ResCon1

Should the West Worry about Putin’s ‘Red Lines’ or Its Own?

Should the West Worry about Putin’s ‘Red Lines’ or Its Own?

By John R Guardiano on March 10, 2022

America and NATO need to focus on what they will do to defeat and discredit Putin.

The commentariat has been fiercely debating whether to impose a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine. This is an interesting tactical question that is worthy of debate; however, the more fundamental and important question is strategic:

Do America and NATO wish to defeat and discredit Putin in Ukraine, or are we simply looking to “deescalate tensions” and give Putin an “off-ramp” so that he can “save face”?

Unfortunately, too many in the West are intent on trying to appease Putin instead of defeating and discrediting him. Their ostensible reason for doing so is to “stop nuclear war” (the New York Times’ Ross Douthat) or at least prevent a wider war (U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken).

Off-Ramps. Of course, as is becoming increasingly clear, Putin himself has absolutely no interest in any “off-ramp” or “deescalation of tensions.” The Russians have willfully violated ceasefire agreements even as they deliberately target civilian population centers and commit war crimes.

The Washington Post reports:

“It’s important to remember that throughout this crisis created by Putin and Russia, we’ve sought to provide possible off-ramps to President Putin,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.

“He’s the only one who can decide whether or not to take them. So far, every time there’s been an opportunity to do just that, he’s pressed the accelerator and continued down this horrific road that he’s been pursuing.”

Exactly. “Off-ramps” and “face-saving measures” are useless if Putin has no interest in that. They also are dangerous and provocative because they communicate weakness and a lack of resolve.

Nuclear War. Indeed, contra Douthat, a nuclear conflagration in Ukraine is more likely to result if America and NATO are not crystal clear about what will invite a devastating Western response.

For this reason, the West needs to draw its own “red lines” involving unacceptable Russian behavior and actions. Otherwise, Putin may be tempted to test fate—and us.

Instead, though, the Biden administration, and Western policymakers in general, have been obsessed with Putin’s red lines, real and imagined, and with what Eliot A. Cohen rightly calls, “self-deterrence”: explaining in detail what we absolutely will not do.

For example: we will not deploy ground troops; we will not deliver MiG fighter jets; we will not conduct long-planned nuclear tests; we will not impose a no-fly zone; we will not sanction Russian oil (until we did two days ago)…

As the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board puts it: “Instead of deterring Mr. Putin, Mr. Biden is letting the Russian deter the U.S.”

This is, needless to say, self-defeating. As Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) explains:

There’s a sentiment that we’re fearful about what Putin might do and what he might consider as an escalation. It’s time for him to be fearful of what we might do.

The only way to get Putin to act in a way that may be able to save lives of Ukrainians is if he fears us more than we fear him…

He’s got to think about what happens if he provokes us: because they [the Russian military] could be obliterated by the forces of NATO.

Exactly. The Russian military has been exposed in Ukraine as subpar and not at all ready for prime time. Their operations have been slow, plodding, disjointed, unimaginative, and utterly unimpressive.

U.S. officials estimate that, in these first two weeks of fighting, as many as 6,000 Russians have been killed. In its nearly two decades in Afghanistan, by contrast, the United States lost fewer than 2,500 soldiers.

In fact, because of the skill and tenacity of the Ukrainian military, as well as the courage and spirt of the Ukrainian people, the prospect of a strategic Russian defeat is likely—even if, as still appears probable, Russia ultimately wins a short-term but pyrrhic military victory and conquers Ukraine.

The West should relish the opportunity to defeat and discredit Putin. For two decades now, he has been a clear and present danger to the rules-based international order worldwide and to peace and stability in Europe.

Under his reign, Russia has waged war on its neighbors and threatened free and sovereign nations throughout Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Ukraine should be a wakeup call not to find a way to accommodate Putin, but to force him from power by making his position untenable.

Russia can have a new leader and a new leadership class. That is desirable and possible—but only if America and NATO stop self-deterring and worrying about Putin’s “red lines,” real and imagined.

Instead, the West needs to focus on its strategic, wartime objectives: a free, sovereign, and independent Ukraine; the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; and a new Russian government that respects international law and the territorial integrity of its neighbors.

This, in turn, will require a focus on deterrence and drawing our own inviolable “red lines.”

Featured photo credit: Screen shot of Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

Is Fox News’s LTC Daniel L. Davis (Ret.) on Putin’s Payroll?

Is Fox News’s LTC Daniel L. Davis (Ret.) on Putin’s Payroll?

By John R Guardiano on March 6, 2022

It’s not just Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. Fox’s pro-Putin appeasers include a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel named Daniel Davis.

There has been a lot of criticism of Fox News primetime hosts Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson for their jarring pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine commentary.

This criticism is well-deserved. But retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, a featured Fox News military commentator, is a far worse Putin shill or stooge.

And, alarmingly, insofar as I have seen, Davis’s pro-Putin propaganda on Fox goes unchallenged by the network’s anchors and reporters:

I report and truth decides. Here is Davis on Fox News, Feb. 24, 2022:

Davis: I think that we’re really misreading what’s going on with Putin here. I don’t think that he’s after trying to rebuild the Soviet Union. I think he means what he’s been saying for 15 years: that NATO and Ukraine is a redline that he will fight to prevent. And he proved it in 2008 with Georgia.

He proved it in 2014 with Crimea. And even as recently as last December, he was saying, “You guys just aren’t believing me. I was serious about this. This is a redline.” And then when he started building up these forces, he was showing us.

We [the United States] had every opportunity to just acknowledge reality and we should have pulled the NATO offer off the table for Ukraine.

That could probably have been the one thing that might have prevented this war entirely. But instead, we wanted to hold with principles and stuff and now the people of Ukraine are paying for that.

Now, let me be very clear: Nobody is responsible for the blood except for Vladimir Putin. Nobody. But we could have mitigated this. We could have.

Fox News Anchor Trace Gallagher: And, you know, Tulsi Gabbard kind of echoed that, Colonel, if you will. She was saying, you know, maybe somebody should have listened at least a little bit to what the President of Russia was saying.

Because if you were saying: Listen, I don’t want weapons. I don’t want NATO weapons that close to my country.

And you know, an example somebody gave tonight was: listen, the United States didn’t want Cuba to have NATO weapons [sic] that close to their country. So, you know, countries are very territorial and they don’t want that.

So, nobody is letting Putin off the hook by any stretch here, Colonel. But what you’re saying is that there might have been a pathway to resolve, earlier in this diplomatic debate.

Davis: One-hundred percent. I’ve been saying for months on this network that that very thing right there: that we had a shot to deescalate this and remove Vladimir Putin’s reason for actually launching an invasion.

Notice: Davis gives a quick and obligatory, pro forma denunciation of Putin as the person responsible for the Russian war against Ukraine. However, the thrust of his commentary is altogether different.

NATO Expansion. The thrust of Davis’s commentary is that America and NATO could have stoped Putin from invading Ukraine if they had simply recognized his “red line” concerning NATO membership.

But this is patently untrue, and we know it is untrue because Putin himself has explicitly said that his concern about Ukraine extends far beyond NATO. Putin views Ukraine as an allegedly lost Russia territory whose sovereignty and independence must be destroyed regardless of what becomes of NATO.

As I’ve explained here and in the Wall Street Journal, NATO’s expansion after the Cold War resulted from Russian threats and aggression; it did not cause Russian threats and aggression.

For Putin,

NATO expansion was always a convenient pretext, but never the reason, for Russia’s invasions of Ukraine… NATO [moreover], saved Europe from Russian military domination, and it would have deterred Russia this time had Ukraine been a NATO member.

Yet, despite this clear and unambiguous history, Gallagher adds insult to injury by agreeing with Davis (!) and saying “somebody should have listened at least a little bit to what the President of Russia was saying.”

Cuba. Gallagher then references Cuba and says, essentially, that when, back in 1962, the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba, the United States took this as a hostile act. So of course, he argues, Russia views NATO encroachment in its near abroad as a hostile act.

Finally, Davis chimes in:

We have to acknowledge that if Russia was trying to have a military alliance with Mexico, and they were gonna put Russian troops on the ground there, there is no way we would ever be satisfied and okay with that.

And it is unrealistic for us to expect Putin to have the exact same thing on his border and be okay with it.

What Davis and Gallagher conveniently ignore: NATO is a defensive alliance of free, sovereign, and independent states.

Putin knows full well that Poland and other NATO countries have absolutely zero intention of ever invading Russia. Nor do non-NATO countries, such as Ukraine, have any interest in invading Russia or acting as a platform for a NATO invasion of Russia—and again, Putin knows this.

Historically speaking, in fact, the East European countries have never threatened Russia; Russia has threatened them, and that remains true today.

The Soviet Union, by contrast, was bent on world domination, which is why President Kennedy, in 1962, acted to ensure that Russian missiles were removed from Cuba.

So no, NATO in Europe near Russia today is not at all the equivalent of the Soviet Union in the Western hemisphere near the United States at the height of the Cold War. This is an utterly false equivalence.

Nor does Mexico have reason to fear an American invasion, which is why there never will be any Russian troops in Mexico. Again, this is a ludicrous analogy divorced from all political and historical reality.

Davis goes on:

All we have to do is just treat Russia the way we did all during the Cold War… We cooperated with them and we had an understanding: We wouldn’t get into their territory and they wouldn’t get into ours, and that was that balance there.

We have to now recognize that this is not 1994 anymore, and we can’t just tell them what is gonna happen, or we’re gonna have an even worse situation than we have now.

Again, this is factually and historically inaccurate and it is the counsel of appeasement. Seldom has so much disinformation and blatant pro-Putin propaganda been crammed into so few words.

What Davis euphemistically calls “cooperation” is appeasement, and that is not what guided American and NATO policy during the Cold War.

Instead, the United States and NATO checked the Soviets—in Greece, Turkey, Korea, Berlin, Cuba, Africa, Asia, Central America, and around the globe. And it is because we checked the Soviets that the Cold War ended and Eastern Europe was freed of Russian domination.

Yet, Davis says that Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, is “their territory,” meaning Russian territory. Putin, of course, agrees; but this is a lie. The countries of Eastern Europe—including Poland, the Baltic states, and Ukraine—are free and sovereign states, not “Russian territory” that ought to be ruled by Moscow.

So I ask you: is Daniel Davis a Russian stooge? Is he on Putin’s payroll? Or is he simply too historically illiterate and ill-informed to separate fact from fiction?

More to the point, why does Fox continue to feature Davis as a military commentator when he spouts such blatantly pro-Putin, anti-America propaganda? Does this enrich the public dialogue and debate? Is this fair and balanced?

Feature photo credit: Fox News military commentator Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis (L) and Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher (R), captured via screen shots of a Fox News broadcast, Feb. 24, 2022.

Why Has the West Been So Late to Arm Ukraine?

Why Has the West Been So Late to Arm Ukraine?

By John R Guardiano on March 5, 2022

America and NATO viewed Ukraine through the prism of Iraq and Afghanistan—two countries that seemed to lack the will to fight for themselves. They did not realize: Ukraine is very different.

“We must get aid to Ukraine NOW,” tweeted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “No half-measures.”

“Please NATO leaders, send all MIG fighter jets that we have—70 altogether, 27 alone in Poland—to Ukraine right now. NOW!” added Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia under President Obama and now a Professor of Political Science at Stanford.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must “put the Ukraine aid bill on the floor Monday for the U.S. to send desperately needed military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine now,” agreed Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

“Waiting on the congressional calendar is unacceptable when people are dying,” he tweeted.

Finally, albeit quite belatedly, America and NATO are arming the Ukrainians. What started out as a token gesture designed simply to show solidarity and friendship with Ukraine has morphed into a serious and sustained effort to enable the Ukrainians to fight off a brutal Russian invasion.

Will it be too little too late? Let us hope not. But it is instructive to understand why the West has been so tardy and myopic about the moral, military, and geo-strategic necessity of arming Ukraine early and earnestly.

The reason is Iraq and Afghanistan. Old generals sometimes mistakenly fight the last war. America and NATO viewed Ukraine through the prism of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The West’s two most recent wars required many American and NATO “boots on the ground” for more than a decade to achieve, ultimately, very little. Western policymakers feared that Ukraine would be another allegedly hopeless cause not worth the hassle and the expense.

The expectation was that, in the face of a vastly superior Russian military force, the Ukrainians would run, hide, and fold—just as, candidly, many Iraqis and many Afghans had abandoned the battlefield in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

“Three U.S. officials have told Newsweek they expect Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to fall to incoming Russian forces within days, and the country’s resistance to be effectively neutralized soon thereafter…

“They expect Kyiv to be taken within 96 hours, and then the leadership of Ukraine to follow in about a week’s time.”

That was written Feb. 24, in the early hours of the Russian invasion. Today, 10 days later, March 5, retired Army four-star General Jack Keane says that Russian military forces are “not even close” to Kyiv.

Ukrainians Fight. “They have not been able to encircle the city, which is their plan,” Keane told Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot on Fox News.

The Ukrainians have held them up… You just can’t give them enough credit… They’re standing off a formidable force in the north [of Ukraine], and that force has stalled.

The [Russians] have lost their operational momentum, and there’s nobody behind them.

I mean, there’s not 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 troops that they’re [the Russians] gonna be able to bring up here. They [the Russians] have committed their forces…

So when Zelensky’s screaming [that] he needs arms and ammunition, and the rest of it, we better be getting it to him.

Because he has real opportunity here to do some serious damage to the Russians, and it certainly, [will] impact what an occupation would look like.

Volodymyr Zelensky. Western policymakers, obviously, did not know or understand Ukraine. They did not know Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and they did not understand the Ukrainian people.

Far from running, hiding, and folding, Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have been profiles in courage, tenacity and determination.

“I need ammunition, not a ride,” said Zelensky when the United States offered to evacuate him from the country, warning that Russian mercenaries had been sent to find and assassinate him.

France 24 reports from Kyiv:

“Our fighting spirit is 120 percent. We’re ready to defend our country. “We’re not going to surrender. Never,” says Mikhail, a military engineer.

“Eight years of war in Donbas and still Putin hasn’t admitted his troops were there. But in those eight years, the Ukrainian military has learned how to fight its vile enemy. And now the Russians are suffering heavy losses.”

Another soldier says, “We’re not afraid. We’ve grown tired of fear. We have no other choice but to defend our country. We have to win for our next generation of children—for our future and our freedom.”

The New York Times reports:

In a matter of days, Kyiv went from a busy, cosmopolitan European capital to a war zone—with many citizens abandoning their day jobs and taking up the arms being shipped in en masse.

Now, the newly armed civilians and members of various paramilitary groups are fighting under the loose command of the military in an organization called the Territorial Defense Forces.

“The national call to arms and the mobilization of ordinary citizens to repel the Russian invader does not have any obvious parallels in recent global conflicts,”Mats Berdal, a professor of conflict and security studies at King’s College London, said.

Indeed, Ukraine ain’t Iraq or Afghanistan, and Western policymakers should have known this. Iraq and Afghanistan were, in many ways, civil wars within existing countries. Ukraine, by contrast, is being invaded by a foreign country, Russia, that seeks to conquer and subjugate it.

Ukrainians recall the horrid brutality of life under Soviet occupation during the Cold War, notes Eugene Bondarenko, a lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literature.

Thus they see Russia’s latest attempt to subjugate them “as nothing less than an existential threat… Putin has come to destroy Ukrainian culture, language, society and statehood. That’s why Ukraine fights,” Bondarenko explains.

Cohen and Clausewitz. “Why did so many highly intelligent and educated observers get so much wrong?” asks Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

In large part because of the conventional Western “focus on technology at the expense of the human element in war.” Cohen references Carl von Clausewitz’s classic On War to understand why Ukraine ain’t Iraq or Afghanistan.

“War,” Cohen writes, echoing Clausewitz,

is a contest of wills; it is unpredictable; it is the domain of accident and contingency; nothing goes as planned; and events are smothered in a fog created by misinformation and fear.

Patriotic fervor, hatred of the invader, and knowledge of place and home weigh a great deal, and thus far so they have.

But a passionate desire for freedom and independence, coupled with an indomitable will to win, can carry a people on so far.

Brute Russian force and a clear Russian willingness to commit war crimes ultimately will prevail—unless America and NATO can rush arms and equipment to Ukraine fast enough to alter the political and military equation.

Will the West succeed or will it be a day late and a dollar short, as they say? We don’t know. Time will tell. Stay tuned.

What we do know is that the war in Ukraine is very different from the recent American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the West needs to respond accordingly.

Feature photo credit: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin (R), courtesy of Newsweek.

Why the West Mustn’t Give Putin an ‘Off-Ramp’ or a ‘Face-Saving’ Way Out

Why the West Mustn’t Give Putin an ‘Off-Ramp’ or a ‘Face-Saving’ Way Out

By John R Guardiano on March 1, 2022

Defeat and discredit Putin so that a new Russian leader and a new Russian leadership class can emerge.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine had barely begun when the councils of caution warned that we must tread carefully and give Putin an “off-ramp” or a way that might allow him to “back down while retaining some semblance of face.”

It sounds so reasonable and so judicious—especially after Putin intimated that he might be prepared to use nuclear weapons. But in fact, this is exactly the wrong approach.

Giving Putin an “off-ramp” and allowing him to “save face” will allow him to retain power in Russia. It will inspire and motivate like-minded Russian politicians who wish to inherit his mantle of political authoritarianism, military imperialism, personal plunder, and misrule.

It will mean that Putin will live, politically, to fight another day and to continue menacing Europe, America, and the West.

Thus the only wise and acceptable course of action is to defeat and discredit Putin: so that he is replaced by a new Russian leader who respects international norms, international law, and the territorial sovereignty of free and independent states.

The Russian Elite. This is achievable. Russia, after all, is not Iraq or Afghanistan. Despite its myriad problems, Russia has a well-educated elite that can assume the reins of political power and exercise political authority.

But this will not happen, and it cannot happen, unless and until Putin is defeated and thoroughly discredited in the eyes of his countrymen, especially the Russian elite.

As we have noted, Putin serves at the pleasure of a rich and cosseted Russian mafia oligarchy. If and when this oligarchy finds that Putin is bad for business, it will force him from power.

But that won’t happen if we insist on creating a safe space for Vladimir and a zone of comfort in which he can “save face.”

As for Putin’s brandishing of nuclear weapons, perspective is needed.

First, nuclear saber rattling is nothing new for the Russians. During the Cold War, the Soviets often intimated that they might use nukes, or that a nuclear conflagration might result should America and the West not accede to their demands. So take their latest threat with a big grain of salt.

Second, as Russia’s poor military performance in Ukraine thus far is amply demonstrating, the Russian military is subpar.

Their conventional military units are formidable on paper, but surprisingly weak in battle. Nuclear weapons and cyber warfare capabilities are about all the Russians have to intimidate and frighten the West. So of course they play that card diplomatically and in communications designed for public consumption.

But in truth, as Alexander S. Vindman points out:

Despite Putin’s bluster, the rules of great-power competition and confrontation have not changed since the beginning of the Cold War. But we have forgotten how to confront a belligerent, saber-rattling Russia.

A previous generation of policymakers would have managed tensions while standing up to intimidation and calling out incendiary rhetoric. In truth, Russian leaders have no interest in a nuclear war or a bilateral conventional conflict that they would certainly lose.

The West has far more room to maneuver than it appears to grasp.

In other words: nuclear saber-rattling by Putin is a reflection of Russian weakness, not Russian strength.

The bottom line: America and Europe need a new Russian leader and a new type of Russian leadership. We need Russian leaders who, at a minimum, respect international norms, international law, and the territorial sovereignty of other states.

But this objective never will be achieved if we insist on accepting Putin’s misrule as inevitable and as something that we must recognize and accommodate.

“Off-ramps” and “face-saving measures” for Putin are inimical to achieving the West’s desired end state: a Russia free of Putin and Putinism.

Feature photo credit: Associated Press photo of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin (L) and jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (R) courtesy of Sky News.

Biden Should Use his State of the Union Address to Declare Economic War on Russia

Biden Should Use his State of the Union Address to Declare Economic War on Russia

By John R Guardiano on February 26, 2022

America and NATO have the means to force Vladimir Putin from power and reverse the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Note: President Biden is scheduled to deliver the annual State of the Union Address to Congress Tuesday, March 1. In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, here is what the President should say.

Madam Speaker, Madam Vice President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans, and concerned people across the globe, especially the brave people of Ukraine:

This evening, I was planning to deliver the annual State of the Union Address. However, you will forgive me for parting from tradition and doing something different.

Tonight, I would like to address a much more pressing and urgent matter: the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the response from America, NATO, and the free world.

Russian Invasion. As you know, last week, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin launched a wholly unprovoked military assault against the free and sovereign nation of Ukraine. Putin’s aim: to conquer and subjugate Ukraine and make it an indissoluble part of a new and more expansive Russian empire.

America and its NATO allies have armed the Ukrainian military and we will continue to do so. A free and sovereign people deserve the right to fight for themselves, to fight for their freedom and independence. The United States of America will never be indifferent to their pleas for help and to the cause of liberty.

However, we will not wage a military war against Russia. We will not send American ground troops to Ukraine.

The time to do that, candidly was a year or more ago, before Russia invaded, when U.S. troops could have deterred Putin and prevented this military war from happening. That opportunity, sadly, has been lost.

But while a traditional military war in not something we will partake in, we will embrace every measure short of armed conflict, and short of “boots on the ground,” to ensure that Ukraine remains a free and sovereign state.

This means that America and NATO are launching an economic war against Russia. Our aims are clear and just:

First, as I mentioned, we will arm the Ukrainian people with as much military aid as possible as quickly as possible. America once again will be the arsenal of democracy, and our support for the brave people of Ukraine will continue for as long as they wish to fight.

Second, we will destroy the Russian economy through economic boycotts, sabotage, and cyberwar. This is necessary to force Russia to change course and to change its government.

Putin serves at the pleasure of a rich and cosseted Russian mafia oligarchy that has plundered Russia and stolen blood and treasure from the Russian people. By squeezing Russia economically, we will force that oligarchy to come to terms with the economic wreckage wrought by Putin’s misrule and his reckless invasion of Ukraine.

Costs. This economic war will not be cost-free for America and its NATO allies. We will suffer economic hardship and deprivation. In the short-term, certainly, the price of gas will rise dramatically. Disruptions to our electrical grid and Internet connectivity will occur.

But these will be temporary and transitory problems that I assure you we will overcome. America is rich in fossil fuels and energy abundance, and I will be unleashing the full power of our nation’s energy sector.

Our cyber capabilities, likewise, are second to none and not to be tampered with. Silicon Valley, after all, is an America creation and we will retain dominance in the cyber domain, while protecting our networks from attack.

Third, by means of economic warfare, we aim to force Putin from power, so that we can constructively engage a new Russian government that respects its neighbors and acts in accordance with international norms and international law.

We seek peaceful and constructive relations with Russia. And we are confident that, when Russia has a new government worthy of its history and its people, we again can have harmonious and mutually beneficial relations.

But this can only happen when Putin is removed from power and Russia has a new leader and not an international gangster at the helm who holds free and sovereign nations hostage.

Fourth, we demand the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; the restoration there of freely elected democratic governments; and the end of Russian meddling in the internal affairs of these and other countries.

Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia were granted their freedom and independence in 1991 at the conclusion of the Cold War. However, all three countries have since seen their sovereignty undermined and taken by Russia at the behest of Putin.

This cannot stand. The nation-state, its territorial integrity, self-rule, and self-determination are pillars of the international order. Yesterday it was Georgia and Belarus; today it is Ukraine; and tomorrow it will be the Baltic states and Poland.

We must stop and reverse Russian military imperialism before it further unravels the world order and imperils America and the West.

Victory. Make no mistake: we will prevail. Because of Putin’s economic mismanagement and oligarchic plundering, Russia today is a poor country that has failed to realize its potential. Russia’s economy is smaller than the economy of South Korea and smaller than the economy of Italy.

And we are not acting alone, but instead in concert with allies who span the globe—from Europe to Asia, North and South America, Africa and the Middle East. Literally dozens of nations are joining us to reverse Putin’s dangerous assault on international norms and the international order.

Some Americans, I know, will say: why us? Why is Ukraine’s problem our problem? Why is Europe’s danger our danger?

Because, my fellow Americans, we live in a world in which America and Americans are deeply engaged, commercially and politically. Thus our well-being as a nation is inextricably and irreversibly linked to what happens far beyond our borders.

Our ability to travel and do business abroad, in all corners of the globe, will suffer mightily if Russian military imperialism is left unchecked.

And of course, as we’ve seen, Putin’s attacks have extended far beyond Ukraine. He has launched cyber attacks on America and Europe and waged a war of discord and disinformation on the West. He has undermined peace, stability, and freedom worldwide.

This will not stand. We are in an economic position to stop Putin and we will.

The path ahead will not be easy and it is not without risk. But previous generations of Americans have encountered far worse and triumphed over much greater odds. With your help and with God’s blessing, we will prevail. Freedom will be restored and justice will be done.

Thank you. God bless America and God bless the people of Ukraine.

Feature photo credit: President Biden (L) and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin (R), courtesy of Al Arabiya.