosnia even before the war. They were 17.38% in the then most recent (1991) census. They are now fewer: 15.43% in 2013.
Dayton gave them one-third of what the Bosnians call “the state” in addition to their half of the Federation, which became 51% of the territory. They also held, like the Bosniaks and Serbs, various constitutionally established vetoes. A Bosnian Croat became Foreign Minister in the state government. There were lots of other goodies along the way. No wonder no Bosnian Croat at that time asked for what is now known as “the third entity,” that is a Croat sub-state like Republika Srpska.
Now things are different
That has changed. Despite favorable election rules and constitutional provisions, the ethnic nationalist Croats have not been adept. The country has even dared elect an anti-nationalist Croat to the presidency, thrice. So the Croat nationalist leader, Dragan Covic, has conducted a major campaign to change the rules in his own favor. This despite several court decisions to the contrary.
Covic does this in collaboration with Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik. Russian President Putin encourages them, both because he is an ethnic nationalist like them and because it causes the US and EU heartburn. Covic gets a lot of face time with weak-kneed Western diplomats desperately seeking to make progress on electoral reform.
That effort has failed, but the Croat/Serb campaign continues. Both leaderships feel threatened. They fear a civic Bosnia. Each person would then have one vote. Ethnic nationalist institutions and vetoes would be reduced or eliminated. Dodik and Covic denounce this option as leading to an Islamic state. Bosnia now has a slight Bosniak (Muslim in their terms) numerical majority.
No one should be fooled
The real threat is different. Strengthening ethnic division in Bosnia, which is what the nationalist Croats and Serbs advocate, would lead to the formation of an Islamic state. The third entity implies two others, one of which would necessarily be Muslim. It would be land-locked and barely viable. Most Bosniaks don’t want that. They are too fractious to achieve it anyway. Only Croat success in getting a third entity could make it happen.
Franjo Tudjman, the war-time father of independent Croatia, understood this. He was no liberal democrat. He collaborated despite his ethnic nationalist politics with formation of the Federation and its role in post-war Bosnia. The reason: preventing the emergence of three entities. Somehow Zagreb has forgotten that an Islamic state next door would not necessarily be a good neighbor. Too many Americans and Europeans have forgotten it too. So I hear lots of third entity talk, either explicit or implicit, especially from Croatians as well as Bosnian Croats.
It was a bad idea in 1995. We in the State Department worried then that it would become a platform for Iranian-supported terrorism in Europe, because Tehran was providing ample support to the Bosnian Army. Sunni Islamists didn’t teach us about terrorism in the US until 2001. A democratic Bosnia has no need of ethnically defined sub-national entitites. If a third entity was a bad idea in 1995, it is a worse idea now, including for Croatians and Bosnian Croats.
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