Can an Exhausted America Confront Russia?

Atlantic Magazine recently wrote about Vladamir Putin, “He is threatening to invade Ukraine because he wants democracy to fail.” This opinion has been shared by a remarkable array of experts.

The idea that Putin is afraid of Ukrainian democracy is absurd. Regretfully, Ukraine has been a tragic setback for America’s democratic aspirations in the region.

Since Ukraine got its independence, the Ukrainian people have not shared American commitments to democracy. Indeed, they found it difficult to elect leaders who recognize the importance of democracy other than as a means to achieve their personal enrichment.

The defining characteristics of Ukraine are chaos, uncertainty, instability and theft of the state treasury and natural resources. It is a failed state rotten with incompetence and endemic corruption.

If Ukraine is supposed to serve as an exemplar of Western democracy, Putin should preserve Ukraine as visual material and ‘jealously guard” it.  

It is not about democracy or Ukraine; Ukraine is an American pawn and isn’t even at the table.

Could it be about NATO? Moscow has warned for a long time that the eastward expansion of NATO threatens Russia’s security.

NATO should anticipate that it would eventually lead to confrontation with Russia. But when it came, NATO was unprepared for it.

Prosperous members of NATO have devoted their resources to the welfare state and neglected military capabilities. Disarmed and dependent on Russia for energy and natural resources, they could not pose a geopolitical threat to anybody.

Instead, they have delegated their defense to the United States.

If it is not about NATO, then it must be the continuation of the United States’ “the Thirty Years War.” In 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright outlined the U.S. policies: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future."

Since 1991 the United States vision of the future included wars in Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and now the U.S. policies are instigating the war in Ukraine.

The arrogance of “seeing further than other countries” brought America into a period of its “Time of Troubles.” Overextended and overcommitted, it is now a debt nation that unravels from inside. Its values and historical heritage are under assault and crumbling.

The national consensus bricked down, the polarization of society is at the levels not seen since the Civil War.

Drug cartels control American borders. The country is no longer energy independent. The government is woefully incompetent, and the president is ineffective.

Unable to deal with domestic problems, the administration seeks turmoil abroad to divert attention from the host of failures before the mid-term elections.

At the opposite end is Russia. Putin sees an opening to exploit America’s vulnerabilities and improve Russia’s geopolitical position. If Putin wanted to lay low American pride, he could not choose a better time.

So it is about Russia, after all. Despite a vulnerable economy and geopolitical insolation, Russia has transformed itself from a cause into a state capable of being influenced by calculations of risks and rewards.

Putin put up the “greatest” military show on Earth in a stunning display of history reversal. It aimed to show America that with a defense budget of less than 10% of the American, Russia has built a modern army and achieved near parity in the land-based conventional forces.

Moreover, he sends a strong message that Russia is re-emerging as a great power to be reckoned with.

Exhausted during 30 years of wars, America has no capabilities and no will to confront Russia effectively. Indeed, all that America has to offer are the threats of economic sanctions.

That can only embolden Putin, who learned in KGB that “threats are a weapon of weak against weaklings.”

It is becoming exceedingly apparent that America is no longer a supranational sovereign that can impose order. Undeniably, the balance of power in Europe has been recalibrated as a fact.

If we are to keep peace in Europe, it will soon become necessary to recalibrate it as a system. A new European order, similar to the Treaty of Westphalia is to be developed without feckless NATO and belligerent and arrogant the United States.

The new European order should be based on Wilsonian principles of self-determination for the nations of Europe. The principle should apply to the people of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine just as they were applied to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Scotland, the Falkland Islands and Cyprus.

As far as America is concerned, when Demosthenes asked what was to be done about the decline of Athens, he replied, “I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer — don’t do what you are doing now.”