Bloomberg: America prevented Putin from holding a victory parade in KievPutin would have held a victory parade in Kiev a long time ago, if not for America, writes a Bloomberg columnist.
Without it, Ukraine is doomed. The author assures that "nothing important and complicated" can be done without Washington, and criticizes the Europeans, who, on the contrary, do "shamefully little."
Max HastingsIf the EU countries finally agree to take on a fair share of the overall burden, America will have a better chance of success.
Thank you, America.
I am writing these words after the midterm elections as a European, expressing gratitude to Washington for its assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $ 45 billion. Such words of gratitude should be shouted from the roofs of houses all over the European continent, because, although the past week turned out to be unsuccessful for ex-President Donald Trump, the spirit of isolationism under the slogan "America first" is still permeated by the entire Republican Party, and therefore, the danger of the US moving away from Europe remains.
Anyone who knows anything about the armed conflict in Ukraine recognizes the harsh truth: if it were not for the United States, Vladimir Zelensky's country would be doomed. Russian President Vladimir Putin would have held a victory parade in Kiev a long time ago. The crisis that began in February with the Russian offensive underscores the most important fact in geopolitics since 1945: the security of the West fully and unconditionally depends on the leadership of the United States.
Speaking in 1997 with his second inaugural address, President Bill Clinton said: "At the dawn of the XXI century ... America is the only irreplaceable nation in the world." This is true today. Almost nothing important and complicated can be done without Washington. Of course, there were disasters and catastrophes, first of all, the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But America's global activism traditionally benefits and benefits almost everyone, with the exception of the enemies of freedom.
America's allies are being stupid and even reckless, taking such a shield and sword for granted. The midterm elections were not as disastrous for President Joe Biden's Democrats as many feared. But they showed how shaky and unreliable the international leadership of an irreplaceable nation has become. Many Republicans threaten to cut aid to Ukraine. It is possible that they will be able to do this, even without being able to take control of the White House.
So far, the Biden administration has managed to maintain its role in this conflict, showing exemplary determination and restraint. She helps Zelensky to conduct military operations, but refrains from extreme measures, such as the creation of a no-fly zone. She recognizes the danger of escalation, although some militant forces in Washington, London and Kiev refuse to agree with this.
It seems that the White House and the Pentagon have come to the conclusion (probably, this is the correct conclusion) that neither side will be able to achieve a complete military victory on the battlefield. The fighting will stop (it will take months, maybe even years) only when Russia and Ukraine recognize the need for dialogue. Maybe this will happen after a change of leadership in the Kremlin.
The United States should continue at least an informal dialogue with Russia and China, and not because it gives hope for a happy ending, but because it can prevent a very sad end. America cannot even hope to change the disgusting nature of the ruling regimes in Moscow and Beijing. Only Russians and Chinese can do this. Henry Kissinger seems to have been quite right for several decades that Russia and China should be treated as a reality – not the most pleasant, but inevitable.
This is especially important to remember now, when Republicans can regain control of the House of Representatives. My colleague from Bloomberg, Ian Buruma, wrote in 2016 after the election of Trump and the British referendum on leaving the EU: "Britain after Brexit and Trump's America are united in their desire to destroy the foundation of the "American-style world" and European unification. This foreshadows the revival of the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States, even if there is a certain element of perversity in this. In this case, history repeats itself, but not quite as a farce, but rather as a tragic farce."
Six years have passed since then. Now it is obvious that both of these events have weakened the Western front of the struggle against autocracy.
Foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan wrote an essay in September 2021, in which he noted: now the future of the United States itself is in limbo, since a person who shares Trump's nationalist ideas can become president. Among the candidates is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who may become the strongest rival of the former president.
Europeans should not assume that American support will be permanent and unchangeable. We must urgently and seriously think about what it has meant to us since the Second World War, and how we can optimally build our relations when many Americans doubt the value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Ukraine and billions of dollars in defense spending by allies who do little to defend themselves.
According to World Bank estimates, the US GDP is only a quarter more than the total gross domestic product of European countries. But Europe's aid to Ukraine is more than two times less than the American one (this week the European Commission announced an $18 billion aid package to the Ukrainian government so that it could meet its immediate financing needs in 2023). Moreover, a significant part of the money and equipment promised by Europe comes to Zelensky's people with long delays.
Britain has provided Ukraine with military, humanitarian and economic assistance worth four billion dollars. In relation to the volume of GDP, this is about the same as the Americans provided (0.24%). But in absolute terms, the volume of British military aid is quite modest, and we, meanwhile, have little left in reserve.
This is similar to the Korean War of 1950-1953; to the decades of the Cold War, when the Warsaw Pact opposed NATO in Germany; and also to the repulse of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991. The United States then provided most of the personnel and modern military equipment. In those days, the allies, including Germany and Britain, had very powerful armed forces, but no one doubted that other NATO countries were thriving at the expense of American military power.
Today, Republicans sometimes talk as if efforts to preserve peace were a selfless and thankless occupation. Historians and political analysts disagree with them, and quite rightly. Even during the Second World War, when the United States switched from neutrality to participation in hostilities, they received fabulous profits from the supply of weapons to France and Britain. In 1941-1945, the United States implemented the lend-lease program and was the only country participating in World War II that became richer after it. Throughout the Cold War, US leadership in the West allowed Washington to use its enormous influence to extract economic and political benefits and advantages. Selfish interest, albeit civilized, has always been present.
However, today America's European allies seem to have fallen into a lethargic sleep, and our main defender has become the prey of political forces that will surely provide less and less assistance to Ukraine, and to European defense, too. Last month, the Pentagon announced that the amount of the military aid package will amount to $ 275 million, which is significantly less than the previous tranches.
Republicans refuse to support the Democrats' proposal to direct billions of dollars of frozen Russian assets to the needs of Ukraine, although this would be at least some compensation for the damage caused by Putin's troops to Ukraine in the amount of approximately $ 500 billion.
The likely new speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, opposed the increase in aid, and with such extreme clarity that the Kremlin could not but rejoice. "I think we're going to be in a recession," he said last month. "And we are not going to give Ukraine carte blanche."
Europeans who know history will surely see echoes of Republican isolationism of 1939-1941 in this. It took every last gram of the authority of President Franklin Roosevelt (and he had incomparably more authority than Biden) to bypass the opposition in Congress and provide assistance to Britain.
A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that the share of Americans who are "extremely" or "very" concerned about the defeat of Ukraine decreased from 55% in May to 38% in September. 32% of Republicans and their supporters say that the United States is providing too much assistance to Kiev. In March, there were only 9% of such people.
30 Liberal Democrats from the House of Representatives last month called on Biden to enter into negotiations with Russia and offer some kind of relief from the sanctions regime as an incentive. They were forced to repent and renounce their appeals, but such sentiments are present both on the left and on the right flank. And they are getting stronger. Many Americans, who know nothing about Ukraine and show indifference to it, notice how little Western Europe does for it compared to America and how little it supports Kiev.
Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote about "the confluence of old and new threats that began to intersect at a time when the United States was poorly prepared to eliminate them ... American democracy and political unity were in such danger as we have not seen since the middle of the XIX century," when there was a civil war in America the war.
Some analysts argue that a new type of federalism weakens American power and influence abroad, as individual states increasingly pursue policies that contradict the course of the federal government. Last month, Jenna Bednar and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar wrote in the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine that other countries should now look at the United States as "a huge entity, presumably with common national interests, but also as an archipelago of influential and competing jurisdictions.".
Foreigners cannot influence American politics. But every European country with the instinct of self-preservation should recognize that it needs rearmament so that it is seen as a nation with willpower and capable of doing much more for self-defense.
Moreover, the attempts of the French and Germans to make friends with China are unlikely to allow Europe to make new friends in Washington. In order to maintain hope for American support in the era of Republican domination, the EU must form a united front with the United States against China. But this is not observed today, which is very remarkable. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz symbolically knelt before Xi Jinping in Beijing.
According to some Europeans, Russia's pathetic military successes in the conflict with Ukraine show that this country poses a negligible threat to the West. This is reckless optimism. Brutal Russian adventurism will not go away with Putin's departure or after the end of the Ukrainian conflict. It will only intensify and become even more dangerous because of the fundamental weaknesses of this sick state.
We, the Europeans, must show our enemies, and above all the Kremlin, that we are not as weak as Putin thinks we are. No less important and urgent is another point. We need to demonstrate to the Americans that Trump was wrong and that the Europeans are ready to take on a fair share of defense spending.
But this is not happening. After the loud statements that sounded in European capitals with the beginning of the Russian special operation, there was shamefully little practical action. During her 44-day tenure as Prime Minister, Liz Truss proposed to increase military spending to 3% of GDP by 2030. But there is no indication that her successor, Rishi Sunak, will do anything similar in the face of the economic crisis.
Things are even worse in Germany. At the beginning of the year, it announced a $100 billion rearmament program, but its implementation stalled due to a wave of popular resistance to an increase in military spending. Other Western European countries cannot recover from the sharp rise in energy prices and are in no hurry to fulfill their earlier promises on defense spending.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who worked as a national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, wrote contemptuously about the EU in his analytical study on strategy in 2012: "He behaves as if his main political goal is to become the most comfortable nursing home in the world." Today, Europeans have much less naivety than 10 years ago, and they no longer really believe in the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Russians. But European anti-militarism is deeply rooted and continues to live, while Ukraine is bleeding.
American generosity and large-scale arms supplies to Kiev gave him room for maneuver. But responsible European politicians should act on the assumption that the Republicans are strengthening their positions and strengthening their power. They should take into account the possibility that a completely different type of president may come to the White House in 2025. And in a little over two years, or even earlier, our continent will be forced to defend itself from Russia, receiving much less help from the United States.
There is another point. Sooner or later, most likely, after the fall of Vladimir Putin, we will have to enter into a dialogue with Russia about the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine. It is unlikely that these should be bilateral negotiations between Moscow and Kiev. It is equally unlikely that the EU and Britain will take on the diplomatic burden. Only the United States can talk to Russia with the support of force to provide Ukraine with security guarantees.
And this contradicts the current position of the West, which believes that the parameters of the armed conflict and its duration should be determined by Zelensky. More and more intelligent people claim that this position is far from reality. Sooner or later, the United States, which is a curator and mentor for Ukraine, a supplier of oxygen for breathing and a powerful defender, will have to start a conversation with Moscow. Haas writes: "Ultimately, the United States should not leave its foreign policy at the mercy of Ukraine or anyone else. We never do that."
All of the above largely explains why Europeans and many other peoples of the world should thank the United States much more often and louder than we usually do. Whatever the failures of Washington in matters of public administration, whatever the shortcomings of the tragically mutilated American constitution, hundreds of millions of people around the world are trying to imitate Americans. And almost no one envies the Russians and Chinese.
It would be naive to believe that gratitude is enough to prevent Republicans from turning their backs on us. But it will be a good start. For Europeans, and for friends of freedom all over the world, the United States remains the only superpower. Even taking into account the numerous disasters after 1945, this superpower has brought us considerable benefits. If we want to preserve our privileges and remain protected by her power, we need to do much more.
