Volume 7 Issue 21a_Sun Bay Paper

From his principal avenues of attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin began this war with three strategic goals. Send an army south from Belarus to capture Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, and replace the government. Send forces into northeast Ukraine to capture its second largest city, Kharkiv, with 1.4 million people. Third, extend the Donetsk enclave westward to establish a land bridge to Crimea and give Russia full control of the Sea of Azov and most of the Ukrainian coast along the Black Sea. This last objective is almost achieved. Yet, as of Monday evening, five days into the war, neither Kyiv nor Kharkiv had fallen, though Russia had committed most of the troops it had assembled for the invasion. Putin needs to get this war over with, for time is not on his side or Russia's side. In a week, he has become a universally condemned and isolated figure, and his country has been made the target of sanctions by almost the entire West. He is being depicted as an aggressor, even a war criminal, who is brutalizing a smaller neighbor, which, in its fierce and brave resistance, has taken on the aspect of a heroic nation. The world is rallying to Ukraine. In the UN Security Council, which Russia chairs, only Russia voted to veto a resolution denouncing it for aggression. India, China and the United Arab Emirates abstained. As for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his defiance of demands for surrender is being portrayed as Churchillian. Moreover, serious military aid to Ukraine will soon begin. Europeans and Americans have promised more Javelin missiles to destroy Russian tanks and armor, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles of the type that took a heavy toll of Russian helicopters in the Afghan war of the 1980s. NATO is uniting. Germany has voted to raise its defense budget and send its own anti-tank weapons and Stingers to Ukraine. Economic sanctions imposed on Russia have crashed the ruble, caused a collapse of the stock market and severely restricted Moscow's capacity to manage its debt. Russian army units in Ukraine may be sufficient to occupy Kharkiv and Kyiv, but that army is insufficient to control and run a country the size of Texas with a population of 44 million people. The Russians would have to find thousands of collaborators to help run the country. Where would Putin find them among a people that so widely detests him today? The longer this war goes on, the greater the certainty that it bleeds the invading army to levels intolerable to Mother Russia, which is what eventually happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s. If this war does not end soon, Putin is likely to lose it and fail in his goal of pulling Ukraine out of the Western camp and back into the orbit of Mother Russia. Eventual defeat is becoming visible, and Putin probably cannot politically survive such a defeat. As his motivation is to hold power and use it to carve a niche in history alongside the greatest Russian rulers of the past who enlarged the nation or empire, Putin is probably not going to accept defeat and go quietly. Nor was it a sign of resignation that Putin, on Sunday, ordered Russia's nuclear forces to high alert because, "Top officials in leading NATO countries have allowed themselves to make aggressive comments about our country." This is not the first time Putin has introduced the idea of using a nuclear weapon. On Feb. 19, days before the invasion began, Putin ordered drills of nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles, bombers and warships. In his speech announcing the military operation in Ukraine, Putin warned that countries that interfere with Russia's actions will face "consequences you have never seen." Would Putin exercise what has been called the "Samson Option" - pulling down the pillars of the temple and taking your enemies with you? What Putin is suggesting is that in the last analysis, if military defeat beckons for Russia, and his own dispossession of power and political if not actual death are to follow, he may use the ultimate weapon in Russia's arsenal to prevent it. What should U.S. policy be? Avoid a widening of the war by preventing any escalation to nuclear weapons. Secure the independence of Ukraine. Effect the removal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory. If this requires that Ukraine give up any ambition to become a NATO nation, Putin's declared purpose in launching the war, so be it. We might have avoided this war had we done so before it was begun. This is not where we appear to be headed. Finland, and Sweden, it is now being said, should be invited into NATO. Were that to happen, the U.S. would be obligated to help defend the 830-mile Finnish border with Russia. This would be an act of hubris of the kind that has led to great wars. Patrick J. Buchanan The Sun Bay Paper Page 26 March 4, 2022 - March 10, 2022 International News Is Putin Considering Using Nukes on NATO? The Scary State of the Union Russian President Vladimir Putin has succeeded in uniting the world in a way no modern leader has. War in the world of social media is not a pretty site. Everyone knows someone. The basements are full of women and children, the very old and the very young. The men have gone off to fight -- not just men who are soldiers, but doctors and lawyers, plumbers and printers, accountants and musicians, taking up arms. The oligarchs have come home to fight. A country that most Americans probably couldn't find on a map has become the repository of the hopes and dreams of freedomloving people. Today, we are all Ukrainians. It is hard to watch the news. It is almost as hard not to. How can this be, in the modern world, that a country simply invades another country because it can? Russia was not at risk from Ukraine. Ukraine had not announced its intention to drive Russia to the sea. Russia is not even trying to explain itself to the world because there is no explanation. Only a madman would do this, only someone so determined to show the world his power, to flex his outdated military muscle, to show his so-called might that he will sacrifice his people for his ego. The most frightened people I know are the ones who know him best, because they believe there is simply nothing he will not do to satisfy that ego. After 20 years in power, he has long since removed from his circle anyone with the independence or courage to oppose him when he is wrong. He is surrounded instead by those whose very survival depends on his. They would be the last to stop him, or to try. The only hope, they say, is that he is only pretending to be a madman, and those who have seen his punitive streak over the years believe the worst. And so what? Does knowing you are dealing with a madman -- as opposed to a man only pretending to be mad -- change the way you deal with him? Does knowing that Putin is capable of mass murder change the way we deal with a mass murderer? I know that we never negotiate with terrorists until we do, until doing so is better than not. But when is that moment? My Russian friends fear that President Joe Biden will be naive, that he will believe that Putin thinks the way he does when he doesn't, not at all. I try to comfort them. Biden is a careful president. Maybe that's what Putin is counting on. He will not risk World War III. He will deal with Putin cautiously. But what is he to do? Recognize a puppet government in Ukraine? Let Putin win? No can do. I reassure my Russian friends that surely there are those in the American intelligence world who are telling the president that Putin is the unstable egomaniac that many Russians believe him to be. In my experience, it is a rare situation where all the plausible views are not presented. But then decisions must be made, based on more intelligence than my friends and I have access to, and we have no choice but to trust that they are made with good intelligence, which is not always the case. Basements are for rec rooms. My grandfather was born in Kyiv. I could be in a basement, too. COVID-19 was scary. Nuclear war is scarier. Our poor children. There are no answers except to be grateful. We take our freedom for granted. Susan Estrich

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