At this point in the Ukraine crisis, it doesn’t matter if Vladimir Putin lets slip the dogs of war and invades. He’s already accomplished two important objectives. He has illuminated NATO’s disunion and the extent of America’s weakness and division.
Indeed, NATO has been among the walking dead for three decades. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the reason for NATO’s existence vanished.
There was involvement in Kosovo, the Balkans, Bosnia, and Herzegovina. NATO’s involvement in Kuwait was extremely limited, and there was a competition to guard the airport in Kabul during the war in Afghanistan, but otherwise, NATO has been an empty shell.
But America’s internationalists put a great deal of stock in NATO’s survival, so it’s been hanging around pretending to be relevant for 30 years.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Europeans are far more concerned about their supplies of gas than they are the fate of Ukraine. Putin knows this. He engineered it long ago. And now, that policy is bearing fruit.
The chink in NATO’s attempt to present Putin with a unified response is the new government of Germany, which gets 40% of its natural gas from Russia.
“Russia has been able to divide the alliance in Europe based on German dependence on Russia’s supply of natural gas,” writes Bill Schneider, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “Germany’s decision to eliminate nuclear energy from its energy mix and increase its investment in renewable energy has proven to be an unwise choice.” If Germany is persuaded to keep the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from opening to punish Russia, its own citizens could face much higher heating bills over the winter.
“These realities of Germany’s energy policy may account for the new governing coalition to retreat so rapidly from developing and sustaining an alliance response to Russia’s efforts to create a sphere of influence over the independent states of the former Soviet Union as well as the former Warsaw Pact States,” Schneider writes.
Germany’s new woke coalition of socialists and greens is of no mind to sacrifice the people’s comfort for Ukraine or U.S. interests when it comes down to it. And there are real-world consequences to pay for that position.
Germany’s evident hesitation to take forceful measures has fueled doubts about its reliability as an ally — reversing the dynamic with the United States in recent years — and added to concerns that Moscow could use German wavering as a wedge to divide a united European response to any Russian aggression.
President Biden held a video call with European leaders on Monday night, saying it went “very, very, very” well, and beforehand Chancellor Scholz reiterated that Russia would suffer “high costs” in case of a military intervention. But Germany’s allies have still been left to wonder what cost it is prepared to bear to confront possible Russian aggression.
For his part, Putin will keep pushing and probing, looking for further weakness in the coalition. And given the weakness in the White House, Putin is probably prepared to push a little harder than he would if a stronger president were in office.
In fact, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows 62% of Republicans believe that Vladimir Putin is a stronger leader than Joe Biden.
“Shame on them,” John Sipher, who worked in Moscow and ran Russia operations during his three decades in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast Tuesday when asked about the results. “Vladimir Putin hates the United States. He wants to do everything he can to weaken the United States around the world. He’s attacked our troops in Afghanistan. He’s undercut every foreign policy issue, [including] foreign policy issues that Republicans have supported for years around the world. He’s assassinating people around the world.”
“That’s incredibly, incredibly myopic, political, silly kind of thinking,” Sipher added.
Sipher is absolutely correct. But he didn’t offer one scintilla of evidence that Biden is a stronger leader, did he?
Vladimir Putin is a dangerous narcissist, a power-mad dictator, a bitterly resentful nationalist who hates the United States and will do everything short of nuclear war to destroy us. At the same time, the United States has a president who wakes up every morning looking for ways to accommodate him.
Putin has already won in Ukraine. Where his next challenge will come is anyone’s guess.
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