(Dobbs) Give Putin An Inch, He'll Take A Mile
Ukraine's president knows, he can't trust Putin to stop with what he's got.
With thousands dead in Ukraine so far, and the incomparably costly and almost irreparable ruination of its cities and towns and villages so far, and with its railroads and runways pummeled and its main sources of income, both industrial and agricultural, largely demolished, there is a good argument for President Zelensky make the hard call and end the war, and let Putin keep what he has taken. Especially since without that, as is now crystal clear, it will all only get worse.
But hard as it is to say, I think there’s a better argument against it.
In a larger context, President Biden framed the argument last week: “The cost of failing to stand up to violent aggression… has always been higher than the cost of standing firm against such attacks.” A simpler form of the same theme is what my mother used to say: “Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.”
Putin wants a mile.
Mark Elovitz, Director of the Centre for Strategic Geopolitics, reached a different conclusion. He has written, “Matters may come down to a seemingly simple question: Should Ukraine’s unbridled nationalism, vaunted patriotism and the uncommon valor of Ukraine’s military trump the sheer survival of Ukrainian troops and the earthly existence of that nation’s desperately beleaguered citizenry?”
But I propose a different question, with even more cataclysmic potential consequences: If Ukraine surrenders the land that Putin has grabbed and insists on keeping, where does it stop? Can anyone feel safe? Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Estonia, all of which were part of Putin’s beloved Soviet Union and all of which share borders with Russia? What about Poland which also shares a border and which once was part of the Soviet bloc? Not to mention Norway and Finland, the Western nations that border Putin’s land.
As well as the rest of Ukraine itself. How do we know, President Zelensky asked last week on CNN, that if Ukraine agrees to Russia’s terms and lets its guard down, “they won’t come back… towards Kyiv."
If Zelensky were to agree to cede territory to end the war, could we trust Putin to abide by any such agreement? Zelensky himself certainly has no reason to trust him at all. As he put it to CNN, mincing no words about Putin’s “special military operation,” “Look what happened in Bucha. It's clear that is not even a war, it's a genocide. They just killed people. Not soldiers, people. They just shot people in the streets. People were riding bicycles, taking the bus or just walking down the street. There were corpses lining the streets.”
Who could ever trust a man who would do things like that?
Don’t forget, during his first term as Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin declared in a State of the Nation address that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
This doesn’t sound like a man who is satisfied today with his nation’s diminished power and smaller profile on the world stage. It suggests a man who wants a return to glory, a man who I once saw tell a rally in Moscow, “We were a superpower once, we will be a superpower again.” It suggests a megalomaniac who might not stop just with Ukraine. Which brings us back to the question, if he does get away with carving out parts of a sovereign nation and returning them to Russia’s fold— which he already did eight years ago with Crimea— what’s next? Who’s next? Can anyone feel safe?
On the day in late February when Russia launched its brutal attack, Putin warned Western nations that if they tried to stop him, there would be "consequences greater than any you have faced in history.” Then when reports came out that that long-neutral Finland and Sweden might join NATO, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s first successor as President and now the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, added fuel to Putin’s threat, saying that if they did, there could be no more talk of a “nuclear free” Baltic.
Putin plays the nuclear card as if the concept that kept the peace through the Cold War, “Mutual Assured Destruction,” was mere folly.
Mark Elovitz from the Centre for Strategic Geopolitics argues that the deciding factor for Zelensky ought to be the oft-cited adage, “It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who is dead!” But that ignores a crucial contradiction: for Vladimir Putin, war is the price of power. War with Ukraine, war with anyone else who stands in his way.
A piece of President Zelensky must want to do anything to save his nation from even more destruction and even more death. But the other piece is what resonates with me: if you don’t fight this war now, you fight a worse war next.
Sometimes, when decisions are tough, we have to put things on a scale. Mine puts more weight on Zelensky standing firm and giving Russia nothing. Thankfully there are parts of Ukraine that have not been destroyed but still, given the scope of decimated lives and the scale of economic destruction, whoever wins will rule over rubble. Better the Ukrainian people than the Russians.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
(Dobbs) Give Putin An Inch, He'll Take A Mile
We don't have to look at Bucha to wonder whether Putin's word is to be trusted. Just look at his promises to Ukraine when they agreed to surrender their nuclear weapons to Russia. When he didn't care to abide by those promises anymore, he just said things have changed and he took Crimea by force. Trust someone who lied to me before, shame on me!
Well said. Thank you!