The author makes a pretty strong case for American involvement, pointing out that Ukrainian membership of NATO has been effectively off the table for some time, despite Russia's professed concerns, and that Russia's demands include the removal of all troops and weapons from countries that joined NATO after 1997 i.e. the entire former Warsaw Pact.
To agree to such demands, he argues, would deal a severe blow to the credibility of the Western alliance generally, with implications for Chinese risk assessments as they decide whether to move on Taiwan. He rejects the dichotomy between doing nothing and war-making, favoring measures such as arms supplies and economic sanctions that could act as a deterrent.
As things stand, the neocon wing has been pretty much marginalized in the Republican party, exemplified by the tenuous situation of Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president, currently facing a primary challenge for her Wyoming seat that she seems likely to lose.
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Douthat proposes an “ideal retreat” from Ukraine which would leave “NATO expansion permanently tabled, with Ukraine subject to inevitable Russian pressure but neither invaded nor annexed, and with our NATO allies shouldering more of the burden of maintaining a security perimeter in Eastern Europe.” He concedes that it would be a struggle to execute an immaculate retrenchment, as our bitter experience in Afghanistan suggests. But it might be the “least-bad” of our available options.
This is exactly the concession Russia is demanding from the West. How else could you interpret Moscow’s demands in exchange for ratcheting down tensions? The Kremlin has insisted, in writing, that the United States and the West must commit not just to halting NATO expansion but must remove all troops and weapons from nations that entered the NATO alliance after 1997; namely, the entire former Warsaw Pact. Thus, Russia has effectively asked the West to gift them a sphere of influence they cannot secure militarily, diplomatically, or economically. To do so would abrogate the sovereignty of our partners and allies in Europe, shatter confidence in America across the globe, and represent a profound misreading of the imbalance of forces arrayed against Russian interests in its own backyard.
Those who are attracted to Douthat’s argument appear to believe that the West’s only course of action short of war with Russia is retreat. There is, in the estimation of the American Conservative editor Rod Dreher, an “eagerness” among “American elites” to get involved in a real shooting war with Russia. “We have no realistic choice but to cede to at least some of Russia’s demands,” he writes, lest we abandon the geostrategic imperative of containing a revisionist China. Such a theory confuses deterrence with war-making. The dispatching of lethal arms into Ukraine, as well as the deployment of troops, naval assets, and area denial technology, is designed to raise the stakes of conflict to the point that Moscow blinks. That would be the best of all imaginable resolutions to the present conflict, because the refugee crisis, economic disruptions, and war of attrition in Europe that would follow a Russian invasion would be catastrophic. After all, the likelihood that U.S. could avoid becoming entangled in a conflict on NATO’s borders that involves America’s ratified allies is negligible.