Category: World

Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

No genocide in the 20th century ended without armed intervention.

For more than a year now, the international community has been in denial about the implication of these two facts.

The international community has demanded that Israel stop. The international community has sued Israel. The International Criminal Court has issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli leaders. The UN Security Council has even voted unanimously for a ceasefire (with the United States vetoing, of course).

But even the most outspoken international lawyers dare not speak the name of the only thing that history suggests might actually stop Israel.

That is, of course, war—by the international community against Israel.

As months of genocide have turned into years, and the body count has soared from tens of thousands of Palestinians to hundreds of thousands with no end in sight, the international community is increasingly faced with a stark choice:

Either organize armed intervention to stop the genocide or give up on the view that genocide is against the law.

To be sure, this is not the first American-backed genocide of the Postwar era or the first time that America and Israel have ignored the demands of international institutions. But never before has the United States—the architect of the present international system—enthusiastically backed a genocide against the objection of every major organ of world government: the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court.

International lawyers like to pretend that international law is self-enforcing. They talk about “soft power”, custom, and the innate human tendency to follow rules even in the absence of an enforcement mechanism.

But human beings have another innate tendency: to measure the strength of a rule by the extent to which people are willing to fight to defend it. A rule honored only in spectacular breach stops being a rule.

The rule against genocide will not survive the extermination of two million people documented by the perpetrators themselves on social media while the world lifts a finger only to wag it back and forth.

Nor will American or Israeli policymakers save the international community from this choice.

History teaches that once a state goes all-in on genocide—as Israel and her American backer have over the past year—the only way it ends other than through war is completion.

It took the Allies’ invasion of Germany to end the Holocaust, Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia to end the killing fields, the conquest of Rwanda by the Rwandan Patriotic Front to end the Rwandan Genocide, and the intervention of Arab armies to halt Israel’s first attempt at genocide of Palestinians in 1948 during the Nakba.

By contrast, no one came to rescue the Armenians or the Bosnians. Those genocides ended only with the almost complete eradication of Armenian life in Turkey and Bosnian life in Srebrenica (until military intervention finally drove Serb units from the region).

The lesson is clear: to stop the Palestinian Genocide, the world must go to war against Israel.

States could coordinate their efforts under the General Assembly’s “uniting for peace” resolution, which authorizes international military action to quell threats to international peace when the UN Security Council fails to act.

A UN force fought a bloody war on the Korean Peninsula in the early 1950s under the authority of that resolution. And in 1956 and 1957, another UN force organized under that resolution oversaw Israel’s withdrawal from Suez and Gaza after the Suez Crisis.

Even absent a resolution of the General Assembly, the mere declaration of war by a diverse international coalition might be enough to halt the slaughter. To date, fourteen countries have joined South Africa in charging Israel with genocide before the International Court of Justice.

These include three members of the European Union (Belgium, Spain, and Ireland), four Middle Eastern countries (including Turkey and Egypt), and six Latin American countries (including Mexico, Chile, and Colombia).

If these countries were to join South Africa in declaring war, Israel would face an international coalition with a combined GDP nearly ten times her own. If the coalition were to devote just 3% of its GDP to the war, that expenditure would dwarf Israeli military spending inclusive of American transfers over the past year.

More importantly, Israel’s American backer would face an unprecedented challenge to her authority on three continents.

At a time when America has been struggling to arm Israel, face down Russia in Ukraine, and deter China, it is difficult to imagine America isolating her Latin American neighbors, her European allies, and her Middle Eastern friends all at the same time—much less going to war against them.

American support for Israel is strong, but America has never been asked to pay a meaningful price for it. America’s unwillingness to put boots on the ground in Yemen in order to reopen the Red Sea to Israeli shipping suggests that America has little appetite for going to war on Israel’s behalf—and that is before taking into account the isolationism of the incoming Trump Administration.

Faced with what would amount to a global revolt against her sponsorship of genocide in the Middle East, America would flinch, potentially without a shot being fired.

Were an American failure to curb Israel to force an international coalition to put boots on the ground in Palestine, however, the coalition should not stop with the imposition of a ceasefire. Israel could be expected to break any ceasefire at the first opportunity given the Zionist aspiration to eradicate Palestinian life throughout Palestine.

Any coalition force should seek instead to impose a permanent peace in Palestine before withdrawing. But that could only be achieved through decolonization.

Consistent with international practice in more than eighty cases since 1945, the international community would withdraw recognition from Israel—the only settler state remaining anywhere in Africa or the Middle East—and aid the State of Palestine in gaining control over Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea.

Throughout history, powerful leaders have claimed to act according to rules. But it has only been when the community has banded together to enforce the rules against the powerful that law as we understand it today has come into being. Magna Carta was born in precisely that way.

The American-backed genocide that Israel is currently carrying out is a horror. But it is also a unique opportunity for the world to experience its first real constitutional moment.

For that to happen, however, the international community must prepare for war.

Ramsi A. Woodcock teaches international law and antitrust at University of Kentucky’s Rosenberg College of Law.

Dear Law Scholar Colleagues,

As I write, Israel is systematically exterminating northern Gaza. Israeli forces have surrounded 400,000 Palestinians, machine gunning anyone attempting to flee the encirclement. F-35 fighter-bombers drop payload after payload of our bombs onto tents in which families cower, incinerating their inhabitants alive. Artillery shells fall like rain.

Israeli remote-controlled vehicles packed with explosives shudder up streets and detonate, demolishing whole city blocks teeming with refugees. Israeli killdozers bring down the remaining structures on the heads of families hiding inside.

No food or water has been allowed into the area for weeks. Swarms of Israeli quadcopter drones move across the apocalyptic landscape, gunning down the starving survivors. They hunt the children first, then bomb the adults who rush to save them.

Israeli death squads round up those who remain, separating the men and boys from the women and lining them up in front of trenches.

Those waiting to die post their goodbyes on social media, their accounts going silent one by one.

Here is the message left by one young woman shortly before Israel killed her on October 18: “Always pray for me. I don’t want to be just another number.”

Israeli forces face no meaningful resistance from Palestinians, who fight with homemade weapons.

Extrapolating from estimates in The Lancet, Israel has already killed more than 300,000 Palestinians over the past year. In the next few weeks, that number is likely to double as Israel liquidates the entire population in the north.

Our leaders are not naïve, weak, stupid, or somehow beholden to political entities that are entirely dependent upon them for security. They are the killers. They will not stop.

Against this backdrop, I invite you to join me in the statement copied below, which calls upon the international community immediately to invade and put an end to Israel.

If you would like to join the statement, please email me at ramsiwoodcock@antizionist.net and I will add your name to the list.

Please forward to your networks.

Sincerely,

Ramsi

STATEMENT

I call upon every country in the world to make war on Israel immediately and until such time as Israel has submitted permanently and unconditionally to the government of Palestine everywhere from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel is the last major Western colony remaining in Africa or the Middle East. Israel has committed genocide, extermination, and forced displacement against the native population of Palestine since her inception in 1948.

Israel has done so at greatly accelerated pace over the past year, during which she has killed in excess of 300,000 people, about 150,000 of whom were children. Israel promises to kill many times that number.

The norm against Western colonization established by wars of decolonization in the 20th century is in peril. It will survive only so long as states are willing to go to war to defend it. The world must act now. Given the stakes, each nation must prepare to strike alone.

I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and the Lebanese people, their resistance forces, their allies throughout the region, the global intifada, and, especially, my fellow law scholars in Palestine, both teachers and students, thousands of whom have been slaughtered by Israel over the past year.

Signed:

Ramsi Woodcock
University of Kentucky

PS An earlier statement can be found here.

Our country is committing a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza through the colony that we maintain in Palestine called the State of Israel. So far we have killed a minimum of 30,000 Palestinians. Twelve thousand eight hundred were children. Through our colonial forces—the Israeli military—we have dropped 30,000 bombs on, and fired 90,000 artillery shells into, a population of two million Palestinians who are completely encircled on an urban territory half the size of New York City.

Since October, we have maintained a policy of denial of access to food, water, and medicine for the entire population of Palestinians in Gaza that has brought it to the brink of famine and epidemic in a mere six months—the quickest reduction of a population to starvation since the Nazis laid siege to a city of similar population in 1941. In Leningrad, where, unlike in Gaza, the encirclement was incomplete and the besieged population maintained some control over resupply, 100,000 people starved to death in the eighth month of the siege. That will be this May for Gaza.

Our colonial forces move through Gaza at will massacring, torturing, or raping the civilians they encounter. We target children, women, the injured, the hospitalized, the starving, the elderly, Muslims, Christians, those carrying white flags, and anyone who strays into extermination zones. As a result of this holocaust, which is only beginning, 17,000 children in Gaza have been separated from their families and many are classified as “wounded children with no surviving family.” Up to a thousand children shattered by our bombs have endured amputations without anesthetic, which we refuse to allow into the enclave.

I believe that when our country commits genocide all elements of civil society have a duty to oppose it, especially institutions of higher learning, which are the keepers of wisdom in our society—and especially law schools, whose business is to define justice. As a law professor, I therefore must condemn our nation’s commission of genocide against Palestinians. But this condemnation would not be sincere were I to condemn only the slaughter in which our nation has engaged over the past six months. For it represents only a particularly active phase in a broader project of genocide of the Palestinian people associated with the creation and expansion of our colony—Israel—in Palestine. (The Nakba was an earlier particularly active phase of this project.)

We must submit Israel, immediately, permanently, and unconditionally, to the legitimate government of Palestine everywhere from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Colonization is genocide. It is impossible to take land from its native inhabitants without destroying them through murder, forced resettlement, or both. All states are a product of colonization, but to put an end to further colonization the world long ago said: no more. Each of the dozens of Western colonies created in Africa or the Middle East after 1882—the year the first Western colonizers arrived in Palestine—has been decolonized, except ours: Israel. The proper response to modern colonization is decolonization—of the entire colonized territory. Anything short of that at best legitimizes the slaughter and displacement already undertaken to create the colony and thereby calls into question the modern norm against colonization. At worst, it encourages more slaughter and further displacement of the native population, as we are witnessing today in Palestine.

I must therefore call not for a ceasefire but for the immediate and complete dismantling of our colony in Palestine. We must submit Israel, immediately, permanently, and unconditionally, to the legitimate government of Palestine everywhere from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It is not uncommon for a colony to resist attempts by the metropole to shut her down. If Israel resists, we must be prepared to use military force to compel her submission to Palestine.

I must also oppose the Zionist ideology that gave rise to the creation of Israel. The core Zionist tenet that Jewish people as a group have a right to self-determination in Palestine is racist. I reject it. Only the native population of Palestine—the Palestinians, among whom are counted adherents to the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish faiths—has a right of self-determination in Palestine. I call for the dismantling of all organizations that support Zionism in the United States and around the world.

I note that, as a colonized population, the Palestinians alone have a right to engage in armed struggle within their territory, which includes all of the territory of Israel. The operation carried out by Palestinian armed forces on October 7, 2023 was a legitimate exercise of that right. Palestinian forces broke out of the military encirclement of Gaza that had been maintained by our colonial army for decades, killed hundreds of soldiers in that army, including dozens of officers and four colonels, and seized control of the headquarters of the military division maintaining the encirclement.

I believe that Palestinians’ seizure of civilian hostages was a proportionate response to our colonial forces’ decades-long practice of taking Palestinian civilian hostages, including children, and holding them under horrific conditions. Our colonial forces held more than 1,200 Palestinian civilian hostages immediately prior to October 7 and have taken additional hostages, including children, since then. Colonist civilians seeking redress for harm inflicted upon them by Palestinian armed forces must apply for justice to a competent Palestinian or international tribunal, just as a civilian anywhere in the world seeking redress for harms committed by the armed forces of a legitimate government within its territory must apply to that government or an international court for redress. Neither we, nor our colonial forces in Palestine, nor colonist civilians, have a right to seek redress through violence.

The only thing that is perhaps unusual about this colonization project is that we prefer not to call it colonization, because today the world recognizes that colonization is unacceptable. 

Is Israel really our colony? Are her actions ours? The answer is unmistakably “yes”. We created Israel in 1948 by recognizing the Nakba—the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians carried out by Zionist forces—as an act of statehood, something the rest of the world would not have accepted without our leadership. We extend to Israel a de facto guarantee of territorial integrity that appears every bit as strong as the one that the fifty states enjoy, and without which it is doubtful that Israel would continue to exist. We rush aircraft carrier battle groups and unlimited supplies of weaponry to Israel whenever she is threatened—and unlike our support for our close ally, Britain, during World War Two, we provide this support free of charge.

We also bomb and invade Israel’s enemies. Our legislature casts unanimous or near unanimous votes in Israel’s favor on matters that concern her security—a level of bipartisanship that one might otherwise expect only if the territorial integrity of the United States themselves were under threat. We permit Israel’s government, alone among putatively foreign governments, to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections. Israel is the largest recipient of our financial aid of any nation since World War Two, so far receiving twice what we gave all of Europe as part of the Marshall Plan.

The history of colonialism is replete with examples of metropoles that maintained a more distant relationship with their colonies than we maintain with Israel. The only thing that is perhaps unusual about this colonization project is that we prefer not to call it colonization, because today the world recognizes that colonization is unacceptable. 

The slaughter that our nation is conducting today in Palestine has been enabled by the failure of earlier decolonization movements to hold colonizers accountable. Accordingly, I call also for the prosecution of all Americans and Israelis who have provided material support for our colonial project in Palestine, especially President Biden and all those who have participated in military action against Palestinians at any time, including as members of Israeli military forces. This also includes major media organizations in the United States, such as The New York Times, which have incited genocide by reporting as fact claims that Palestinian armed forces killed colonists’ babies or raped colonist women on October 7—claims for which there is no evidence. I note that international criminal tribunals have convicted media executives for incitement to genocide in the past.

Finally, I call for the resignation of every university president in the United States who has failed over six months of our nation’s mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza publicly to condemn the slaughter. I expect our university heads to object when our nation commits genocide.

Free Palestine.

Signed:

Ramsi A. Woodcock
Associate Professor of Law
J. David Rosenberg College of Law
University of Kentucky

The West has careened from fear to confidence in Ukraine.

The fear may well return.

On February 25, 2022, the day after the present Russian invasion of Ukraine commenced, the West feared Russia.

The West feared escalation.

The West feared nuclear war.

And so the West would commit only to very limited supply of arms to Ukraine. Antitank small arms. But no tanks. No artillery. No big missiles.

Then Russia’s conventional forces struggled in the field. Russia withdrew her forces from the north and gave up on the reduction of Kyiv.

Now the West’s confidence grew. Russia appeared to be a paper tiger. And now the arms poured in. Artillery. Missile systems. Tanks.

But it was unclear why Russia’s poor showing as a conventional military so stoked Western confidence, because the threat to the West had always been a nuclear threat.

On February 25, 2022, no one thought that Russia might retaliate against the Western arming of Ukraine by undertaking a conventional invasion, of, say, Britain.

What the West feared was that Russia might respond by using battlefield nuclear weapons according to her doctrine of escalating to deescalate. She might drop a nuclear weapon on Kyiv.

And then what?

For the West not to respond by dropping a nuke on Russian forces would be to condone Russia’s use of the weapons. But to respond in that way might draw a nuclear response from Russia.

There would be nuclear war.

The peculiar thing about the resurgence of Western confidence after Russia’s conventional forces struggled is that Russia’s poor performance with conventional arms didn’t change the nuclear calculus.

Unless one wished to infer from Russia’s difficulty hitting Ukrainian targets with her long range missiles, or her inability to achieve air superiority, that Russia was in fact incapable of using her nuclear weapons at all, there was no basis in Russia’s weakness in conventional arms to support the view that Russia was not a threat to the West after all.

Indeed, as we have been reminded by Russia’s renewed threats to use nuclear weapons in response to her loss of the city of Izium, her conventional military failures made her more likely to resort to nuclear war.

If the West feared nuclear war with Russia on February 25, 2022, the West ought to have feared nuclear war with Russia even more on April 2, 2022, once Russia had retreated from Kyiv. If the West thought it unwise to supply Ukraine with weapons on February 25, 2022, then the West should have thought it even less wise to supply Ukraine with weapons in April 2022.

Instead, the West sent more.

I do not mean to say that the West should not have sent more weapons. But I do mean to say that the West ought to have been aware, in sending them, that the West was increasing the risk of nuclear war. The arming of Ukraine ought to have been carried out with a sense of courage—with an awareness that great and increasing risks were being undertaken in the interest of winning a struggle with a nuclear adversary.

Instead, it was undertaken with a sense of relief and confidence. It was undertaken out of the irrational belief that Russia’s conventional military weakness meant that supplying the weapons would not be as dangerous as had at first appeared.

Which is a problem, because it suggests that West will not be ready when, as is increasingly likely, Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

For if Russia were to do that, the West would find itself right back in the scary world of February 25, 2022, a world in which the West’s first instinct was not courage but rather fear and paralysis.

If the West’s basis for standing up to Russia over the past six months has been the belief that Russia is no real threat, then when Russia demonstrates that she remains a threat—indeed an existential threat—the West’s basis for standing up to Russia will disappear.

If it seemed obvious to the Biden Administration in the lead-up to the invasion that drawing a red line and committing to arm Ukraine would be unwise, because it could lead to nuclear war, then it will seem equally obvious to the Biden Administration on the morning after a nuclear attack by Russia on Ukraine that responding in kind would be unwise, because it could lead to nuclear war.

But if the Biden Administration does not respond, then the West will lose.

The problem with the past six months of Western policy toward Russia is that it has been built on the fantasy that Russia’s inability to get tanks to Kyiv means that she is not a nuclear threat.

In fact she remains a grave nuclear threat, and the West has been fighting a proxy war against her. And not just any proxy war, but the supremely dangerous form in which only one side believes that there is a proxy involved. Russia does not think this is a proxy war. She thinks that Ukraine (unlike, say, Afghanistan) is hers.

When the West decided in April to arm Ukraine in earnest, the West decided to escalate a conflict between the West and a nuclear adversary. The West can only win such a nuclear struggle if the West knows that it is in fact a nuclear struggle.

And only if the West is willing to risk the West’s annihilation in order to win.

On February 25, 2022, the West was not prepared to take such a risk.

Is the West ready to take it now?

Many have drawn the conclusion from Russia’s failures in Ukraine that the United States would have been more successful—because the United States were more successful in their own most recent military adventure against a functioning state: the invasion of Iraq.

To see whether such a conclusion is sound, it is useful to consider whether the Iraqis took the same steps as the Ukrainians to defend their country—and if they did not, whether those steps would have been effective in Iraq.

If Iraq did take the same steps, or they would not have been effective, then the comparison between Ukraine and Iraq is a good one: if America beat Iraq it could probably have beaten Ukraine as well.

But if Iraq did not take those steps, and they would have been effective, then American success in Iraq may not tell us much about how America would have fared against Ukraine.

A RAND post-mortem on the Iraq War is most helpful in this regard. It suggests that Iraq, unlike Ukraine, failed to mount a basic defense of its territory—one that would have seriously hampered the American invasion—which in turn suggests that American success in Iraq tells us little about whether America would have been more successful than Russia in Ukraine.

The report points out five basic mistakes that Iraq made, which would have slowed the American advance, and which Ukraine has not made.

First, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, much of the Iraqi military was stationed in the north or the east of the country—the opposite of where they needed to be to counter a massive, well-publicized American buildup of troops to the south and west.

No one seems fully to understand why Iraq did this. But it is as if Ukraine had stationed all of its units on its borders with Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland prior to the Russian invasion.

Ukraine did not, of course, do that; on the eve of the invasion, its troops were stationed in the east of the country, where the Russian invasion force was massed. If Iraq had deployed its forces to the south and west, American forces would have faced a much more numerous and concentrated enemy during the Iraq War.

Second, Iraq failed systematically to prepare to blow up ports, bridges, dams and oil fields to slow the American advance.

This was not because American planes or special operations forces had prevented demolition plans from being carried out. There simply were no plans.

As RAND puts it: “Even though the Iraqi strategy was to impede the U.S. march toward Baghdad, measures that could have slowed the American advance, such as the systematic mining of roads, destruction of bridges, and flooding of choke points, were not part of the Iraqi defense scheme.”

Ukraine has not made this mistake—at least not entirely. While Ukraine failed to scuttle ships in the Port of Mariupol in advance of the Russian invasion, she did mine the port. And she did blow bridges and dams, slowing the Russian advance on Kyiv and forcing Russia to engage in costly bridging operations in the east of the country.

If Iraq had done the same—in particular, if she had blown the Hadithah Dam, flooding the Karbala gap, which was the main bottleneck along the American line of advance—the invasion would have been slowed.

According to RAND, “[t]he gap to the west of Karbala was the only feasible route of advance as the area to the east of Karbala and around the Euphrates River crossing was a ‘nightmare of bogs and obstacles.’ . . . Had the dam been breached, the resulting flood would have made an armored movement through the gap impossible.”

The report continues: “However, there is no evidence that the Iraqis ever intended to breach the Hadithah Dam, as they had ample opportunity to do so before the Rangers seized it.”

Third, Iraq made virtually no effort to defend against the American advance on the most defender-favorable terrain in the country: its cities, which offer excellent concealment from air attack, among other advantages.

RAND reports: “According to [an American researcher], the [Iraqi] Regular Army and Republican Guard commanders his team interviewed [after the war] found the entire concept of city fighting unthinkable. [The researcher] quoted one Iraqi colonel as saying: ‘Why would anyone want to fight in a city? Troops couldn’t defend themselves in cities.’”

Indeed, almost none of the Iraqi army had trained for urban combat and its leaders hardly considered the option. And the sole Republican Guard unit stationed inside Baghdad failed to prepare any serious strong-points in the city. According to RAND:

A survey of Iraqi defenses in Baghdad found no defensive preparations, such as barricades, wall reinforcement, loophole construction to permit firing through walls, or wire entanglements, in the interiors of buildings and few, if any, obstacles, minefields, and barriers on the streets. What prepared fighting positions existed were typically outdoors and exposed. The protection surrounding such positions was often one sandbag deep. As a consequence, the militias and Special Republican Guard units often fought in the open or from easily penetrated defensive positions.

Stephen T. Hosmer, Why the Iraqi Resistance to the Coalition Invasion Was so Weak 51, 71 (2007).

Iraq did plan on using militias to defend cities using small arms. But instead of using the urban terrain to their advantage, these units engaged in suicidal frontal assaults on armored vehicles.

Ukraine has not made these mistakes. While it is difficult to judge the preparations made by Ukraine for the defense of downtown Kyiv—which seemed to be ad hoc at best—the urban defense of Mariupol appears to have been well executed. It slowed the Russian advance for three months despite heavy bombardment from both Russian strategic bombers and artillery.

A bit of arithmetic suggests that if Iraq had taken urban defense seriously as well, American casualties would have been very high and the Iraq War—which lasted six weeks—would have been greatly prolonged.

While the ratio of Iraqi to American casualties in the invasion was 40 to 1 (according to calculations based on numbers supplied by Wikipedia), virtually none of that fighting involved urban combat. The following year, however, when the United States spent another six weeks wresting control of a single small Iraqi city–Fallujah—from lightly-armed Iraqi insurgents who used the urban terrain to advantage, the ratio of Iraqi to American casualties fell nearly to parity: 4.45 to 1 (again based on casualty figures in Wikipedia). (The Iraq War, like the earlier Gulf War—which I touch upon below—was an American-led coalition affair; the numbers I report for “American” troop strength and casualties in these wars are coalition-wide numbers.)

If Iraq had concentrated its 1.3 million combatants in its cities, 292,000 American casualties—approximately the size of the entire American invasion force—would have been required to kill or wound them all. (And, if the numbers in Wikipedia are any guide, virtually all of the Iraqi combatants in Fallujah did have to be killed or wounded before the United States were able to declare victory in that battle.)

Even if we reduce the number of casualties required for victory by 75% to make liberal allowance for desertions and the application of measures not employed in Fallujah—such as the carpet bombing of Iraqi cities—America would have needed to sustain about 50,000 casualties to take Iraq via urban combat—roughly the level of casualties that Russia has sustained so far in the invasion of Ukraine (assuming 15,000 Russian dead and a 3-to-1 ratio of wounded to dead).

Moreover, the amount of time required to reduce Iraqi cities would have been great. American forces entered the Battle of Fallujah with the 3-to-1 ratio of attackers to defenders generally thought required for a successful advance. But at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, Iraqi combatants outnumbered American combatants by more than four to one—1.3 million Iraqis under arms to about 300,000 Americans.

It would not, therefore, have been possible for American forces to reduce every Iraqi urban area at the same time. Instead, America would have had to proceed piecemeal—perhaps even city-by-city—in order to achieve favorable attacker-to-defender ratios, greatly increasing the duration of the campaign.

Fourth, apparently few in the Iraqi military could hit a target. As RAND puts it with endearing understatement: “Coalition forces were also fortunate in that Iraqi shooting accuracy was so poor. This bad marksmanship was apparent in both Iraqi regular military and militia units, and it was frequently commented on by U.S. forces.”

Many Iraqi units had no live fire training in the year before the invasion and units that did allocated four or ten bullets per soldier for target practice.

The marksmanship problem extended to elite Iraqi tankers. According to the report:

At Objective Montgomery west of Baghdad, an elite Republican Guard tank battalion fired at least 16 T-72 main gun rounds at ranges of as little as 800-1000 meters at the fully exposed flanks of the U.S. 3-7 Cavalry’s tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles—with zero hits at what amounted to point[-]blank range for weapons of this caliber. In fact, the nearest miss fell 25 meters short of the lead American troop commander’s tank. Similar results are reported from American and British combatants throughout the theater of war, and across all Iraqi weapon types employed in [the war].

Stephen T. Hosmer, Why the Iraqi Resistance to the Coalition Invasion Was so Weak 72–73 (2007) (quoting Congressional testimony).

Ukraine has not had this problem.

One of the success stories of the Ukrainian defense against Russia has been the accuracy of her soldiers’ fire, particularly artillery. This has, of course, been greatly aided by the use of drones. But for coordinates relayed by a drone to be useful, an artillery team must be able actually to hit them. The large number of Russian armored vehicles and soldiers destroyed by Ukraine further testifies to the Ukrainian military’s overall competence at aiming and shooting a variety of different weapons.

If the Iraqi army had actually been able to hit American tanks at point blank range, American losses during the invasion would have been rather higher than they were.

Fifth, the Iraqi army apparently made no attempt to attack lightly-armored American supply lines during the initial invasion itself. (That changed during the insurgency that followed.)

Indeed, Iraqi units purposely bypassed supply vehicles to mount suicidal assaults on armored vehicles instead. This inattention to supply is striking because American supply lines were stretched very thin during the invasion, as commanders chose to bypass numerous cities in their sprint to Baghdad.

As RAND puts it:

The fast-moving Coalition combat forces depended on extended supply lines through areas that had not been fully cleared of enemy forces. However, the Iraqis apparently had no plan and made little or no attempt to interdict those lines of supply by having militia and other forces attack the thin-skinned tankers and other supply vehicles supporting the U.S. advance. Instead, the militia forces were directed to attack U.S. combat elements, particularly the tanks and APCs leading the U.S. advance.

Stephen T. Hosmer, Why the Iraqi Resistance to the Coalition Invasion Was so Weak 55 (2007) (quoting Congressional testimony).

The Ukrainian military has not made this mistake. A successful Ukrainian campaign against Russian supply lines, which, like American supply lines in Iraq, were seriously stretched because Russia bypassed cities on the way to the capital, helped win Ukraine the battle for Kyiv.

Had the Iraqi military targeted American supply lines, the American invasion would have been delayed. Indeed, it is striking that Russia, like America in Iraq, gambled that she could achieve capitulation via a sprint to the capital despite the rear-area vulnerability this creates. America won her gamble. Russia lost hers.

Overall, then, Russia has faced a much different foe from the one the United States faced in Iraq.

Ukraine had forces stationed roughly where she needed them to mount a defense, denied Russia infrastructure, used urban terrain to her advantage, showed competence in the use of her weapons systems, and attacked supply lines. And several of these actions—denial of infrastructure (e.g., bridges), accurate fire, and attacks on supply—have been credited as reasons for Ukraine’s success thus far in the war.

Iraq did none of these things. Indeed, Iraq was incompetent, whereas Ukraine has proven at least minimally competent.

Had Iraq been a minimally competent opponent, the results of the Iraq War might have been very different—and the image of American invincibility might have been tarnished in the way that Russia’s military image has been greatly tarnished by Ukrainian resistance.

(Of course, America’s struggles responding to the subsequent Iraqi insurgency demonstrated the limits of of the American military as an occupying force. But my interest here is in the ability of the military to prosecute a successful invasion rather than in its ability to prosecute a successful occupation—if successful occupations are ever possible in the absence of genocide.)

Russia’s failure to achieve air superiority in Ukraine has been striking, and it does seem reasonable to assume that America would have achieved air superiority—and would have carried out vastly more devastating air assaults in Ukraine than has the Russian Air Force.

But it is not clear that air superiority would have won the war for Russia so much as shifted the battlefield from the countryside and the suburbs to Ukraine’s cities.

Indeed, the American experience in the first Gulf War (as opposed to the Iraq War), suggests that air superiority is no silver bullet against a minimally competent defender such as Ukraine even outside of cities.

The Gulf War of 1991 was a contest between thousands of tanks and armored vehicles on both sides undertaken in the deserts of Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. It was preceded by six weeks of continuous air attack conducted by the United States on Iraqi forces, during five of which American planes had air superiority.

Despite this, many Iraqi armored units remained near full strength when the ground invasion began, forcing American ground units to destroy thousands of Iraqi tanks and armored vehicles in combat.

According to a researcher:

The Iraqi armor force that survived the air campaign was still very large by historical standards, and many of these survivors fought back when attacked by Coalition ground forces. It is now known that about 2000 Iraqi tanks and 2100 other armored vehicles survived the air campaign and were potentially available to resist the Coalition ground attack . . . . By contrast with these . . . Iraqi armored vehicles, the entire German army in Normandy had fewer than 500 tanks in July 1944.

Stephen Biddle, Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict, 21 International Security 139, 149, 152 (1996).

Moreover, simulations conducted by the American military after the Gulf War showed that if Iraqi armored units had been minimally competent—that is, had they bothered to dig trenches for their tanks instead of hiding them behind sand berms and had they posted sentries to alert them when the invasion started—they would have inflicted more casualties on American invasion forces than American forces would have been able to inflict upon them, notwithstanding the inferior range and target acquisition systems of Iraqi tanks.

As the same researcher recounts:

Western armies dig their fighting positions into the earth below grade, and hide the soil removed in excavation. The [elite Iraqi Republican] Guard, on the other hand, simply piled sand into loose berms, or mounds, on the surface of the ground around combat vehicles and infantry positions. This gave away the defenders’ locations from literally thousands of meters away, as the berms were the only distinctive feature of an otherwise flat landscape, without providing any real protection against the fire this inevitably drew. Loose piles of sand cannot stop modern high-velocity tank rounds. In fact, they barely slow them down. U.S. crews in [one battle] reported seeing 120 mm tank rounds pass through Iraqi berms, through the Iraqi armored vehicle behind the berm, and off into the distance. No U.S. tank crew would leave itself so exposed.

Stephen Biddle, Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict, 21 International Security 158-59 (1996)

He continues:

Iraqi covering forces systematically failed to alert their main defenses of the U.S. approach, allowing even Republican Guard units to be taken completely by surprise. Going back at least as far as World War I, all Western armies have used covering forces—whether observation posts, forward reconnaissance screens, or delaying positions—to provide warning to the main defenses that they are about to be attacked. Ideally, these covering forces serve other functions as well (such as stripping away the opponent’s recon elements, slowing the attacker’s movement, or channeling the assault), but the minimum function they must perform is to notify the main defense of an attacker’s approach. This is not difficult. A one-word radio message is enough to sound the alarm. Even less can work if commanders agree in advance that failure to check in at specified times will be taken as warning of attack. The brevity of the message makes it virtually impossible to jam; the procedural backup of interpreting silence as warning means that even a dead observer can provide an alert. Yet at [the Gulf War battle known as] 73 Easting, for example, the Iraqi main position received no warning of the [American tanks’] approach. A few observation posts were deployed well forward of the main defenses, but these were evidently destroyed without sending any messages, and without the local commander interpreting silence as evidence of attack.

Stephen Biddle, Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict, 21 International Security 160 (1996)

If, as those simulations showed, a minimally competent Iraqi army not making such basic mistakes and fielding mid-twentieth-century-vintage Soviet armor could have made the Gulf War a costly affair for the United States military, notwithstanding American air superiority over a desert terrain affording nowhere to hide, then a minimally competent Ukrainian military operating in Ukraine’s rather more defender-friendly terrain of farms and forests would likely be able to inflict substantial losses on an American invasion force having air supremacy.

And that’s before the fight would even make it to the cities.

The fact is that, against a minimally competent foe, even one with somewhat inferior technology and no air defenses, attacking is hard.

One gets a hint of this when one considers that the great advances of World War Two were, for the most part, executed only with the aid of staggering amounts of men.

To dislodge the 100,000 German soldiers holding the Seelow Heights on the route to Berlin, for example, the Soviets flung a million men at them and took thousands of casualties.

By contrast, both the American invasion force in the Iraq War and the Russian invasion force in Ukraine were smaller in size than the forces mustered by the defenders (300,000 against 1.3 million in Iraq and 225,000 against 300,000 in Ukraine according to Wikipedia).

One should expect, then, difficulties for the invader, regardless how competent the invader may be—or how advanced its weaponry. America was fortunate enough to dodge these difficulties by picking a foe that was not minimally competent.

The lesson of Iraq was not American invincibility but rather that the most important choice to make in planning a military adventure is whom to fight.

The difference between American success and Russian failure in these conflicts may be due to no more than that the United States chose wisely—and Russia poorly.

Some people think the Biden Administration hasn’t said enough to deter Russia from escalating in Ukraine. Others think the Administration has said too much to deter Russia from escalating in Ukraine.

But the problem isn’t with what the Administration is saying.

The problem is that the Administration—or, more accurately, America—isn’t willing to die either to restore America’s erstwhile sole great power status or to save Ukraine.

If America isn’t willing to die for status or for Ukraine, there’s not much America can do to deter Russia from using gas, plagues, or nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Too Much Talk

Some Europeans—and Mitt Romney—argue that the Biden Administration’s flat renunciation of direct military intervention in Ukraine is a lost opportunity to deter Russia through “strategic ambiguity”. The Biden Administration ought instead not to make a promise about intervention either way, they say.

The trouble with this view is that it assumes the Russians take the Administration at its word when the Administration renounces direct intervention. But there is no reason whatsoever for Russia to do that. For there would be almost no consequences for the Administration were it to break its word.

If the Administration’s promise not to intervene is a promise to anyone, it is a promise to Russia, the very country the Administration would threaten to attack were the Administration to break its word. The threat to go to war would alienate Russia whether the Administration broke a promise to make it or not.

Of course, some Americans who hope for peace would feel betrayed by the Administration’s change of policy. But while the Administration surely would lose some antiwar voters, it is not at all clear that the Administration would lose them because the Administration broke a promise rather than because the Administration threatened war.

The Biden Administration’s promise not to intervene is what game theorist’s call “cheap talk”—talk for the cost of a ruble. It’s an incredible threat. The mere fact that the Administration has stated that it would not go to war to defend Ukraine erects no barrier whatsoever to an Administration decision to go to war to defend Ukraine.

If Russia is at all wise—and she may not be—she should not and will not take the Administration at its word when it promises not to go to war to defend Ukraine. It is a mistake to suppose that the Administration’s message is not already ambiguous. From the Russian perspective, it must be ambiguous.

It is more than passing naive for the Europeans—and Mitt Romney—to assume that the Administration would not lie, or change its mind.

Switching to “strategic ambiguity”—refusing to take a position on intervention—cannot help. A worthless promise not to intervene is as ambiguous as silence. There are no consequences for the Administration of breaking either.

Indeed, the only thing the Administration could say that would be credible, and so might affect the Russian calculus regarding escalation, would be to promise to intervene in the event that Russia gasses, infects, or nukes Ukraine.

That threat would be credible because a failure to abide by a promise of direct military support for Ukraine would call into question the Administration’s commitment to protecting any other ally, especially NATO members. And that in turn would prevent NATO from acting with resolve in its dealings with Russia.

So the cost to the Administration of breaking its promise would be catastrophic, creating an incentive for the Administration to abide by its promise, and so making its threat credible.

The Administration has not in fact promised to defend Ukraine because the Administration is not sure that it is willing to die for either of the things that going to war with Russia would do: restore America’s erstwhile position as the world’s sole great power or protect Ukraine.

But if the Administration were willing to die for status or Ukraine, then it would be advisable for the Administration to make the threat, because ambiguity about resolve to go to war, when such resolve actually exists, is dangerous. If Russia does not wish to go to war with the United States, then ambiguity might lead Russia to trigger a war that neither the United States nor Russia wants.

So strategic ambiguity is a bad idea all the way around. It gets the Administration nothing in the event that the Administration does not wish to go to war—because a worthless promise not to fight is no different than ambiguity—and could well cause a war that neither side wants in the event that the Administration does wish to go to war.

Too Little Talk

Some argue, by contrast, that the Administration ought to start “drawing red lines,” presumably by making explicit that the Administration will escalate if Russia gasses, infects, or nukes Ukraine.

But it is not clear that these people understand that this is not a question of words—what to say in a crisis—but rather of resolve. If the Administration draws red lines as a bluff, and Russia calls that bluff, then Russia will be able to destroy or seriously weaken NATO without firing a shot at any NATO member.

Indeed, that is what happened with the Obama Administration’s red line over chemical weapons in Syria. Russia called the Administration’s bluff, and the Administration failed to follow through, accepting a deal for Syria to destroy its stockpiles of chemical weapons as a face-saving device that fooled no one.

Coming after America’s failure to respond to the Russian invasions of Crimea and the Donbas, the Administration’s non-response put the last nail in the coffin of America’s sole great power status. Thanks to the Administration’s bluff, Russia was able to achieve this without having to fire a shot at the United States.

The Administration should only draw red lines if it has resolved to enforce them. In the context of the present war, that means that the Administration should draw red lines only if it is willing to go to nuclear war to defend them.

If not, then the Administration’s overall approach has, I think, been wise. The Administration has made a promise not to go to war that it does not need to keep.

And no promise to go to war that it cannot keep.

Russia has reportedly been demanding a promise of neutrality from Ukraine in exchange for a ceasefire. Ukrainian neutrality would leave Russia better off than she is currently, for at the moment Ukraine is a Western march: allied with the West without being under the West’s security umbrella. A neutral Ukraine would not be under the Western security umbrella either, but also could not act as a Western ally in military affairs.

But neutrality is not just something that a country declares.

To be neutral, a country must posses sufficient resources to defend herself against all potential attackers. If not, then, even if she declares neutrality, a threat will cause her to seek help from others, and her neutrality will disappear. Switzerland and Finland were able to be neutrals in the 20th century because they are hard to dominate. Switzerland is defended by her mountains. The Finns showed their capacity for self defense in the Winter War.

So, how to make a Ukrainian promise of neutrality credible?

Replace her nuclear weapons, and give her the means to launch them. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine had about 1,700 nuclear warheads. In 1994, she agreed to destroy them in exchange for a Russian promise “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” It is only just that, given Russia’s breach of promise, Russia should restore Ukraine to the nuclear position Ukraine once occupied.

But not only is it just, it is also good for Russia. For a nuclear Ukraine would have the resources to defend herself against all potential attackers, making her a true candidate for neutrality.

Today, Ukraine is a Western march because Ukraine needs Western help to defend herself against Russia. In exchange for that help, she must be willing to tolerate a Western military presence on her soil (indeed, she is begging for that presence). If Ukraine continues to be a Western march after the war, Russia can be certain that Ukraine would permit the West to transit through Ukrainian territory en route to attacking Russia.

But if Ukraine were to have nuclear weapons after the war, then Ukraine would no longer need the West to help her defend herself against Russia. And if Ukraine would not need the West, the likelihood that she would allow the West to transit through her territory en route to making war against Russia would be reduced. Indeed, given the potential for such an attack to spiral into a nuclear conflict, and the fact that Ukraine would then have nuclear weapons and so be a natural target of Russia in such a conflict, Ukraine would have a strong incentive to preserve her neutrality and not to permit such transit.

Nukes mean independence. And independence is a prerequisite of neutrality. If all Russia seeks from Ukraine is neutrality then it is in Russia’s interest to reward a Ukrainian promise of neutrality not just with a complete withdrawal of troops from Ukraine but with 1,700 free nuclear weapons, and the means to launch them—both at the West, and back at Russia.

If Russia won’t consider renuclearizing Ukraine, then Russia’s demand of neutrality is not sincere. Indeed, if the reports that Russia is also demanding demilitarization are correct, then what Russia really wants is to make Ukraine a Russian march—a territory through which Russia can transit at will but to which Russia need make no promises—for example, of mutual defense—in exchange for that power.

There is nothing so helpful to national defense as a borderland. In Europe, these were called marches. The fight over Ukraine is a fight for a march, and this explains why the West is reluctant to intervene militarily.

You can dig moats, build walls, and buy tanks, but none of these will raise your rivals’ costs of attacking you quite like a march.

A march puts space between you and your enemy, and so forces your enemy to cross that space to reach you, costing time and energy. The Germanic tribes maintained tracts of empty territory along the East bank of the Rhine for this purpose. Roman armies had to cover much territory before they could harm them.

But often a march gives you something even more valuable: people willing to fight and die to keep your enemy out of the march—people who aren’t yours, and whose deaths cost you nothing. People who are expendable.

But also loyal. You can send your own armies through a march unmolested. But the population will make your enemies pay for every square inch they wish to cross. A march facilitates your offense and substitutes for your defense. It is at once the least expensive and most effective form of protection available to a great power.

Post-Soviet Ukraine has long been in danger of becoming a march. After the collapse of the Soviet Union she did not join the mutual defense pact of the former Soviet states. Because that pact would have obligated Russia to come to her aid in the event of invasion by the West, it would have made her a part of Russia, in the sense that an attack on her would have been an attack on Russia. But Ukraine also did not become a part of NATO or the EU. She belonged to neither, which meant that she could become a march of either.

Russia seems to have thought that she could make a Russian march out of Ukraine. But, after 2004, or at any rate 2014, when Russia first attacked Ukraine, Ukraine became a Western march instead. She welcomed Western military aid and no doubt would have been delighted had the United States offered to station troops in her territory. But she would have, and indeed was, fighting any Russian encroachment upon her territory whether she received support from the West or not.

Thus between 2004 and 2014, the West received a windfall in the form of a march that it had obtained for free thanks to the aspirations of Ukrainians to ally themselves with the West as opposed to Russia.

The West will not intervene militarily to stop Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine because the West is better off letting Ukraine do the West’s fighting for it. That is the advantage of having a march. Why should the West give it up? If the West is not thinking this way, it is, at any rate, acting this way; its refusal to go to war to protect Ukraine is, clearly, selfish.

The alternative to having a march is exposing yourself to your enemy, which is why marches are always better if you can get them. If the West had undertaken to guarantee Ukraine’s security against Russia, then Ukraine would have become the West, and a strike by Russia at Ukraine would have been a strike directly at the Western belly, with all of the danger that entails.

The West is held together by mutual defense pacts—those between NATO members and those between European Union members. A failure to defend a member calls the entire union, and hence the existence of the West itself, into question. Unity may be difficult to muster with the threat of nuclear war hanging over the decision.

How much safer the West is in keeping its belly tucked safely behind Ukraine! The Russian invasion of Ukraine does not force the West to prove its unity or strength on the battlefield.

So when a Ukrainian says to the West: “what is the difference between sending us guns or volunteer soldiers and deploying your tanks directly against Russia?”, the West’s answer is: cost. It is far less expensive and less risky for us if you do the fighting for us.

Bleed Russia until her government collapses. Bleed her until her people lose the will to fight. Bleed her until she lacks the ability to fight. So we will never have to face her directly.

And Ukraine is compelled to respond: “nevermind; we will defend you gladly, and for free!” For Ukraine is in the terrible position occupied by nearly all marches: she fears one neighbor more than the other, and the other neighbor knows it.

What makes Ukraine a Western march and not a Russian march is that she fears Russia more than she fears war. So she has no leverage in negotiating the terms according to which she defends the West.

She cannot say to the West: “give us a share of the vast savings in blood and treasure that we confer upon you by doing your fighting for you; if you do not, we will not fight for you.” The West would know this to be a bluff. Ukraine will fight Russian aggression whether the West helps or not, and so she cannot hope to appropriate any of the benefits that her self-defense incidentally confers upon the West.

Comparison with Poland in 1939

What Ukraine would have needed in order to avoid becoming a march is what Poland thought she had in 1939: a third party to guarantee her safety.

Poland was sandwiched between Germany and Russia. Rather than become a march to either, she entered into an alliance with the West—that is, Britain and France—which undertook to guarantee her security.

If this guarantee had been credible, then if Germany had wanted Poland as a march against Russia, Germany would have had to pay Poland a pretty penny for her aid. Indeed, Germany would have had to guarantee Poland’s security, since that is what the West was already doing, meaning that Germany would not really have been able to make a march of Poland at all, at any price. And if Russia had wanted Poland as a march, Russia would have had to do the same and more, in order to outbid Germany.

In the event, however, neither Germany nor Russia considered the Western guarantee to be credible. And although the guarantee turned out to be real enough in the end, in the sense that Britain and France did declare war on Germany when Germany invaded Poland, it turned out still to be false as a practical matter, because World War Two never did save Poland. She regained her freedom from Russia only with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Despite the incredibility of the Western guarantee, Germany and Russia ought, nevertheless, to have been content to let Poland alone, acting as march to neither. For, unlike Ukraine, which fears Russia more than the West (if she fears the West at all), Poland feared both Russia and Germany and would have, and did, fight the encroachments of both. That fact of mutual animosity provided some safety to both Germany and Russia vis a vis each other—a protective buffer between two powers—even if less than the safety that would come to one from having Poland as a march against the other.

But instead Germany and Russia decided to divide Poland up between themselves, thereby exposing themselves to each other. Russia learned shortly just how unwise it is for a weaker power to expose herself directly across a border to a stronger power. And of course the dividing up triggered the Western declaration of war, which, though it could not save Poland, ultimately was Germany’s undoing.

Marchdom for Ukraine Is a Departure for the West . . .

The West’s decision to treat Ukraine as a march flies in the face of decades of Western post-Soviet policy toward the West’s borderlands with Russia. For whenever the West has had the opportunity to swallow its marches—by promising to defend them, and hence incorporating them into itself—it has.

If one starts from the north and works down the European border with Russia, one encounters, first, Finland, which was non-aligned during the Cold War, relying on the lesson in military resilience that it taught both the Soviets and the Germans during World War Two to operate as a neutral—a country that buffers both sides by being willing to fight encroachment by either, but which allies with neither and so cannot be considered a march.

When the EU adopted its mutual defense clause in 2009, Finland, which had joined the EU in 1995, stayed on in the union. She became dear to the West. Not a march—for the West now was obligated to treat her as a limb and come to her aid in the event of attack, lest the West itself shatter through a show of disunity. The West, then, had exposed itself to Russia directly across a land border, and indeed caused Russia to be exposed to the West directly across a land border.

It did not stop there. Moving south, we next encounter the Baltic states, all three of which joined both the EU and NATO in 2004, obligating the United States, and not just Europe, to come to their aid in the event of a Russian attack. Here again the West had exposed itself to Russia directly across a land border and caused Russia to be exposed to the West directly across a land border as well.

Belarus is next. She belongs to Russia’s mutual defense organization, the CSTO, which makes her dear to Russia—not a Russian march but a Russian limb. To her south, we find Ukraine, to which the West seemed willing to give NATO membership as late as 2008, but no longer, making her a Western march.

. . . Because Russia Used to Be a Middle Power

Why was the West so willing for so long to expose itself directly to Russia across its long borders with her; and why has the West now changed its mind and chosen to make Ukraine a march rather than to incorporate her via NATO membership?

The answer is that from 1991 until perhaps 2014, the West thought Russia was a middle power. She still had a vast nuclear arsenal, to be sure, and plenty of means of using it. But she seemed to have lost the mindset of a great power, just as France, Germany, Japan, and Britain had done before her.

You let your belly hang out when you think you are safe, and the West thought it was now safe. Not so safe, perhaps, as to do away with mutual defense pacts, but safe enough not to bother to create marches against Russia.

And the West could have created marches. Finland could have been made to continue to play the buffer role that she had played throughout the Cold War, by ejecting her from the European Union when the mutual defense clause was adopted, or by not adopting that clause and continuing to reserve to NATO responsibility for mutual defense. Finland’s closeness with the West might have made her accept march status; but even if she had insisted upon returning to her Cold War neutrality the West would have been much less exposed to Russia along the Russo-Finnish border than the West is now.

Each of the Baltic states would, certainly, have been willing to be a Western march. Each would have been willing to fight Russia regardless whether the West made a commitment to protect her. The Baltic states loathe Russia and fear her far more than they fear war. They will take all the Western help they can get. The West could have denied them NATO membership without losing their loyalty.

But it was only in 2014, after the West had gone belly to belly with Russia in Finland and the Baltic states, that it became clear to the West that Russia had reacquired a great power mindset, and so the West did not think to make marches of Finland or the Baltic states.

Perhaps Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia signaled the change in her mindset well enough to careful observers. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, followed by Russia’s wars in the Donbas and Syria, made it clear to the world.

The West Could Have Responded to a Resurgent Russia By Defending the West’s Status as Sole Great Power

The West could have responded in one of two ways.

First, it could have insisted upon the sole great power status that it had enjoyed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. To maintain that status, the West would have had to continue to treat Russia as a middle power, for the world’s sole great power can deal only with middle powers.

In this case, the West would have continued to pursue NATO membership for Ukraine—to demonstrate the hollowness of Russia’s attempt to reassert great power status by exposing the West’s belly to Russia. The message would have been: “go ahead, make my day.” It would have been a challenge to Russia to prove to the world that she was in fact able to go toe to toe with the world’s sole great power.

The West would have rushed troops to Ukraine in the wake of the Crimea annexation, rushed them again to the Donbas, and rushed them again to Syria, seeking to eject Russian forces in all three cases. Middle powers are not permitted international adventures without the consent of the sole great power.

This would, to be sure, have created a risk of nuclear war. But the world’s sole great power does not fear war with a middle power more than the world’s sole great power fears loss of status. To the contrary, the ultimate test of a great power—or, in this case, of a sole great power—is a willingness to go to war—to risk everything—to maintain status.

The West did not do these things, and in not doing them, the West conceded to the world that it was not the world’s sole great power anymore, but merely one among two—indeed, given China’s strength relative to Russia, necessarily three—great powers.

One should not forget the importance of that moment in 2014 when the West failed to respond to Crimea. For a quarter century before that time, the West had been the only global actor. Its status as sole great power was taken for granted. With the non-response to Crimea, that image disappeared and talk of great power competition reappeared after a decades-long hiatus.

The West in Fact Responded by Conceding Renewed Great Power Status to Russia

But even if the West had conceded its status as sole great power, it remained a great power. Its second Crimean response option was consistent with that great, but not sole-great, power status.

The West could take steps to defend itself, one great power from another, in ways familiar to students of great power competition throughout history: to put marches between itself and the enemy. The West took that option by demurring on NATO membership for Ukraine after 2014, and is continuing that policy by refusing to go to war with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf today.

The West has abandoned its policy of going belly-to-belly with Russia and is now making marches because the West has conceded Russia’s claim to renewed great power status. The West no longer sees itself as staring down a middle power but rather as erecting defenses against a great power.

Thus, it is entirely fair to say that the failure of the West to go to war to defend Ukraine is a sign of weakness. It reflects loss of sole great power status. If the West wished to maintain that status, it would have had to go to war with Russia after Crimea, and certainly, now, in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

It is entirely fair as well to question whether the West’s failure to defend Ukraine is a mistake. For there were plenty of advantages associated with being the world’s sole great power.

Most notably: security.

In a world in which any middle power seeking to adopt a great power mindset and so to raise herself to great power status were threatened with overwhelming, nuclear force by the West, one might expect such challenges from middle powers to dwindle and disappear over time. And uncontested power brings peace—to everyone except the victims of the sole great power itself (let us not forget Iraq).

Of course, threatening nuclear-armed states risks nuclear war.

But, again, great power status can be maintained only if one is willing to die for it. Russia has been able to claw back her lost great power status only by taking such risks. If they perhaps seemed small in the context of Crimea, the Donbas, and Syria, the danger Russia currently runs of defeat in Ukraine and collapse at home shows how much she has been willing to risk to reacquire her status.

To maintain its sole great power status, the West would have had to do the same. And, if the poor performance of Russian forces in Ukraine is any measure, it appears that Russia would have stood no chance against the West in a conventional fight over Crimea, the Donbas, or Syria. Unless she were willing to risk nuclear annihilation, Russia might well have withdrawn in the face of a determined foe.

Loss of Sole Great Power Status Aside, the West Is Strongly Playing a Strong Hand

It is also fair to say that, if the West is content to relinquish its status as sole great power, then the West’s failure to come to Ukraine’s aid is in the West’s interests and not a sign of weakness at all. What’s more, if Russia wrecks herself on the Ukrainian rock, she will lose her great power status and the West will gain status by default, though not a return to sole great power status given the West’s passive response to Russian intervention in Ukraine and the continued viability of China.

It is in a great power’s interest to allow her enemies to bleed themselves dry fighting in her marches. It is in the West’s interests to let others—here, the Ukrainians—do their fighting for them. Assuming, again, that the West is content to let the world see Russia as a great, rather than a middle, power.

Mearsheimer Is Wrong

This also provides a complete response to John Mearsheimer’s contention that Crimea, the Donbas, and the invasion of Ukraine are all the West’s fault. It is Mearsheimer’s contention that if the West had not come to view Russia as a middle power after the collapse of the Soviet Union and had instead treated her like a great power, then the West would not have sought to make Ukraine a NATO member and so Russia would not have felt compelled to attack Ukraine.

What Mearsheimer misses is that, given Russia’s bid to return to great power status, the only way war could have been avoided is if Ukraine had submitted to incorporation into Russia via participation in the CSTO’s mutual defense pact, a la Ukraine’s neighbor Belarus. All other outcomes are either impossible or lead to war.

But Ukraine would never have submitted to such a thing. Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that Ukraine never even joined the Commonwealth of Independent States when it formed in 1993 because she objected to the position of the CIS charter that Russia was the only legal successor state to the Soviet Union. Ukraine also never joined the CSTO’s predecessor.

Russia would also have been satisfied if Ukraine had become a Russian march. But for that to happen Ukrainians would have needed to fear the West more than they fear Russia, which Ukrainians manifestly do not. Only a war aimed at breaking the will of the Ukrainian people, such as Russia has launched now, would change this.

Russia might also have been satisfied if Ukraine had become a neutral country—non-aligned in the style of Finland during the Cold War. But neutrality is possible only if a country fears all the powers on its doorstep more or less equally. Ukraine, however, fears Russia more than the West. Given this asymmetry of fear, the natural position for Ukraine to occupy even were the West never to have offered NATO membership to her would be that of a Western march—precisely the position that Russia has proven herself willing to go to war to stop.

What Mearsheimer misses, as well, is that, from his own realist perspective, the present war in Ukraine is a victory for the West.

That is, Mearsheimer does not seem to think that the West could maintain its sole great power status. Instead, Mearsheimer sees the conflict between Russia and the West as a matter of competition between great powers. In that case, the best possible outcome for the West is to have Ukraine become a march—which she has—and then to have Russia throw herself upon that march and bleed dry, which she is doing. Even if Russia wins the war, she emerges weaker. And it is far from certain that she can win the war.

The war is a calamity for Ukraine and for humanity; but not for a West that sees itself as one of several great powers.

What is more, Mearsheimer’s view suffers from hindsight bias. It was not at all clear in 2000 or 2004 that Russia would ever regain her erstwhile great power mindset. She could very well have chosen to join the ranks of former great powers content to grow rich on international trade and follow the direction of the West.

If she did not go to war to stop the Baltic states’ incorporation into NATO in 2004 or to prevent Finland from joining the EU’s mutual defense pact in 2009, why should the West have supposed that she would go to war in 2014 to stop the incorporation of Ukraine into the West? (Well, Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 was some warning, but Georgia is a small country. )

Great power status is not something that can be measured in terms of nuclear weapons, GDP, or numbers of tanks alone. It is not the case that Russia always was a great power and should have been treated accordingly throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Great power status is a mindset; a way of acting. Russia did lose it in 1991.

Russian Policy Toward Ukraine Has Been Folly

It is also fair to say that, while Russia’s policy toward Ukraine since 2014 has been wildly successful at demoting the West from the status of sole great power, it has been utter folly from the perspective of competition between great powers.

For Russia is better off going belly-to-belly with the West across the land border between Russia and Ukraine than it is facing a Western march in Ukraine. But Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donbas prevented NATO from swallowing Ukraine and made a march out of her instead.

A march is altogether a more dangerous thing for Russia than is having her enemy at her gates, because the enemy can attack you through a march but you cannot attack your enemy through the march. When you have your enemy at your gates, by contrast, you can attack your enemy directly.

If Ukraine had joined NATO, and Russia had only then annexed Crimea, or started trouble in the Donbas, or, indeed, launched the present total invasion of Ukraine, and the West had failed to declare war upon Russia in response, then the West would be utterly shattered. NATO’s mutual defense pact would be a dead letter and Eastern Europe would be forced to accept Russian power in the region. NATO expansion brings menace to Russia’s borders, but it also brings Western vulnerability to her borders.

Instead, Russia annexed Crimea and started trouble in the Donbas before Ukraine could become part of NATO, and so before Ukraine could expose the Western belly. And Russia’s annexation of Crimea and starting of trouble in the Donbas worked to convince the West not to expose herself to Russia, to delay NATO membership indefinitely, and to turn Ukraine into a Western march.

Now Russia’s total invasion of Ukraine strikes no blow at the West at all, but instead becomes an unparalleled opportunity for the West to bleed Russia dry. Russia’s armies are tied up in brutal fighting. Russia’s economy is wrecked. But the failure of the West to go to war with Russia does not shatter the West, because there are no Western promises to Ukraine to break. And no matter how many Ukrainian soldiers Russia kills, not a single Western soldier is harmed. This is why a march is a great power’s best defense.

And why a great power that has any wisdom at all does not undertake to invade a march.

This is also why Anders Fogh Rasmussen is quite wrong to say that if Ukraine were to forswear NATO membership in order to obtain peace from Russia then that “would de facto make Ukraine a part of Russia, like Belarus.”

On the contrary, if that were all that Ukraine were to agree to do, then that would make Ukraine a permanent Western march—the absolute worse possible outcome for Russia, although it is not clear that Russia herself is aware of this.

Of course, it would not be in the interest of Ukraine to make such a concession, because that means agreeing to suffer for the safety of the West in perpetuity. Ukraine would be much better off insisting upon and obtaining NATO membership, so that the West will guarantee her safety.

Indeed, so long as Russia is considered a great power, the only beneficiary of a Western refusal to grant Ukraine NATO membership is the West.

The Conditions Required for a Pyrrhic Victory

It is impossible for the present Russian invasion of Ukraine to become a success for Russia. The poor performance of her military is a humiliation, one that has greatly set back her ambitions to reassert her great power status, and if she loses the war—a real possibility—she will return to the ranks of the middle powers. If she wins the war she may remain a great power, but only barely; it will be a pyrrhic victory.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that if she prevails militarily she will be unable to hold onto Ukraine due to the depth of anti-Russian sentiment among Ukrainians. If Russia is not constrained by public opinion—and it seems that she is not—then she will be at liberty to kill any Ukrainian who resists, and so to alter Ukrainian society. History is littered with tales of conquered peoples who go on to collaborate with the invader—so long as the invader is cruel enough.

It was the conquered Mexica themselves who rebuilt Tenochtitlan for Cortes.

Once he had conquered Gaulish armies, Caesar seems to have had little difficulty controlling the Gauls. Everywhere he went, he spared those who submitted fully to Roman rule and sold the rest into slavery or put them to the sword. Having beheld the complete destruction of their world, those who remained—and they remained because they had shown a willingness to submit—became Romans.

Moreover, Russia was able to control deeply unhappy populations all across Eastern Europe during the Cold War. And Russia has succeeded at doing so more recently in quelling resistance in Chechnya, which Russia now so dominates that Chechen troops are fighting on the Russian side against Ukraine.

Russia’s indiscriminate shelling of Ukrainian cities is not only meant to help her troops advance into them. It is also meant to prepare the Ukrainian people for submission.

If Russia is entirely successful, then she will make a Russian march of Ukraine. If she is only moderately successful—if Ukraine retains some independent spirit—then Russia will be forced to incorporate Ukraine, either because she must occupy Ukraine permanently or because she cannot expect Ukraine to fight her enemies on her behalf without tying Ukraine more closely to herself.

Russia would be better off making a march of Ukraine. But incorporating Ukraine would leave Russia better off than before the war, for now a Russian vulnerability to a Western march on the Russian-Ukrainian border would have been converted into a mutual Russian vulnerability and a European vulnerability on the Ukrainian border with NATO-member Poland.

But Russia will be no better off than if she had desisted from annexing Crimea and attacking the Donbas in 2014 and thereby allowed Ukrainian membership in NATO to become a reality. That would have created the same mutual vulnerability across a land border. True, in the event that the invasion is a success, the mutual vulnerability will exist across a land border nearly 800 miles further West. But the cost to Russia of winning is likely to be so large as to cancel out that improvement.

Russia Has So Few Marches of Her Own Because She Is Feared

A country aspiring to a return to great power status ought not expose her belly to her enemy in the way that a power that pretends to sole great power status might expose her belly to a middle power.

Russia has not, however, been able to avoid doing that in the post-Soviet years, because her weakness makes it difficult for her to maintain marches, and if you are not blessed with neutral powers to act as buffers, the next best thing to a march is to incorporate the territory. You expose yourself, but you deny the territory to your adversary.

The West has been able to maintain Ukraine as a march because Ukraine fears Russia more than she fears the West (if she fears the West at all). Russia has not been able to do the same with her satellites because they do not fear the West more than they fear Russia. If Russia tries to maintain them as marches without giving them security guarantees, then they may well defect to the West (or Russia will be forced to invade and break them, as she is trying to do with Ukraine).

As a result, Russia has been forced to go belly-to-belly with the West not only along her borders with Finland and the Baltic states, a situation foisted on her by Western decisionmaking. She has also gone belly-to-belly with the West across Belarus’s borders with the Baltic states and Poland, because she has been forced to give Belarus security guarantees in order to keep her in the fold, and so has incorporated Belarus.

Going belly-to-belly with the West along the border between Ukraine and Poland would not, therefore, be much of a departure for Russia, and, again, it is better for her than facing a Western march along her border with Ukraine.

But all this assumes that Russia can win the war. She may not.

And one hopes that she does not.

Lipsky argues if the West were to ban Russia’s energy exports, it would drive up energy prices in a way which would benefit the Russian economy rather than hurt it. He said Russia would find other buyers for its energy, such as in China, and it would have more cash coming in, not less.

Chris Isidore, Russia’s Economy is Surprisingly Tiny. Here’s Why It Matters so Much to You, CNN (Feb. 26, 2022).

This is a deeply flawed assessment of the likely effects of an energy embargo on Russia.

If an energy-embargoed Russia were only able to trade with China, then an energy-embargoed Russia would not be able to insist that China pay the world market price for natural gas.

Russia would only be able to insist that China pay the world market price if Russia could threaten to access world natural gas markets in the event that China were to refuse to pay the world market price. But, because of the embargo, Russia would not be able to make such a threat.

Instead, an energy-embargoed Russia would negotiate with China from a position of extreme weakness, just as, for example, Britain negotiated with the United States from a position of extreme weakness during World War Two.

Due to Hitler’s capture of Europe, Britain’s only real trading partner for war materiel was the United States. We insisted on prices that nearly bankrupted Britain; she rationed food until 1950 in part to pay off her debts. This despite our being an ally with interests that were more or less aligned with Britain’s.

China and Russia are, by contrast, neighboring great power aspirants that have fought with each other in living memory. China would surely insist on very low prices for the gas, or other terms designed to weaken her latent adversary or put Russia into a position of long-term dependence on her.

No, it is not any question about efficacy vis a vis Russia that counsels against an embargo. It is the suffering that it would cause to the rest of the world.

China imports 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year, Russia exports 200 billion cubic meters per year, and global yearly imports by all countries are 960 billion cubic meters. It follows that, after accounting for the natural gas that would be freed up on the world market by Chinese purchase of discounted gas from Russia, the embargo would wipe out about 15% of global natural gas supply.

Someone is going to have to go without, and in the short run it would be Europeans, given that alternative sources of supply have already been contracted out to others. Closing airspace and lighting up buildings in blue and yellow is rather less costly.

The liberal internationalists who said that trade would bind powers together and so reduce conflict weren’t wrong.

But an important corollary is that you have to be willing to use the leverage that trade gives you. Threats only work if they are credible.

That means being willing to suffer.