The conventional wisdom in Washington is that NATO should refrain from enforcing a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine due to the risk of an all-out NATO-Russia war. This view reflects a decades-long misunderstanding of both Russia and Ukraine, and is mired in appeasement thinking. While the window to impose a No-Fly Zone has likely closed, there are still alternatives that could work. The West should implement them without delay.
After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the US hastily abandoned the post-Soviet world and moved on to other international challenges. Ironically, this disinvestment meant that it stopped maintaining and developing the very expertise that had allowed America to triumph over the USSR in the first place.
Over the intervening three decades, appeasement has replaced expertise. Whether it was Russia’s brutal wars in Chechnya, the 2008 war with Georgia, or the 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, the West’s approach has frequently been shaped by fear of provoking an already aggrieved Russia.
This has led the West to misread Putin’s Russia again and again. It also caused Western leaders to misinterpret developments in Ukraine. We overestimate Putin and underestimate Ukraine due to limited understanding of the fast-changing dynamics in the post-Soviet region.
Read more at
Fear of provoking Putin is leading the Western world toward disaster - Atlantic Council
No comments:
Post a Comment