(Dobbs) Why Does Ukraine Matter To Us?

Because an emboldened Putin could cost us elsewhere.

When I flew to Afghanistan for my first time, to cover the Soviet invasion there the day before Christmas in 1979, I was like most of my countrymen: I couldn’t have found the place on a map.

I suspect that’s pretty much how most Americans are today about Ukraine: couldn’t find it on a map, and couldn’t explain why they should.

But the current crisis there should matter to Americans because it is about more than just Ukraine. It is about Vladimir Putin’s long-held lust that I’ve reported on before to restore Russia to the superpower status that it once had, and to restore Russia’s reach in parts of the world that it once had. 

All of which could come at America’s cost.

Of course we still don’t know what Putin plans for Ukraine— analysts say that the old KGB agent who runs Russia keeps his thoughts so close to the vest that even important associates don’t know what he’s thinking— but we do know from his bellicose behavior in the past that he won’t sit still to preside over a skeleton of the superpower he loved, the collapse of which he has called a “genuine tragedy.” To wit, in 1999 he conquered the autonomous republic of Chechnya, putting it firmly again under Russian control. In 2008 he invaded an independent Georgia, the upshot of which was the return-to-the-fold of two Russian-oriented breakaway provinces. In 2014 he marched in and took the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine, which is now annexed to the Russian state.

Russia grows bigger, its sway gets broader, its buffers seem safer. And from the looks of things today on Ukraine’s borders, Putin’s not through.

That’s where we might want to worry.

Especially since it was reported just last night from both Washington and London that despite its proclamation about pulling back from the borders after the completion of military exercises, Russia actually has added more military assets and 7,000 more troops.

So giving Putin an open field might only embolden him, because his eyes are on more than just Europe. He wants to be a power in the Arctic, a resource-rich region important to Russia both economically and militarily. Even more important, because of Russia’s ambition for alliances with other energy producers and its traditional thirst for warm water ports, he wants to widen his foothold in the Middle East.

There is history there. In the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union kept Egypt strong with weapons and military advisors that the U.S. wouldn’t provide, and it kept that leverage with the Arab world’s largest and most powerful nation until the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, when his successor Anwar Sadat kicked Russia out and formed instead a new partnership with the United States.

The Soviets’ biggest foothold was lost. Putin wants back in.

So he has provided weapons to powerful parties in a still war-torn Libya. He offered to broker talks with the Palestinians when President Trump gave them the cold shoulder. He created an alliance with Iran during the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. And in Syria itself, he sent troops and aircraft to the side of President Bashar al-Assad, which changed the course of that nation’s calamitous civil war and kept the abominable Assad in the presidential palace. Four years ago, Russia even announced a “strategic partnership” with the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, which in recent years has been an American ally and even established diplomatic relations with Israel.

It’s complicated.

So today in the Middle East, Putin has a bigger profile and a more powerful voice. It is not in America’s interest to let him have more.

That’s why President Biden is playing hardball over Ukraine. And at least so far, (aside perhaps from publicly pulling the panic button too many times, although that might actually be forcing Putin’s hand), he’s doing it pretty well. He has made clear to Putin that an invasion might be bloody not just on the battlefield but in Russia’s economy. He has moved more powerful arms to Ukraine. He has strengthened the American presence in eastern Europe. And he has unified NATO in opposition to Russian aggression, all of which has to be counterproductive to everything Putin wants to win.

Perhaps that’s why diplomacy might still have a chance, although as the spokesman for the State Department said this week, “In order for it to be good faith… that will require the Russians to respond in kind.”

Maybe, despite the addition of troops in the tension zone, they will. The Russian foreign minister said on Monday that diplomacy is “far from being exhausted.” Maybe the strategic approach by the United States has made Putin think twice.

But maybe not. From one side of his mouth, Putin says he won’t start a war in Ukraine, but from the other side, he tells the German chancellor this week that Ukraine’s treatment of Russia-oriented Russian-speaking separatists in eastern Ukraine is “genocide.” If history is any guide, we shouldn’t take anything from Putin’s Kremlin at face value.

Plus there’s a new complication. Russia’s lower house of parliament, the Duma, which is decidedly in the president’s pocket, just voted to recognize two eastern Ukrainian provinces— both of which are populated with those separatists— as independent nations.

If Putin chooses to take advantage of that, it could be his pretext for an invasion. If he decides the reward of a stronger Russia is greater than the risk of a weakened Russia, he could invade.

If he does, the United States will have to shore up its own investments, its own alliances, its own defenses, elsewhere. It is what NATO’s Secretary General calls “the new normal.”

So Ukraine matters. That’s why we ought to be able to find it on a map, and understand why we should.

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.