The Baltics Are Next If Putin Isn't Stopped

On the home front where 38% of Americans in one poll - insanely in my view - are blaming Joe Biden for high inflation while only 6% blame Vladimir Putin's war that have sent oil and gas prices soaring and disrupted the grain and other food supplies normally flowing out of Russia.  Only slightly more blame repatious oil compnies for obvious price gouging that doesn't match with actual increases in oil prices.  Never mind that America is enjoying record low unemployment levels or that in many ways the American economy is strong.  It's yet a example of too manyAmericans living with blinders on and/or having the attention span of a flea.  Defeating Putin or not has huge consequential implications and  could well impact Americans for years to come if the American public could but look at the bigger picture. Moreover, it should be a rminder of why America is blessed not to have Donald Trump in the White House.  Unlike Biden who has assembled remarkable unity among western nations, Trump would likely have already handed Ukraine over to Putin.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the importance of decisively defeating Putin in Ukraine.  While not mentioned in the column, a decisive defeat of Putin could also keep China from military aggression in Asia, starting with Taiwan. Here are highlights:

I was with President George W. Bush when he visited Lithuania in 2002, just after the Baltic states had been offered membership in NATO. Bush had been one of the strongest advocates for the inclusion of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in the alliance, which would establish the obligation of mutual defense.

At the celebration ceremony, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus presented Bush with the Cross of the Order of Vytautas the Great, his country’s highest honor. . . . But Bush’s speech that day (which I helped produce) highlighted a greater gift: “Anyone who would choose Lithuania as an enemy,” he said, “has also made an enemy of the United States of America. In the face of aggression, the brave people of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will never again stand alone.”

You could almost hear three nations exhale in relief. The Baltics have the misfortune of sitting at a bloody geopolitical crossroads, and their last two occupations were particularly horrifying. Nazi German “killing units” murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews. The Soviet Union deported half a million Baltic citizens to gulags or Siberia. The Soviets also imported ethnic Russians to change the ethnic composition of these conquered nations.

The United States never recognized Soviet Russia’s illegal occupation of the Baltics. But its and NATO’s commitment to prevent any future occupation engendered some controversy. Experts such as George Kennan thought that NATO membership for a former constitutive republic of the U.S.S.R. would needlessly provoke the Russians.

The argument over the NATO-ization of the Baltics was a prelude to disputes over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions in Ukraine and beyond. . . . Mearsheimer contended that Russian leaders “would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.”

In this view, Putin is primarily the defender of the Russian homeland. His soldiers might have the moral restraint of drunken Cossacks, but he is resisting the hubristic expansion of a hostile military alliance.

This conviction, no doubt, is widely shared among Russians, and easily exploitable by their leader. Putin has portrayed his unprovoked attack on Ukraine as another reaction to fascist aggression from the West. His deception runs along well-worn historical grooves. Over the centuries, Russia has faced invasions from across the vast, flat plain reaching from Germany to the heart of Mother Russia. For many older Russians, memories of World War II consist mainly of Western perfidy and Russian indomitability.

The Putin-NATO divide might not rise to the level of ideological conflict, but it does involve a serious argument about the future of Europe.

Most recent U.S. presidents have maintained that NATO expansion is the natural outcome of a rules-based international order. European countries that meet defined standards on good governance, economic freedom and civilian control of the military can be admitted. This has helped consolidate several democratic transitions in Eastern Europe. It has also helped rectify the terrible wrong of the Yalta agreements, which formally cut Europe into areas of dominance and threw a number of vulnerable nations to the wolves.

Putin’s contrasting goal, says former U.S. ambassador to NATO and Russia Alexander Vershbow, is “to pressure the West into accepting some sort of Yalta 2, a Europe divided into spheres of influence with limited sovereignty for everyone but Russia.” This would allow him to restore Russian hegemony over its “near abroad.”

Why is this conflict between rules and spheres so important? . . . if Putin is attempting to reconstruct the Russian sphere of influence in Europe, his success in Ukraine would pave the way for future horrors. The logic that led to Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine — no NATO in the Russian sphere — would almost certainly lead toward the Baltics.

The lesson? Ukraine, with aggressive help from NATO, must defeat Russian forces, or the United States might soon face the question: Do we really fight for Lithuania? Though we are obligated, the decision and task would not be easy. Helping draw a NATO redline at Ukraine could help the United States preserve itself from impossible choices of the future.