No term sparks more fear and loathing in Ukraine than Holodomor. It refers to the famine engineered by Josef Stalin in 1932-33 that killed millions. To be clear, this was not just a preventable catastrophe, like say the million American Covid dead. No, this was an orchestrated crime against humanity, a purposeful policy perpetuated under the guise of Communist necessity. Ukraine, once a rich agricultural “breadbasket” of Russia, was decimated to feed Stalin’s madness for the collectivization he dictated would impel Soviet industrialization. More than 3.5 million Ukrainians starved for no other reason than one man’s sick vision his unchallenged power enabled. No citizenry has darker memories of the Soviet menace than the Ukrainians.
From the first hour of America’s Cold War victory it was only a question when Russia would reconstitute itself enough to menace Ukrainians again. The notion centuries of autocracy was going away and those cursed by geography would be permitted the simple dignity of being treated as neighbors rather than peas to be podded by jealously insecure Czars and Party Chairmen was never more than an inevitable flight of fancy the West luxuriated in while the liberated took sledge hammers to the Berlin Wall.
Even as champagne was being poured in the White House, President George Bush Sr. and his national security team headed by close friend Brent Scowcroft understood whatever iteration the collapsing Soviet empire settled into, Russia wasn’t going anywhere and possessed enough weaponry to end everything. Moreover, assuming it was transforming into Eurasia’s largest democracy and bent on constructive engagement with the West was la la land thinking. The bear would lick its wounds and hibernate awhile. In the meantime redrawing Europe’s map, and more importantly NATO, was a task that should only proceed with a mind fixated on future risks new status quo antes could create, particularly in Russia’s backyard.
George Kennan as much as anyone helped create the US Containment Policy that ultimately outlasted the Soviets. As he aged Kennan became far more concerned about modern war’s destructiveness and US militarism than Soviet aggression. After the Eastern Bloc’s collapse, Kennan had no use for inviting its former members into NATO. Such a campaign would only set the stage for future conflict. In 1998, a 94-year old Kennan argued “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”
Grievous error or not, post-Cold War NATO moved apace to offer membership to former Eastern Bloc nations. Poland, Hungary, Albania, Romania, the Baltic States, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Bulgaria all were offered and accepted membership in the alliance. Notable is the fact that no former Soviet Socialist Republics were included in that group. It was one thing to bring on board countries that suffered as a result of Stalin’s sinister Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler, or were left with no options when the Red Army “liberated” them from Nazi occupation and stayed on until Stalinist puppets were in place, quite another to consider pre-war Russian republics who declared independence as the Soviet system collapsed. Chief among those held at arm’s length was Ukraine.
Of course Gorbachev gave way to Yeltsin, who would then give way to Putin just in time for the new century. Within a decade of the Soviet collapse any dreams of Russian democracy were over, and full control was back in the hands of a Stalinist with regaining regional hegemony among his top priorities… along with the usual brutal repression of dissidents, personal enrichment and foreign troublemaking. The only thing slowing Putin’s timetable was his lack of capability; but make no mistake, the last thing he was going to tolerate was NATO membership for former SSRs like Georgia and Ukraine.
For Western leaders and NATO the challenge was acute. Ukrainian membership in NATO was hitting close to home as far as historical Russian security interests were concerned, but refusing to consider an independent European democracy for the alliance abetted Russian intimidation of its neighbors. An uneasy geopolitical murkiness ensued, with NATO giving lip service to the “right” of former SSRs to “pursue whatever alliances they saw fit” and Putin denouncing such “intrusions” but otherwise biding his time, while interfering in their domestic politics with an eye toward promoting dependent tyrants like Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. The fact that, for the most part, Ukraine’s leadership reflected Putin’s basic tendencies spared NATO from the pickle of having to ignore a democracy’s desire to receive the benefits of the “an attack on one is an attack on all” security umbrella.
That changed in February of 2014. Following the tumult of what became known as the Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainians decided they’d had enough of Putin lackeys and ousted Viktor Yanukovych. Putin then decided the time was right to push the envelope and moved to annex the Crimea, betting that claiming a small slice of ethnically aligned Ukrainian pie would not be too difficult for the West to digest. He was right. However, while Russian aggression in the Crimea achieved its immediate ends at a cost Putin was willing to pay, the new Ukrainian government moved with purpose to cement a much closer relationship with the EU, leaving little doubt in word and deed that, Crimea be damned, western democracy was the future.
Then in November of 2016 Putin drew a straight flush as a certified, fully kompromat stooge defeated one of his most implacable adversaries for the American Presidency. The windfall was immediate, as Trump made rebranding NATO allies as deadbeat moochers, interested in nothing past taking advantage of Uncle Sam’s goodwill, a top foreign policy priority.
Why get in the way of that? A Russian move on Ukraine was now only counterproductive; needlessly undoing all of Trump’s corrosive attacks on NATO unity. Why force MAGA sedition into the open by creating a situation that could only paint Trump into a box? After all, what more discouraging message could Ukrainian patriots receive than an American President who cared less about their democratic sovereignty than how their newly elected President could aid his own corrupt domestic aims back in the US?
Once Biden defeated Trump, Putin got right back to finishing the business he started in 2014. Any horse player will tell you that following a monster score is always a reckless time because one is playing with house money and is willing to risk more. That’s Putin to a tee. And why not? Trump continues to be an asset Stalin only dreamed of, as the Republican Party dutifully goes full nihilist to keep the MAGA wretched core content that their seditious grievances rule the day. Where America once boasted partisanship “ended at the water’s edge,” the gravest European military crisis since WWII is now processed by the GOP solely as just another prime opportunity to weaken their nation’s President.
Those who equate Putin’s move into Ukraine with Hitler circa 1938 are misguided. He has nothing like the conventional capability the Nazis were ready to launch. Moreover, not only is a resurgent NATO to the west, he has arguably the world’s most powerful nation to his east, and China is more competitor than ally. Assuming Putin is a rational actor, and certainly nothing he has done to date persuades otherwise, his attack on Ukraine really can’t be termed shocking, and it’s reasonable to believe it presages nothing more right now than carving the country up to his liking and making sure everyone understands who is still the boss when it comes to former SSRs. Besides, why does he need to rush things? MAGA House and Senate majorities seem right now to be odds-on propositions, and nobody should bet good money against another MAGA Presidency in 2024… the death knell for NATO, a new dark age. Time is on his side.
And the Ukrainians? They are going to suffer. Except this time, unlike near a century ago, the world will watch in real time and wonder how we can possibly be so powerless in the face of such unjust carnage. President Zelensky will likely become a martyr, a hero for the ages. But like his forefathers, the victims of the Holodomor, he is cursed by geography, doomed by man’s full potential for evil and the apathy that empowers it. Americans would do well to ponder his predicament. BC