And call China's bluff at the same time.
Legendary State Department diplomat Charles “Chip” Bohlen summed up Soviet relations with: “Stalin believes that you have to probe with a bayonet. If you meet mush, you push farther. If go meet steel, you pull back."
Ukraine’s Vlodomyr Zelensky has figured this out, whether or not his backers in the West do. The surprise Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region of Russia has also unveiled a new “top-secret” weapon of Ukraine design and manufacture to get around Western restriction on how it can be used. The Palyanytsya is a hybrid missile/drone, launched and propelled with a jet engine capable of striking deep – with a range estimated a 430 miles. It’s named after a hearty local bread loaf that is so hard to pronounce by Russian speakers that it was used as a code-word early in the war.
If an invasion of the Mother Land isn’t a nuclear red line, Lord only knows what is. The Russian response to the invasion has been typically scattered and unfocused, but getting creamed by some Ukrainian DYI drone/missile combo over the weekend seemed to have sobered them up. Moscow is moving troops from the frontline Donetsk region to fight in Kursk, but is more focused on the most intense airstrikes since the start of the war. They’ve taken out an estimated 50% of the country’s electrical capacity. Meanwhile, Ukrainian strikes are striking Russian bridges and oil facilities.
What Kyiv has learned from its Kursk maneuver is that it is better to ask for forgiveness that permission. Also that one of the best ways to gather allies, is the show that you will fight on alone if you must. According to Zelensky’s daily addresses, this was part of the plan: With Kyiv holding Russian territory to swap for its own and airstrikes that are pushing deeper into Russia’s oil capacity he wants to sit down with the White House and hammer out a peace plan.
At issue is whether or not Putin’s bayonet has struck steel yet – it probably has. So far he has rejected invitations to talk, but not because he’s confident of his position. The man doesn’t really believe his gonzo alternate histories – these are just lawyer’s arguments to sell a dubious position. He won’t negotiate with Ukraine because he thinks the country is beneath him.
Putin famously got huffy after the Cold War when he asked the head of Nato when they were going to ask Russia to join. When told he needed to apply, he stormed off. He didn’t want to apply, he wanted to get asked like a real power. That tells us something: counter-intuitive as it may be, the best that the way to get Putin to the negotiating table is an offer from the United States. What Putin really wants it to flex his muscles the way Stalin did before communism gave the entire country a stroke. Deranged, sure, but as Putin sees it, this would be Great Power Politics as it should be – a few powerful countries divvying up the rest of the world without running by the divvied.
As a young country that lurched from isolationism to accidentally super-power, it’s hard for Americans to understand foreign policy fueled by ancient grievances, but it’s driving both our pressing rivalries in Russia and China. The two countries aren’t so much linked by common interests, but by a common chip on the shoulder. Remove the chip and you remove the alignment. Whether most Americans really care about Ukraine or not, it would force a very fussy China to the table at the precise moment when its ally is waffling. And that’s why we should stay with Ukraine – to call China’s bluff.
Currently China is reaping great rewards from a dependent neighbor (Russia) and chaos in a rival (the “West”) provided by the war in Ukraine. For Beijing, it’s all about global influence, so it can’t really be seen stymying peace efforts in Europe while it’s trying to pull out of a trade war with the EU and the US. With a “great power” sit down on offer from the great power blocs, China will be forced to the table (it dare not be left out).
For its part, Russia gets to sit at the big boy Great Power table while it is cods are gently gelded in front of its ally, China. While in Central Asia, it’s other ally, Iran continues to isolate and collapse into itself. Neither are going be able to sop up all that Chinese overproduction.
Which, in a nutshell, is why we ought to care what happens in Ukraine – to beat China.