Earlier this week, in the Daily, I quoted a 29-year-old Ukrainian who, in remarks to The New York Times, lamented a deadly dissimilitude.
“When rockets fly in Israel, the whole world writes about it,” the young man said. “Here, rockets are flying and we don’t have American bombers that are saving the sky like over Israel.”
If you’re the White House or the US Congress, there’s no rejoinder. Or no rejoinder that won’t sound, in Kyiv or in Kharkiv or in Chernihiv on Thursday, like an admission that in the eyes of America, Israeli lives are worth more than Ukrainian lives.
There’s more to it than that, of course. Russia isn’t Iran. And the Kremlin’s salvos aren’t just fireworks shows. Putin’s strikes come with no warning and they’re intended to maximize damage, including and especially to critical infrastructure (e.g., Ukraine’s power grid). Casualties, civilians among them, are expected and acceptable.
By contrast, Iran telegraphed its intentions ahead of a planned barrage against Israel, both to the US (through a network of back channels) and regional powers, days in advance. According to a heavily-sourced, detailed account of the events that led up to last weekend’s dramatics in the Middle East, the Iranian attack was designed to over-deliver in terms of scale and scope (i.e., more missiles and drones than Israel and the US expected), while still minimizing the odds of serious damage and casualties.
Tehran, the Times‘s extensive reporting indicated, went to extraordinary lengths to convey both its obligation to respond to the Israeli strike against the Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria, and its sincerity in averting a regional war.
The strategy was clear: If Iran took steps to ensure the vast majority of its drones and missiles would be intercepted (and that any which made it through wouldn’t hit anything or anyone important), and if the IRGC stated, unequivocally, that the theocracy had no plans to attack Israel further, the US would be incentivized to talk Israel out of additional escalations. The IRGC not only knew the US would help Israel shoot down the barrage, that was apparently part of the plan.
The situation in Ukraine’s entirely different. If the US and the UK interceded directly to intercept Russian missiles and Iranian drones launched by Russia, it’d be viewed in Moscow as a de facto war declaration. The stage would be set for nuclear power conflict.
On the ground in Ukraine, the situation’s dire. Russia’s war machine is famously clunky, somewhat decrepit and in many respects mirrors Russia itself in being a rickety remnant of a failed experiment (as I’m fond of putting it). But what it lacks in grace and agility it makes up for over time in the kind of grinding, monotonous cruelty that broke the resistance in Syria and may be on the brink of breaking it in Ukraine. Many observers consider such a breaking point to be imminent.
Although the US House looked poised to finally advance an aid package for Kyiv, it’s no longer obvious that more money and more ammunition will be enough to prolong the stalemate. The fact that perpetuating a stalemate is the best the West can hope for speaks volumes on its own. Such are the perils of procrastination.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, buoyed recently by a show of support from Donald Trump, was set to move forward with assistance for Kyiv at the risk of sparking a rebellion from a right-flank he supposedly represents. The Ukraine bill would be one of five separate measures for the House to consider. Democrats indicated that if the foreign aid bills fail, it won’t be because of them.
Long story short, Johnson may have to gamble the House gavel on aid to Ukraine. A motion to vacate, most likely emanating from Marjorie Taylor Greene, could well follow any successful effort to clear the foreign aid packages. Johnson said that’s a risk he’s now willing to take.
“Listen, my philosophy is you do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may,” the Speaker said this week. “If I operated out of fear over a motion to vacate, I would never be able to do my job.”
In remarks to The Washington Post, one Republican privy to the GOP’s intractable intra-party war of attrition said “the battle lines [are] very clear: [A motion to vacate] will be brought if the Speaker’s plan proceeds.”
Hakeem Jeffries has seen (more than) enough from the other side of the aisle. “We can either confront Russian aggression in defense of democracy or we can allow the pro-Putin Republicans to appease” the Kremlin, he declared.
The tragic irony is that by waiting this long to send Ukraine ammunition, Congress might’ve increased the odds that America eventually has to make a more serious commitment. Johnson, whose son is headed to the Naval Academy later this year, acknowledged as much. “This is not a game. It’s not a joke,” he said, chiding the handful of Republicans threatening to oust him over the Ukraine aid package. “To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than Americans.”
The EU’s Josep Borrell underscored the urgency of the situation during remarks to the G-7 this week. “Concrete decisions have to be made to send Ukraine more air defense, otherwise the electricity system will be destroyed, and no country can fight without electricity,” he exhorted.
On Wednesday, nearly two-dozen people died when Russia bombed downtown Chernihiv during morning rush hour. Officials in Kyiv said the deaths could’ve been avoided if Ukraine had the Patriot systems it needs.
“These innocent people would not have been killed or injured if Ukraine had sufficient air defense capabilities,” Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Elon Musk’s “X” where, frankly, I wouldn’t be if I were a Ukrainian official. “Three days ago in the Middle East, we saw what reliable protection of human lives from missiles looks like,” Kuleba went on.
In the same interview with the Times quoted here at the outset, the young Ukrainian man was blunt in describing the juxtaposition lamented by Kuleba. “It’s hypocrisy,” he said. “It’s like some devaluation of Ukrainian lives.”
Johnson may be noted for his courage to support an ally, his oath of office would seem to support that view. The thing is, is this really the speaker we would have chosen to save?
The thing I don’t understand why Putin is acting so destructively. What can he gain? He is destroying the ability of the country to produce anything of value, including the 20% of Europe’s gain supply it once produced. If he knocks out the power grid, the country is finished. So how can he return this nation to any useful condition after he’s done. It’s one thing to want something on principle but it’s another to kill to create a useless nothing. In a fit of pique, for the sake of a principle, the Romans did the same thing to Carthage, reducing a thriving civilization to bare poisoned dirt. When Putin is done in the Ukraine it will be only a useless and ungovernable hulk with no value and millions of pissed off starving refugees. I don’t get it.
The Ukrainian people have been at the center of clashing empires since 1200. There is a reason that the Vikings, Ottomans, Greeks, Hapsburg, Poles, Germans and Soviets have fought over this piece of land. It is the best soil in all of Europe and it will never be without value despite how much destruction is wrought or mines are strewn.
Great piece H. I will say despite the horrifying situation in Ukraine I am not EXTREMELY pessimistic, only SIGNIFICANTLY so, if that is a distinction with any meaningful difference. I was in Kyiv two weeks back meeting with old friends who have been in the fight since 2014. Good people. Some of the best of us. The reality for them is unchanged. It’s a David vs. Goliath fight. And any “hope” in the US is largely gone at this point, given our toxic politics on the right and moral cowardice on the left among the national security policy architecture. Russia’s significant advantages at present remain only twofold. One is the volume of humanity they are willing to throw into the meatgrinder on their side, without care for what happens to them. And the second advantage is near total narrative dominance over the west. The former is easiest to defeat, sadly, but not easy, through further materiel assistance (not just the US but Europe as well, with increasing urgency) and a continued cadence of violence on the front lines to diminish that volume. As irrational a task as that is, it’s an absolute continued requirement. That latter advantage that Russia has is the most pernicious. There are no shortage of narratives out there telling us to give up Ukraine (they are corrupt, they are not a real country, they are nazis, they are on the verge of losing, I don’t want my tax dollars to go to…, and even more extreme tropes, etc., etc., etc.). Our fear of a nuclear exchange with Russia is not rational. IF we have a spine to accept that that is the case. Their doctrine is that any risk to their regime is a real trigger. Nothing they are doing in Ukraine is a risk to their regime. Said differently, even their total loss on the Ukrainian battlefield is not a risk to the Russian regime, unless we are extrapolating a political effect on Putin’s control from a perspective of what kind of weakness that signals. Fair enough, but this would be the same argument if he made a subsequent move on eastern Estonia, or some other NATO-covered territory, and then was successfully beaten back. We are ceding the narrative ground, which has actual effects on the battlefield, which may be our biggest failure when history looks back at all of this…
Outside of Ukraine, it seems that Putin’s invasion and other recent events have strengthened NATO. Sweden and Finland joining, increasing defense budgets elsewhere in EU, etc.
Russia’s grip on certain US political actors is a threat to NATO, but that existed before the invasion.
Let’s not forget that Ukrainians have had since June 28, 1996 to get their sh** together.
Also, that Iran only fired 300 out of 3,000 ballistic missiles capable of traveling up to 1,300 miles.
Ah, yes. The old “you should’ve had your sh-t together” response to a country facing an invasion by an erstwhile superpower. A country which, you’re reminded, surrendered their nuclear deterrent at our request.
And Israel fired only 0 of their ~90 nuclear warheads capable of turning Iran into a very large piece of glass. (Iran fired 0 of their 0 nukes.)
On 99% of days, your comments come from a very rational place. I don’t know where they come from on the 1% of other days.
What I believe is that there is, and should be, a prioritization of where the US sends our young men and women who have committed their lives to defending and protecting the United States of America- based on the level of risk to the people of the USA from Iran and Russia.
I happen to believe that there is a greater risk to the USA from Iran, et al, than from Russia.
And by the way, you were generous with your 99/1 comment, which I appreciate. I do recognize that behind it all, you truly are a gentleman.
A greater risk to the US from Iran than Russia? On what are you basing that belief because with all due respect (and you know I mean that sincerely), that’s as close to factually inaccurate as opinions can be. That is: Opinions can’t be “wrong,” but that one’s really, really close.
And who is “et al”? Hezbollah, the Shiite militias in Iraq and the Houthis? What capabilities do you suppose they possess that present “a threat” to the US? If we weren’t hanging out in Iraq and Syria for no reason, they wouldn’t pose a threat to us at all.
And contrary to popular belief, the US isn’t synonymous with Israel. Obviously, Iran’s “Axis Of Resistance” has no capacity whatsoever to target the US mainland and crucially, no desire to do so (all “death to America” posturing aside). It wasn’t Shiite militants flying planes into Manhattan and running around Paris on a murder spree, after all. It’s incredible to me that Americans continue to put more stock in what Iran and its Shiite militias say compared to what Sunni militants actually do. I don’t know about anybody else, but when I lived in large cities, I never worried about being blown up by an unhinged Iranian. What I did worry about, though, was being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, around the wrong Sunni.
Anyway, unlike Iran and it proxies, Russia has all sorts of capacity to menace the mainland, and so does Putin’s “no limits” partner in Beijing.
I’m generally a pacifist, but IMO the bullets we should send Ukraine are their old nukes, and some newer ones….along with an instant membership in NATO and all that goes with it. At least the NATO part. This should have been done when, even before, the tanks first rolled. Putin is evil and won’t stop until he’s existentially threatened or stopped dead. He’s of the ilk of Tojo and Hitler, but as you say a rickety remnant – so fortunately rather less capable (at least compared to Hitler). Israel could stand strong vs. Iran without us, and Iran is barely even up to Mussolini standards as a junior troublemaker. But allowing Putin’s Russia to win a war of conquest is accepting the geopolitical ethics of the 19th Century and before. In the coming ages where evermore powerful AI and other technologies are added to nukes and bio-weapons, that acceptance is a death wish for humanity, which the justifies the (likely way overstated) risk of nuclear confrontation today to prevent.