Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - Justifying support for Ukraine without resorting to uncredible and over the top arguments.

Ukraine does not need help from bad arguments.

• Over the past year, both sides of the issue have thrown around a number of inadequate arguments in favor of/against the US/Western financial & military support of Ukraine.

• Those arguing against Washington’s role in leading and rallying the global support for Ukraine are plain wrong - therefore spotting their bad arguments is not too hard.

• These always end up as a variation of “we caused this with unlimited NATO expansion/we cornered Russia” and/or “This is not our business - American taxpayers should not be funding a war on another continent”.

• We have rebutted these weak arguments on a number of occasions - fundamentally: no, the US did not trigger the war, and NATO did not magically expand - instead, 30 countries that joined it wanted to be a part of Western world of prosperity, security, and liberty - none of them chose to be unaligned/and or allied with Russia.

• (side note: Russia’s own facade of a security organization, the CSTO contains vassals superstars like Armenia, Belarus, and Tajikistan - paragons of global success and military prowess. Now then, who wouldn’t want to be part of that club?)

• But such weak arguments are not limited to the side that is on the clearly wrong side of the issue.

• Many well-meaning backers/advocates of America’s help for Ukraine resort to hyperbolic or credibility-lacking arguments to justify Washington’s resolute and limitless ‘‘as long as it takes’’ help for the country.

• This risks creating perceptions of intellectual sloppiness - unnecessarily damaging the credibility of those advancing the right side of the argument.

• And this is wholly unnecessary too.

• There are already plenty of good, powerful, and logically iron-clad reasons to provide full support for Ukraine.

• Beyond principle and the basic ethical argument in favor of helping a victim fighting for its liberty and very existence to survive the onslaught of a genocidal army, there are also strategic, geopolitical and realpolitik reasons to back Ukraine with full force and might of the Western civilization:

• 1) Protecting the rules-based, and America-led world order: the order that preserves and protects security and prosperity of all citizens of the world - with Americans being the prime beneficiaries.

• An open, cooperative order that prevents disruptions to key supply chains, energy and food sources - protecting millions of global citizens from famine, starvation and political instability that causes indiscriminate violence.

• 2) Dissuading future invasions and wars of territorial expansion - proving their futility.

• 3) Signaling to Beijing that the West is not decadent and weak, and that it can rally its might behind a unifying cause.

• A signal that if China was to proceed with the invasion of Taiwan, it would surely face enormous economic costs and isolation (even before counting in the possibility of a direct US military involvement to protect Taiwan).

• (side note: this is different from the argument that if Russia succeeds, Taiwan would fall etc. Each case is unique and has different calculations. Whether or not Xi will pull the trigger depends mainly on specific options open to him in relation to Taiwan. But the knowledge of Western capacity to rally resources when needed will surely form at least a part of his overall cost-benefit calculus).

• And then there is the more rudimentary realpolitik calculation - devastating one of America’s main adversaries and military competitors at a minuscule cost of 0.23% of America’s GDP - and in the absence of any US military casualties.

• But in spite of these already powerful and strong arguments to support Ukraine, many bad ones still circulate freely - and in the long-term, damaging the credibility of the right side of the debate.

• Unfortunately, there are many such bad arguments, but we shall focus on the two that have gained most traction, and that have gained support of many well-known and reputable public intellectuals:

• Argument 1: If Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he will proceed to invade further countries in Eastern Europe - Poland will be next - he will gain further confidence (and confirmation of NATO’s weakness), and will be tempted to proceed with military campaigns.

• This rather weak assertion has somehow gained much traction in the intellectual space on the pro-Ukraine side of the discourse.

• The Domino-theory arguments are always weak as a starting point - unless causation can really be established and proven.

• Analogies must fit - there must be a good logical reason for A to follow B.

• For example, the Arab Spring domino theory proved to be (largely) right.

• Early predictors of a chain reaction were to a large extent correct.

• But this is because many Arab countries in North Africa/Middle East shared a lot fundamentals: brutal dictatorships, lack of alternative/civil methods of expressing public’s discontent (i.e, no elections/civil society channels), increasing alienation of the public/loss of legitimacy/ rampant corruption benefiting only few elites/ high youth unemployment leading to a lot of angry young men with not much to lose from a bloody confrontation/ brutal police tactics causing equal but opposite reaction, lack of a clear one leader in charge of everything (who can be targeted and the entire protest wave could then be shut down - for example, even though Russia is fundamentally different across many parameters from these Arab states, this was still the outcome with Alexei Navalny and his org).

• Importantly, no serious analyst was predicting this domino reaction/ revolutionary sentiments spreading to the affluent and relatively apolitical citizens of the UAE or Qatar - because it simply did not make sense.

• Similarly, when it comes to Ukraine, Putin’s self-confidence and future imperial ambitions may certainly rise as a result of a successful invasion: but such an outcome is likely to put non-NATO countries like Moldova or Georgia at 100x higher risk than Poland, Estonia or any other NATO state.

• And if we embark upon that argument, why stop at Poland? Why not go further with Germany and Netherlands added to the mix?

• In fact, why not argue that Putin would invade entire western continental Europe and would then prepare for an amphibious assault against Britain?

• This sounds absurd, and it is absurd, yet this is exactly what a well-known public intellectual Anne Applebaum argued in her article published by highly reputable “The Atlantic” magazine.

• Here is what Applebaum claims would happen if Ukraine was to fall:

• “Russian soldiers, strengthened by their stunning victory, would already be on the borders of Poland, setting up new command posts, digging new trenches. NATO would be in chaos; the entire alliance would be forced to spend billions to prepare for the inevitable invasion of Warsaw, Vilnius, or Berlin.[emphasis added]”

• One would expect that such wild assertions would be backed by at least some evidence.

• Yet this did not happen: exactly how Berlin’s invasion would become ‘‘inevitable” was left unexplained.

• Such over the top hyperbolic exaggerations of the worst-case scenario outcomes are not going to help Ukraine or its allies.

• Although those making the assertions carry the burden of proving it, let us still unpack and analyze why is it exactly that the invasion of Poland is unlikely to take place - regardless of what happens to Ukraine.

• Even though proponents of this delusional domino theory do not provide compelling reasons/motivations for further invasion, broadly speaking, there could be two major reasons why Poland would be invaded and/or attacked by Russia:

• 1. Outright occupation/territorial expansion.

• 2. Political/strategic goals: extra buffer zone/ demilitarization/preemptive strikes against NATO.

• Now, assuming that there is even a desire for this, Poland’s occupation is clearly unfeasible: unlike eastern Ukraine, there is no plausible constituency of majority Russian-speaking population that could be willing participants in this endeavor.

• The guerrilla warfare that Russian troops would face (assuming they could even take an inch of the territory) would make Afghanistan look like a walk in the park.

• Secondly, even if Putin was insane enough to attempt this, there is no plausible way that Russia would simply have enough resources to pull this off: by this point, Moscow would be at war with the entirety of NATO (most likely) and holding any territory in a hostile environment is out of the question.

• What about the second possibility? A preemptive attack and/or invasion against NATO?

• This too is an extremely remote possibility..

• After all, what would Russia gain?

• If the whole idea for (or at least, substantial reason for) Ukraine’s invasion is to create a massive buffer state with NATO, well under this scenario, Putin would have already achieved that with the fall of Ukraine.

• What is the point of going beyond that and actually attacking NATO?

• If the idea of a buffer zone is to provide security, then why destroy that concept by starting a general war with an entire alliance - the most powerful in military history?

• How would triggering a war with NATO and the US add to Russia’s security?

• And even if Putin somehow though that NATO/the US would not step in directly, attacking Poland would still not make sense: he would face the pooled resources of entire NATO/the EU at 10x level of that offered to Ukraine - never mind facing a well-trained Polish army equipped with the most up to date, state of the art weapons.

• Russian casualties would be enormous, and would come with little if any gains.

• And note that this is under an extremely delusional assumption that the US and the rest of NATO would not intervene directly.

• Once again there is not even a slightly plausible reason for Putin to continue Westwards with his invasion: alleging the potential fall of cities like Poland and Berlin is extremely wild.

• And it is surprising that such unsubstantiated assertions have been presented as a given.

• These claims have gone unchallenged for far too long..

• Let us not forget that thus far, Russian military leadership have (overall) acted quite rationally in the face of changing dynamics of the battlefield.

• Putin and his senior generals are not blind: they can perceive correlation of forces and act accordingly.

• Even if Putin is fed with exaggerated reports of success on the ground, he is still aware of the general circumstances of the war.

• This is a military leadership that agreed to pull back its troops from Kyiv - as soon as it became clear that the occupation of the city would not take place.

• This is an army that (in spite of all political costs) withdrew from Kherson to save 30k troops.

• In other words, when Putin sees that the forces available to him are not adequate to achieve his political objectives, he pulls back and retreats.

• The Kremlin would clearly see that attacking Poland would achieve absolutely nothing - and even if it did, the correlation of forces would make such an invasion an impossible feat to pull off.

• But what about the initial invasion of Ukraine? How was that rational? Wasn’t he delusional back then? If so, would he not be tempted to do the same vis-à-vis Poland and further to the west?

• The answer is a definitive no to all of these questions.

• Invasion of Ukraine was clearly a massive gamble that turned out to be a huge flop: an evident miscalculation? Yes. A madman following his delusions ? No.

• Let us not forget that Putin’s initial decision to invade Ukraine was made under these following assumptions:

• 1. That the west/NATO would not help - or even if they did, then at least not to this extent.

• 2. That Kyiv would fall immediately without much resistance: that Russian spies /sleeper cells would successfully activate and take over the key institutions of the state, key generals would defect, and Zelensky would either flee or would be promptly assassinated / captured by Russian operatives.

• 3. That there would be a modern blitz with little casualties in the Russian army.

• And there were a lot of reasons to believe this.

• Here are two key factors (amongst many): a) the fact that the West and the US in particular did not arm Ukraine to its teeth (in spite of months of global information campaign that correctly predicted the invasion) - this created a wrong (to be fair, only obviously so in retrospect) impression that such a passivity would continue going forward and even once the invasion was fully in motion, and that b) Zelensky was a relatively inexperienced leader in charge of an army that quickly defected back in 2014 (when Crimea’s invasion also did not receive a strong Western reaction).

• Fundamentally then, combination of bad intel (creating overconfidence in the Kremlin) from the FSB and GRU, and and perceptions of a weak and passive NATO/West (which was reinforced due to America/NATOs refusal to arm Ukraine appropriately before the war - failing to show appropriate intent, and deter Moscow by raising the cost of invasion) was the ultimate reason why Putin pulled the trigger.

• This miscalculation and not grand delusions was why Ukraine was invaded.

• Well.. no such illusions would remain vis-à-vis Poland or Berlin…

• Argument 2: Russia would never use nuclear weapons against Ukraine - it simply does not make sense: why turn the country you want to occupy into a nuclear wasteland, and put your own soldiers and new “Russian citizens’’ from the annexed regions at risk?