The Situation: On the Fourth Anniversary of Russia’s Full-Scale War

The Situation Friday just asked some questions.

Today is the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

I have nothing wise or novel to say about the war, its progression, or its future. It has all been said.

I have nothing wise or novel either to say about the prospects of President Trump’s itinerant peace talks, which migrate from Abu Dhabi to Miami to Geneva without ever seeming to bring the longest 24 hours in world history to a close. Color me suspicious, but what do I know?

For that matter, I have nothing wise or novel to say about America’s crazed vacillations on the subject of the war—vacillations that have this country alternatively imposing additional sanctions on Russia, adopting Russian negotiating positions, humiliating Ukrainian leaders in public and extorting them for resources, and freeing them up to conduct long-range strikes against Russian targets. It makes my head spin.

I have nothing wise or novel to say about the broader relationship between Russia and The Situation. We have been talking about that for years, and I have long since given up trying to puzzle it out.

I have nothing wise or novel to say about the next four years of Ukraine’s confrontation with Russia—or America’s or Europe’s. I don’t do predictions any more.

I will only say this.

Four years ago today, the dictator of a revisionist power challenged the world order by invading a sovereign country on his borders with the specific objective of obliterating its existence as an independent state, annexing its territory, replacing its democratically elected government with one of his own imposition, and wiping out its language and culture.

The good news is that he has failed—though he is still trying and his failure in the future is not guaranteed.

The less good news is that over the subsequent four years, the world has stood robustly for the proposition that somebody should certainly do something about this.

On the question of exactly who that somebody should be and exactly what that something should be, the world has stood a little less firm.

The United States has been a hot mess. The initial American position was that Ukraine should get all the support that it needs—just not the specific weapons systems it said it needs or in the timeframe that it said it needed them and not in a manner that might make its foe too angry.

That position later evolved into something more like this: Ukraine should get all the support it needs subject to the caveats above just as soon as Congress finishes months-long delays wherein it busily squabbles over domestic politics.

And that position later evolved further into its posture during The Situation: Ukraine should plead and grovel for help, which the United States might then sell it assuming European countries are willing to pay for it and assuming Ukraine agrees to American resource extraction demands.

Europe has performed better, though it hasn’t been the continent’s finest hour either. It declared the war a great turning point—and then turned a few degrees. 

Europe, of course, isn’t an it. It is a they. And the parts of it that are further north and further east have tended to turn further than the parts that are further west and further south—and they had less far to turn in any event. 

And it’s fair to say that Europe has acquitted itself, on the whole, more honorably than has the United States, largely, though not entirely, on account of the behavior of certain Nordic and Eastern European countries that have skin in Russia’s particularly militaristic game. The United Kingdom deserves an honorable mention here too.

Yet Estonia and Finland and Sweden can only do so much, and one doesn’t look at Europe as a whole over the past four years and see quite the stalwart defense of the order that one might have hoped for. Such a defense requires consensus, after all, and the Europeans are far better at making consensus statements about the defense of the order than they are about actually doing things in concert. A lot of Europe is too far away from Russia for its many countries to reach meaningful consensus about confronting Russia. And a lot of its countries have complicated relationships with Russia anyway. And rearmament is such a drag on a welfare-state economy that relies on the United States for security. And resupplying Ukraine? Surely that’s someone else’s job.

The war was a turning point, sure, but don’t make us turn too much or, God forbid, too quickly.

And so with such friends, the burden of confronting the revisionist dictator has fallen on Ukraine itself. Not alone, of course, never quite alone. Sometimes Ukraine has gotten inadequate American support. Sometimes it has gotten inadequate European support. Sometimes, it has gotten both. The South Koreans have been pretty good. But at the end of the day, the burden of defending the proposition that you can’t acquire territory by force in the post-World War II era—you know, that whole UN Charter thing—has been Ukraine’s burden.

And almost miraculously, it has managed to stay in the fight.

It has managed to stay in the fight despite the fact that everyone who wants Ukraine to prevail thinks it’s someone else’s job actually to make that happen.

And it has managed to stay in the fight despite the fact that it’s not even clear the government of the United States still wants Ukraine to prevail. Indeed, the oddity of The Situation with respect to Ukraine and its war is that the president seems genuinely unsure whether or not he even wants Ukraine to win. Hence the vacillations. Sometimes, he seems positively bullish for Russian victory and enthusiastic about Ukrainian capitulation. Sometimes, he seems to just want a “deal,” irrespective of what terms that deal might contain. Sometimes, he seems genuinely horrified by the magnitude of the losses and seems to understand that it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is preventing a reasonable settlement.

He is, to be sure, at all times wholly untroubled by Putin’s assault on the international order. And he thus shares none of the maddening features of so many other actors over the last few years of declaring the full-scale war an intolerable affront and then considering it someone else’s job to remedy that affront or considers half-measures adequate to address it. Trump doesn’t consider the invasion an intolerable affront; he tolerates that just fine. And it’s genuinely unclear what he actually wants in a resolution—save a Nobel Peace Prize for himself.

It all makes for a confusing environment, four years in. The world’s leadership is chock full of pious suits who say all the right things and whose actions don’t remotely comport with their words. And among them struts one grossly impious man who openly admires evil and also seems to think he is the one element needed to bring peace to the war between the evil he admires and a country he has proudly abandoned.

It is unfathomable why he thinks this, yet The Situation continues tomorrow.