Op-ed — by Boris Danik
A Ukrainian serviceman stands in front of the U.S. and Ukrainian flags during the opening ceremony of the Rapid Trident military exercises near the western Ukrainian town of Yavoriv on September 15.
NATO needs a well- armed Ukraine, with or without NATO membership. It should not be difficult to reach this conclusion.
The rampage brought to Iraq in August this year by ISIS (“Islamic State of Iraq and Levant”) has caught the United States by surprise. U.S. President Barack Obama admitted bluntly he has no strategy to deal with it. The commotion that followed his initial remarks was second to none. It went beyond the confusion engulfing the NATO quarters when Russia invaded the Crimea in Ukraine and raised the specter of menace to the Baltic states and to world order.
Among the quickest in America rattled by ISIS atrocities and by the president’s “hesitation what to do” was the feisty Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe (Republican-Oklahoma), who revealed at the obliging PBS News that 71 percent of Americans want to go after ISIS.
A few days after his bad moment, Obama reassured the nation in a televised address on Sept. 9 that he is getting up to speed, and is organizing a coalition of the Middle East and NATO countries to “degrade and destroy” the brutal ISIS enemy. John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of statem is rapidly crisscrossing the Arab world looking for a broad-based support.
But as the US unleashed the aerial bombing to help the battered Iraqi army and the Kurds in the north hold their ground, it became evident that the countries in the prospective coalition are not committing themselves to provide the boots on the ground. It will take years to achieve victory, is the emerging narrative.
The ISIS move from Syria, where it is battling the Assad regime, into Iraq is made possible by the flimsy artificial nature of the Iraq state as a mix of mutually hostile Shia and Sunni, perpetuated by US military occupation for a decade at a huge cost, and originally contrived by Britain and France when the Turkish empire disintegrated after World War I. At this moment the Sunnis (ISIS bastion) have an upper hand and are smashing all the others, who they say are less religious.
Turkey, a NATO ally of the US, is now in no hurry to join the US led coalition, and apparently keeps its eyes away from bootlegging of oil through its territory, a major source of ISIS finances.
And so it looks that, if the ISIS is indeed a deathly menace to the Middle East, to the United States and to the whole world -- as reiterated in Washington’s political skirmishing at various levels as well as in the media barrage -- the US will soon be again heavily engaged in the Middle East.
Where would that leave the American commitment to send troops to NATO in Europe at a level sufficient to deter the menace of Russian aggression in central - eastern Europe, if Ukraine now standing alone is overwhelmed by Russia’s military push ?
Ukrainian soldiers reinforcing Mariupol defense. Sept. 5.
Such a question, most likely, would not arise if Ukraine had a military force equipped to NATO standards. The numbers of its manpower with commitment already shown in battle would change the balance sharply in West’s favor. No wonder that Moscow, while wallowing in its Eurasian exaltation, goes myopic at any mention of NATO connection to Ukraine.
In the last several years, American playbook has relegated to the European Union the handling of knotty issues involving conflict between Ukraine and Russia. American national interest is centered elsewhere, was the axiom. But the ability of the EU to resolve conflict in the ex-Soviet space was and is hampered and overshadowed by its own primary commercial pursuits and the absence of its own military power base.
And, lo and behold, the axiom of America’s national priorities was written before America discovered Ukraine. It is a Ukraine actually fighting Russia in a shooting war, an ongoing war that can affect the balance of power between the East and West.
This is an opportunity for the United States to understand and connect its interests in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, to avoid the wrong assumptions when making military commitments (as was in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan), and to convert the erosion of power and treasury, as well as the deficit of resolve at the right place and time, into an overall gain. This can be done with an upgraded alliance that has a larger base of commitment and substance.
If Obama has his way, American forces will not be again on the ground in Iraq. He has stated this emphatically, after Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff trolled his own caveats in the media. This is not the only challenge to the president from the military in recent times.
In 2010 President Obama dismissed his Afghanistan war top commander Gen. Stanley McCrystal over his off-hand remarks about president’s plan to draw-down the Afghan war. A leading US senator says this week “the president is frustrating military leaders. He should let them do their job”. Since when in America the Pentagon decides when to go to war? Does that show understanding of the national interest within “the security state”?
The Financial Times showcased an article on Sept 19: “Americans galvanized for return to war in Iraq” -- seemingly the mood at Fort Campbell in Tennessee, the home of the elite 101th airborne division. “We are not ramping up. We never stopped.”
This exuberance doesn’t square with the flood of applications for disability compensation coming from about one-half of the millions of all veterans of Iraq and Afghan wars in the last 10 years. Or with recent loud scandals about the breakdown of medical care for war veterans at the Veterans Administration.
Why no one is “ramping up” to send weapons for Ukraine? One reason seems to be that America’s corporate elite, while habitually deriving huge profits from Middle East wars (at taxpayer expense, no less) without risking own hide, are much more cautious about risking Vlad Putin’s wrath. They by far prefer the sure thing when making money (with or without the national interest), never mind the geopolitics of the Baltic states or Poland. Russian tanks will not roll into Berlin any time soon, right? Ask Chancellor Angela Merkel if in doubt.
And what about the Russian jets buzzing near America’s air space around Alaska? The answer is they are only kidding, and are not threatening the $30 trillion in the off-shore accounts of global business barons. Isn’t that where Messrs. Putin and Victor Yanukovych keep their loot too?
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Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
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