The United States Is Obligated to Hold Back to Prevent Nuclear Fallout With Russia

Putin has succeeded at one thing — uniting the West.

Dealing with a nuclear superpower is a delicate balance. Escalation is something that happens quickly, especially with an autocrat. By the very nature of autocracy, the process by which a despot seizes political power makes him isolated, insecure, and unable to trust the people around him.

Even people within his inner circle.

There is speculation Putin is still nervous about COVID conditions and why we see him sitting isolated at the end of long tables during calls with his security council. Still, we are witnessing a weary Putin.

He didn’t count on this much of a war. Putin overstepped. He made a terrible decision not out of madness but lousy judgment. His planning didn’t consider the Ukrainians’ bravery; he thought they were more favorable to Russia and their military would collapse immediately following the invasion.

The more he loses, the more he digs in, the more Russia doubles down on the mass slaughter of Ukrainians, even bombing a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupo, where at least 1,207 people have died.

As the Russian economy is in a free-fall after massive economic sanctions imposed by the West, he may be winning the ground war, but not the economic and political war.

One of my most compelling courses in college was dedicated to superpower nations — how countries exert power through military, economic, and political means. But it was only hypothetical. This was after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We were living in a world that was free and open. Europe stabilized a bit after Word War II, walls came down both literally and figuratively. The Berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

We’ve been complacent since, as has US policy regarding Russia.

Before Putin invaded Ukraine, we haven’t seen a significant ground war in Europe since World War II.

Over the last decade-plus, we’ve seen a rise in populism culminating in Brexit and the election of Trump, partly due to generational turnover. When you live through a war (as in the two world wars of the 20th century), you are grateful for liberal societies and liberal international order.

We now have an entire generation of people who don’t appreciate liberal democracy and institutions like NATO because they haven’t experienced the alternative.

The miscalculations of war

The collapse of the Soviet Empire was a great tragedy for Putin, as is the expansive power of the West and free societies. His dream to recapture it, and become the great nation he thinks Russia is, is the reason for Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Putin has had several miscalculations from the start.

His military plan lacked strategy, as well as, more importantly, reality.

We know this because Russian soldiers were evidently carrying dress uniforms for their victory parade in Kyiv rather than extra ammo and rations. Kyiv was not taken in 48 hours as Putin had hoped.

But Putin’s biggest miscalculation, in my opinion, was that NATO wouldn’t respond, we were weak, and he could divide us from our NATO allies.

Had Trump won a second term, this may not have been the case.

Below is written by Stephen Kotkin, one of our most profound and prodigious scholars of Russian history. His masterwork is a biography of Joseph Stalin. So far he has published two volumes — “Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941.”

The biggest surprise for Putin, of course, was the West. All the nonsense about how the West is decadent, the West is over, the West is in decline, how it’s a multipolar world and the rise of China, et cetera: all of that turned out to be bunk. The courage of the Ukrainian people and the bravery and smarts of the Ukrainian government, and its President, Zelensky, galvanized the West to remember who it was. And that shocked Putin! That’s the miscalculation.

Biden’s finest hour

This could be Biden’s finest hour. This administration has kept their heads during a very emotional time.

As a young senator, Biden was a spearhead for bringing central European countries into NATO and has spent decades building a network in the transatlantic community. His international experience working with coalitions and allies, leading foreign policy decisions for four decades while conjuring unity in fractured political landscapes, is showing up as a cool head marshaling in a global coalition to defend democracy.

When Biden addressed the world in his State of the Union with, “we will defend every inch of NATO territory with full force,” this couldn’t be a more important message to that region’s people and surrounding countries.

Unity among political parties at home

Most Republicans here are home are supporting Biden’s efforts in Ukraine, bringing unity for the first time among Democrats and Republicans — other than the agreement that we never have to change the clock on the microwave again which won by unanimous vote.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

Putin has succeeded at one thing, uniting NATO allies, after hurt feelings over Afghanistan put a wedge between them, and after Trump made a mockery of the United States when he bashed NATO and threatened to leave it in his second term.

Just as it is in expansionist President Putin’s DNA to embrace the Czarist Russian narrative, the glory days of a strong Soviet Union superpower — he wants to occupy, at the very least, Kyiv and Odesa, both capitol cities, symbolic or otherwise — it’s in Biden’s DNA to unite our allies, making western democracy strong and secure in yet another era of Russian aggression in Europe.

Walking a fine line between aiding Ukraine and igniting an all-out war

As a superpower, we have an obligation to the rest of the world to not engage with Russia directly and start Word War III.

When Putin says “he is putting his nuclear forces on high alert,” Putin is a threat and danger, not just to Ukraine but to the global community.

As part of NATO, we don’t make unilateral decisions without consensus. We hold together our coalition that stands for western ideals of a free society and instead take extreme measures to cripple Russia’s economy to avoid nuclear fallout.

We can’t move without NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) makes decisions through consensus. One way to piss off an ally is to do something unilaterally.

Anyone who’s ever been married understands how this works.

If your hubby goes out and buys a Porsche for himself without having a discussion with you, you’d be upset. AND, it would undermine you as part of a couple.

When one country in the multi-nation alliance moves without the other, it undermines the group.

Anyone’s who’s ever been married with children understands this.

If parents disagree in front of their child, and dad thinks it’s OK for the kid to leave Cheetos on the floor of his room and stay up until midnight, dad upsets his alliance with the other superpower in his group. The kid aligns with dad, sewing further discord among the two in charge (and will start taking direction from dad because it best serves the kid’s interest — not having to clean his room and staying up late).

This is a simple analogy, but exactly how international relations work.

We must stand together. The US cannot act unilaterally against Putin.

Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have taken great care to create a formidable global consensus against Putin and his war crimes in Ukraine that is now crushing the Russian economy and isolating Putin.

This is the delicate balance we must walk.

If the United States heads off on its own and takes unilateral action, the balance we’ve painstakingly walked will collapse, we lose trust with our allies. Putin wins the political war and possibly the ground war as well.

If Putin takes part of Ukraine, annexing certain territories, it is not only a land victory for Russia but a psychological victory as well.

Imposing a no-fly zone is an escalation of war

If we are going to impose a no-fly zone, we all have to be in agreement that we are OK with and ready to go to war with another nuclear superpower, with Putin, who already feels backed into a corner as his country is in economic free fall and looking at a war he started that has no immediate end.

We cannot stumble into a war with Vladimir Putin.

If we implement a no-fly zone, we play directly into his hands. Putin wants to say we are attacking him, so if we, along with our NATO allies, engage in conflict full time, Putin gets what he wants.

This may sound harsh or uncaring for the enormous loss of life in Ukraine, but it is far better the Ukrainians defeat the Russians on their own, depriving Moscow of the excuse that NATO attacked them, as well as avoiding escalatory possibilities.

We can keep doing what we are doing

Much more important is to continue supplying Ukraine with Javelins, Stingers, TB2s, medical supplies, and intel sharing with NATO intelligence from outside of Ukraine. In the nuclear age, it’s understandable that economic sanctions, including really powerful ones, are the tools we reach for.

In the last several weeks, we have provided defense weaponry and aid to Ukraine. Biden is expected to announce another $800M in security assistance for Ukraine. The total cost in the last week was $1B and $2B since Biden took office.

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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.