It ought to be an established truth: if Bill Kristol and his gaggle of ‘neo-conservatives’ at The Bulwark support something, you just know that it’s wrong:

The Right’s Argument Against Aiding Ukraine Is Wrong—and Dangerous

A Russian conquest of Ukraine would be perilous for America and our allies.

by Reuben Johnson | Friday, February 11, 2022 | 5:18 AM EST

Kyiv – Conservative opinion in America seems to be hardening around opposition to U.S. support for Ukraine. The United States, the logic goes, has no stake in whether or not Russia invades Ukraine. Ukraine is a European nation and that makes it Europe’s problem.

This argument is wrong and reflects a dangerous misunderstanding of what is at stake in Ukraine’s confrontations with Russia.

For starters, modern Europe has never been able to handle its own military confrontations. The only nation in the NATO alliance that can lead the Europeans in a major multinational endeavor is the United States. There is a simple explanation for this imbalance: Because a European state strong enough to lead a coalition against a threat such as Russia would also be strong enough to dominate Western Europe. Which is not a state of affairs helpful to America’s interests.

Ignoring for the moment the pitiful grammar of the final sentence, the obvious question is: so what? At a certain point, it has to be asked what is to be gained here.

On March 31, 1939, finally realizing that Adolf Hitler’s word was worthless, the United Kingdom and France offered guarantees of Polish sovereignty. Two days after the Wehrmacht rolled in, on September 1, 1939, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany.

But they could do nothing about the invasion: they hadn’t the men or equipment in place, and when it came to actual war, in the spring of 1940, the two nations’ militaries reeled before an attack by Germany on their forces on French soil. In the end, Poland was ‘liberated’ not by the United Kingdom, not by France, but by the Red Army, and that ‘liberation’ meant not freedom, but 45 years of Communist domination.

Next, what happens in Ukraine does not necessarily stay in Ukraine. Previous invasions of Ukraine by Russia have devastated the Donbas region and the cost has been tremendous. If Russia invades again, the cost of rebuilding Ukrainian infrastructure Russian forces destroy could, in the words of the former Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, “turn Ukraine into a failed state.”

Well, that would then be Russia’s problem, wouldn’t it?

Finally, tolerating a militaristic expansion of this kind would mean that “European security and stability” is a myth. There is every reason to believe that failing to stop Russia from continuing to try and destroy its much-smaller neighbor does not prevent war with Moscow, but rather makes likely a much larger, wider war in Europe in the future.

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949, as the Western democracies were worried that the huge Red Army could roll right in and conquer what was then the Federal Republic of Germany, West Germany more colloquially, and the Europeans hadn’t the strength to stop it. NATO’s guarantee was that an attack on one was an attack on all, which was, in effect, a guarantee that the United States, with its large forces and its nuclear weapons, would come to West Germany’s defense.

The USSR detonated its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949, far earlier than it was estimated they could.

NATO was a military alliance, including the nuclear-armed United States, against the wholly conventionally-armed Soviet Union; that lasted for 4½ months.

Of course, the Soviets had no way of delivering atomic bombs to targets at the time, and only a few of the devices, but they kept building, and building, and building. By 1951, the USSR tested an air-dropped atomic bomb, which meant that the USSR now had deliverable nuclear weapons.

If NATO had kept to itself, and not expanded following the fall of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, NATO might still be a credible deterrent. But NATO expanded into Poland, and the Baltic States, right on Russia’s doorstep. Russia now has the nuclear arsenal to completely destroy the United States; does anyone seriously believe that Joe Biden, or any American President, would put the lives of 330 million Americans in danger of nuclear incineration to defend Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia?

There is a part of the calculation that is going unsaid: while Western sanctions could impose some real costs on the Soviet Union Russian Federation, those sanctions would inevitably be temporary, while conquering Ukraine would be a permanent addition to Russia. Byelorussia is already approaching vassal state status. Xi Jinping is making the same calculations when it comes to conquering Taiwan.

Reuben Johnson, the article author, after several paragraphs on the history of Russian adventurism and the inability of NATO to stop them, got one thing absolutely right:

All of which means that if Ukraine receives no help from NATO because they are not a full-fledged member, it will send an ominous signal. It would say that decades of partnering with our alliance, participating in its missions, and contributing personnel and equipment to its operations counts for nothing. If you are attacked by the Russians, there will be no boots on the ground coming to your aid. Which would make the status of being any kind of NATO partner nation worth nothing—and could cripple, if not destroy, the alliance.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is just as aware of that as Mr Johnson, and it is an incentive for President Putin to go ahead and act. More, he has an incentive to strike sooner rather than later:

Which European Countries Depend on Russian Gas?

by Katharina Buchholz | February 3, 2022

As the United States and the EU are working on a strategy to replace natural gas supply to Europe should Russia turn off the tap in a standoff with Western powers over Ukraine, Qatar has said that it sees no way that it could replace the needed amount by itself. If new sanctions were to be introduced against Russian President Vladimir Putin personally or his country, this could trigger an energy crisis on the continent due to much of Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, which arrives on the continent via pipelines.

According to Reuters, close U.S. ally Qatar wants guarantees that natural gas diverted to Europe would not be resold and has urged European countries to resolve their investigation into Qatari gas contracts in order to become a regular customer themselves – which could more permanently shift gas dependencies in Europe.

Data from the European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators shows which countries’ energy supply would be most at risk in the case of a Russian gas freeze. Among Europe’s major economies, Germany imports around half of its gas from Russia, while France only obtains a quarter of its supply from the country, according to the latest available data. The biggest source of French gas was Norway, supplying 35 percent. Italy would also be among the most impacted at a 46 percent reliance on Russian gas.

The UK is in a different position, drawing half of its gas supply from domestic sources and importing mostly from Norway and also Qatar. Spain is also not on the list of Russia’s major customers, the biggest trade partners of the country being Algeria and the U.S.

Some smaller European countries rely exclusively on Russian gas, namely North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Moldova. Dependence also was above 90 percent of gas supply in Finland and Latvia and at 89 percent in Serbia, as per the latest available data.

It’s the middle of February, and cutting off Russian gas to Europe would mean that many Europeans could freeze to death. Any sanctions that the West could impose on Russia for invading Ukraine would take time to work, and, to be brutally honest about it, Russia could withstand a loss of euros coming in for a lot longer than Europeans could survive without heat during the winter. More, alternate sources of fuel coming in would be coming in by liquified natural gas tankers, and sinking just one of them would probably mean that no future shipments would be made; the LNG tankers are privately-owned, no insurance companies would cover subsequent shipments, and many crew would simply refuse to become targets for Russian submarines.

More, as Western Europe tries to move away from fossil fuels, Russia’s position as the primary gas supplier becomes weaker every passing year; it is to President Putin’s advantage to move sooner rather than later.

It seems difficult to blame this on President Biden, because there’s really nothing serious he could do about it, but it is worth noting that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping weren’t putting this kind of pressure on President Trump.

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Related Articles:

• Robert Stacy McCain on The Other McCain: Who’s Afraid of President Crackpipe?
• Deanna Fisher on The Victory Girls: Ukraine Tensions Up As Biden Sends Mixed Messages
• Dennis Santiago on RedState: Last Chance to Prevent Ukraine Becoming Another Afghanistan
• Gordon Lubold, Vivian Salama, and Michael R. Gordon in The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Says Russia Could Invade Ukraine at Any Time: White House urges Americans to leave Ukraine, but officials say they don’t know whether Putin has decided to invade or not
• Andrew E. Kramer, Anton Troianovski, Katie Rogers and Lara Jakes in The New York Times: U.S. Pulls Most Diplomats From Kyiv as Tensions Mount: Western officials made another diplomatic push on Saturday to dissuade President Vladimir V. Putin from invading Ukraine.