Leaving to Go Either West or East With a Change of Name No One Will Ever See Me Again
Round table
4 Times Opinion Writers Analyze Russia'south Invasion: 'The Globe Has Changed Overnight'
Lulu Garcia-Navarro , Farah Stockman, Ross Douthat and
Ms. Garcia-Navarro is a Times Stance podcast host. Ms. Stockman is a fellow member of the editorial lath. Mr. Douthat is a Times columnist. Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer.
Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Thursday, attacking over a dozen major cities and towns, including the capital, Kyiv. The attacks began the beginning major country state of war in Europe in decades. "This aggression cannot get unanswered," President Biden said every bit he appear harsh sanctions against Russia, including blocking major Russian banks and "corrupt billionaires" from access to the U.S. fiscal system as well as deploying troops to NATO'due south eastern flank. Times Stance writers Farah Stockman, Frank Bruni and Ross Douthat discuss what's to come up with Times Opinion podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
Four Times Opinion Writers Analyze Russia'south Attack on Ukraine: 'The Earth Has Changed Overnight'
A roundtable give-and-take about the latest developments in Ukraine.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Russian forces are pouring into Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning that any state attempting to interfere will create "consequences yous have never seen." That's a reminder of Russia's nuclear arsenal. The Ukrainian armed services has mobilized to defend the country. There have been scenes of anarchy in major Ukrainian cities, as civilians take flooded shelters or tried to flee on clogged roads. And Belgium's prime government minister is calling this Europe's darkest 60 minutes since World State of war II.
Equally European leaders vow to punish Russian federation for launching this conflict on their continent, what happens now? This is enormously consequential. It is non an understatement to say the world has inverse overnight, I think.
Farah Stockman: I really worry that Americans aren't prepare for the consequences of this. What we're going to be faced with is the increasing bifurcation of the globe between East and West. And it'due south time now for the United States and Europe to really think about how — well, to really act, right? We have to brand this mean something. We have to meaningfully stand upward at this time. And I fear that a lot of Americans are embroiled in fights with each other. And we have a lot of piece of work to do.
Garcia-Navarro: Ross, Farah thinks that this is a fight between the East and the West. Practice you see it the aforementioned way?
Ross Douthat: I mean, I certainly agree it's an incredibly consequential and kind of astonishing moment. Information technology's been clear for a while that the invasion was a live possibility, that Putin and the Russian government were taking information technology seriously equally a scenario. But it is a really, really radical move that carries dramatic downstream consequences for, plainly, the United states and the Western world, but likewise dramatic consequences for Russia.
It is a tremendous take chances that Putin has taken. And I think there are short-term and long-term questions here.
Short-term, at that place's the question of: We're not going to get to war ourselves for Ukraine. That's been clear for a while. And I remember we've honestly had a somewhat failed strategy vis-à-vis Ukraine, and this has brought that to a head. But nosotros take to have a response, and there's questions nigh what is the immediate response, how far tin can y'all go with sanctions, what volition European countries be willing to do and what kind of pain will everyone be willing to acquit at the gas pump in particular.
Just then longer term, this volition reorient defense postures and energy policies substantially for NATO and for the Eu, again, in ways that will not exist good for Russia. There volition exist some kind of sustained push button for energy independence in Europe, I think on a calibration we haven't seen before. There will be a realignment of NATO forces in the East. It's possible that Finland and Sweden will bring together NATO. All of this — I think those long-term responses are ultimately going to be more important than the decisions we brand about sanctions today. But obviously, those decisions are the ones that are firsthand and necessary right now.
Garcia-Navarro: OK, lots to consider there. Only fundamentally, what we're looking at is a sort of reorganization of the post-Globe War 2 consensus. Is that the way you see it, Frank?
Frank Bruni: Yes, absolutely. And I'thousand struck, listening to both Farah and Ross, at this sense of atheism that all of us seem to experience. And I feel information technology. I see information technology all effectually me. Farah said Americans aren't ready for this. I recall she'southward absolutely right. Ross called this "astonishing." I think that's admittedly right. This feels similar a page from the 20th century. And hither we are in the 21st century. And I'm struck by this sense I pick up in everyone around me that the world, nosotros were somehow past this, that state of war in Europe was something that we wouldn't see.
And so I don't think we're fix for this. I retrieve people don't know how to process this. I don't even remember they've gotten to the bespeak of fear and terror yet considering they're withal in that land of shock. And I wanted to also follow upwards on something Ross said. He talked about the incredible risk Putin is taking hither. I call back when people mention that, they're ordinarily thinking of the gamble he's taking internationally. Just he has taken an enormous, enormous risk internally, too. The Russian people are going to feel this gravely in their economy. They're going to feel this in terms of lost lives. And he is betting — and information technology is fascinating and terrifying — he's betting that this flexing of might and the stoking of national pride is somehow going to transcend and compensate for all of that. I don't know that we know that to be the case.
Garcia-Navarro: Farah, what does the very audacity of this act say well-nigh Putin'south plans?
Stockman: Well, look, Putin's been taking bites out of Ukraine since 2014. And before Ukraine, there was Georgia. Then we might be in atheism, just there are people living at that place who accept seen what's happening. Then I think he has nothing to end him. He is non accountable to a democratically elected congress. He doesn't take an opposition. His biggest opposition is in prison house. And and then what'due south stopping him from doing this?
A lot of people consider this to exist a personal obsession of his. He has a personal obsession with Ukraine. It has a lot of historical meaning to him. But I likewise see this as a bigger deal. It'south bigger than Ukraine because he's been watching for the concluding, I don't know, 20 years — he's been watching the The states do things like this, in his mind. He hated what nosotros did in Libya. He was furious. He hated the Iraq war invasion. He has been seeing us throw our might around and call it international law.
And I recollect he's simply proverb, well, I can play that game, too. And this is really about telling the United States that it'due south no longer the sole superpower and showing that we are weak. He went to Beijing before this and basically got some kind of agreement from President 11 that somehow Prc was going to back them up with economic deals and so that they could live possibly without Europe for a while. I worry about where this is all going.
Garcia-Navarro: Putin wants this, of form, because he sees what happened afterwards the Soviet Matrimony fell every bit a huge error. And and so that is one of the reasons why he'due south fixated on Ukraine.
Douthat: The irony of Farah'southward point is that, of course, nigh of the interventions that she'south describing that the Us made from its ain position of greater strength x or 15 years agone accept ended very badly, with Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, obviously, existence the well-nigh recent example. The Iraq war was not exactly a sterling story of American success. The Libya intervention left that land in a state of civil war that has remained off and on to the present 24-hour interval.
So for a long fourth dimension, Putin wasn't only angry at America most those unilateral interventions, those symbols of American might. He also had this sort of reasonable critique of how they went badly, how they didn't work, how America was reckless and destructive and smashing things up and leaving things in pieces. And at some signal, seemingly in his own vision of what's possible for Russia, he has abandoned that office of his critique of the U.Southward., or he has the idea that Ukraine is shut enough to Russia culturally and weak enough in its ain land chapters that he can succeed in conquest at that place in a style that all of America'due south efforts at nation building and so on have ended badly.
But in that location is a real shift in that location from saying America is reckless and destructive and its wars have failed to saying we tin succeed. We can do what George W. Bush was unable to do in Iraq. We tin conquer Ukraine in a heartbeat and reintegrate them into our own imperium. That's what'southward so distinctive — and distinctive, too, relative to what he had done previously. It'due south true that he had been taking bits and pieces and creating frozen conflicts around Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, elsewhere.
Garcia-Navarro: And Syria.
Douthat: And Syrian arab republic. Simply all of those were limited efforts, often in areas that had sympatric populations, that you could pull dorsum from if anything went wrong. And the scale is just dissimilar. The take a chance is but unlike hither.
Garcia-Navarro: Frank, nosotros don't know nevertheless if this will exist an occupation, just information technology seems clear to me that the intention is to overthrow Zelensky and, in some mode "reclaim" Ukraine.
Bruni: It does, indeed. And at every step of the style for the concluding couple of days and weeks, things have gone across what people feared. We're seeing and reading reports now of explosions and aggressions throughout the country of Ukraine, not just in the areas that are closest to Russia.
And I wanted to follow upwardly on something Ross said considering I think it'southward interesting. At that place's a difference betwixt Putin and Russian federation doing what he'due south doing right now and some of our strange misadventures that I think is striking, and it has a lot to do with how nosotros concluded up in this place. He has much greater control over the information that Russians receive, over the story that they're told. When our strange adventures go misadventures, when we end upward in spots that we were assured we wouldn't and everything goes wrong, we Americans get that information. We are the beneficiaries of a free press. I think for the Russians, whatever they're thinking nearly all of this is colored mightily by a very selective and distorted version of the truth. And I think that will hold true going forrad, and that'south a existent trouble in terms of coming to whatsoever kind of solution here.
Garcia-Navarro: Farah, when you look at this in terms of what Ukraine has symbolized in the region, for sure Russians, Ukraine has represented hope. Ukraine bolstered its republic in 2022 when information technology overthrew its pro-Russian autocrat. And for those living in autocratic countries in the region, the Ukrainian revolution signaled that there could potentially be a different path. And that hope has now been shattered. Basically, the message hither is self-decision will non exist tolerated.
Stockman: I think that'due south true. I've been very worried about this because y'all tin't just option up Ukraine and motility information technology somewhere else. It shares a border with Russia. Russia was ever going to take the ability to influence what was going on in Ukraine either past buying off its politicians or having its pro-Russian propaganda TV channels. And basically what triggered this buildup of troops was that the pro-Russian TV channels were turned off.
So I call up Putin decided, hey, he tin't keep Ukraine by influencing its politics, so he'southward going to go with a military invasion. He'south going to get Ukraine no matter what. That's what he thinks, and he might be right. That's the real worry. I wonder about how we tin can protect Zelensky. What are nosotros going to exercise if they abort the entire Ukrainian government and throw them in jail forever? Putin's good at this. He has washed this to Russia. He knows how to practise this.
I've e'er worried that nosotros might be giving them a little scrap of false hope that they can just do a total break with Russia and not have to think near what Putin's able to do with his giant army. I approximate perhaps I'm a bit of a realist, just I think that the Ukrainian people have such — they deserve to choose their own path. And they deserve the democracy that they're fighting for. Only they're always going to take to deal with that very powerful neighbour. And I worry that we cannot protect Zelensky. I don't know what the plan is right now.
When information technology comes to how nosotros can punish Putin for doing this, we're going to have to too become through some serious pain. Fifty percentage of Germany's natural gas comes from Russia, right? London has been rolling in Russian money for years now. So if Europe wants to stop Putin, we're going to have to go common cold turkey in means that are really hard. And they're going to be hard on Europeans, too. This is going to be a suck-information technology-up situation, where people are going to have to say, nosotros are going to have to quit Putin. We're going to take to quit the Russian gas and oil that we're fond to. And I only promise that nosotros're ready for that.
Garcia-Navarro: Ross, was this a massive miscalculation past Europe and Ukraine that they could even flirt with the idea of forming an alliance? Zelensky had explicitly said Ukraine wanted to join NATO. And Farah believes that peradventure this was all really a grave miscalculation that led to this.
Douthat: I think that it was a grave miscalculation. I call back, in some ways, an understandable one, precisely because the steps Putin has taken are so extraordinary and then fraught with gamble for himself and his regime that y'all could always tell yourself that he would go along to sort of choice away at Ukraine'south borders but information technology wouldn't come to this.
But even down to the terminal few weeks, there's been this very strange dynamic where the United States — which does, for all our intelligence failures, seem to have pretty skilful intel on what the Russians are upward to — kept issuing warnings of, it's really happening. The Russians are really planning to invade. And the Ukrainian authorities will say, oh, end sowing panic, and we don't remember an invasion is imminent and so on. I do recall that for very idealistic reasons, some Ukrainian nationalists talked themselves into the thought that Putin would never move like this or the idea that in the farthermost issue, the West would come to their aid more than was always quite reasonable and plausible.
There is also the question of to what extent — what is actually driving Putin'southward determination-making here, right? Is it NATO? Is it his sort of mystical idea of the Ukrainian-Russian connection and the thought that you tin can't disassemble Ukraine from Russian federation? Is information technology sort of immediate things — the crackdowns on pro-Russian parties and Russian language educational activity and stuff in Ukraine? Presumably, it's all of those at some level. Simply y'all can't say definitively that if there hadn't been this 1 provocative step, it wouldn't have come to this.
Only what's clear is that the United States' and the West's policy toward Ukraine in general was conditioned on this sense that we could invest there on a scale that wouldn't deter Putin. We knew information technology wouldn't deter Putin, but it would all work out, nonetheless. And now that we invested heavily in a government that we tin can't defend and is in danger of beingness destroyed, that is the sort of reality of power politics correct now.
Garcia-Navarro: Frank, Putin has seized this opportunity in my view considering he sees the West as weak and divided, and there's certainly an argument to be made that that is indeed the case. And that has huge implications for the United States and for our political system here. Many people are asking, why hasn't President Biden done more? He apparently tin't send troops into Ukraine, every bit 2 nuclear powers facing off would escalate things even further. But how do yous see his handling of this crisis and so far?
Bruni: Well, I call up he has limited options, as you've just said. And there are weird ways in which we feel backed into a corner, even though we are and have long thought of ourselves as being this superpower. We're non going to be sending troops. We've fabricated that very clear. Putin knows that, and he seems to be treating that as a kind of green light. It'due south unclear what at this point will deter him. I don't think the sanctions are any surprise to him. I think they exercise need to be every bit severe every bit possible, as severe as they tin exist in terms of the upshot they're going to end upwards having on Western European nations and whether they're willing to tolerate the consequences there.
But part of what makes this and so difficult to procedure and then impossible to predict is there are certain responses that we've taken off the table, and we've taken them off the table for very expert reasons. But now that they're off the tabular array, what happens? Where is our leverage? Where is our pressure? And how does this end? And if Putin gets abroad with this, and it looks similar he very well may, given his personality, given his megalomania, what comes later that? I remember these are real questions, and they're scary ones.
Garcia-Navarro: At that place was just a poll out showing that Putin was more than popular among Republicans than any senior Democratic leader, including the American president. We heard that erstwhile President Donald Trump seemingly praised Putin'south actions, calling them an human action of genius. Ross, Republicans seem to be all over the identify in regard to Russia. And on the 1 mitt, in that location are decisions that President Biden will have to make. But we also have to look at what the American political landscape is.
Douthat: I don't call up that poll quite captured what was going on. What it captures is that you have polarization in this country where Republicans don't think well of whatsoever Democratic leader at all. But the number of Republicans who actually said they were favorably tending to Putin was modest, also, right? So y'all're sort of conflating two different kinds of attitudes. If you polled liberals almost Donald Trump at the tiptop of the pandemic, they would have given him v percent approval ratings, too. So I'1000 a little skeptical of that.
I think what you see from Republicans is there's a mixture of things in play. There's a faction in the Republican Party that is sort of shaped by the Iraq experience, shaped past the failures of U.S. foreign policy that has become distinctly noninterventionist in a way that shades into a kind of excuse-making for Putin, a kind of attitude of, why should nosotros care? Basically what yous go from Tucker Carlson's broadcasts, right?
Merely that'due south not at all the dominant mental attitude in the Republican Political party. The dominant attitude in the Republican Party is this more of a partisan-inflected view that says, this is really bad, and the problem is Joe Biden was weak and wasn't tough enough. And Putin didn't set on while Trump was president considering he knew that Trump wouldn't allow him get abroad with it.
Then at that place's Trump himself, who clearly admires authoritarian leaders. That'southward non in question, right? So when Putin does something similar this, you get the immediate Trump sound bite of, he's beingness very smart and very tough. But so Trump too wants to say, this never would have happened had I been president, right? So it'southward a complicated mixture, but fundamentally, there isn't a potent pro-Russian contingent in the Republican Party, outside of, y'all know, something Steve Bannon says on his —
Garcia-Navarro: People though with pretty big megaphones.
Douthat: Right, there are some people with big megaphones. Just if you expect at polls, there was a poll of how involved should the U.S. exist in Ukraine. And what was striking, nigh people said not deeply involved, somewhat involved. The partisan breakdown was actually totally similar. Republicans, Democrats and independents looked quite similar. So I think there'due south actually a fairly strong American consensus that this is bad. In that location's besides a adequately strong American consensus that we don't want to send in ground troops. And most of our politicians, Republicans and Democrats, are going to operate within that consensus, at least until the adjacent presidential wheel gets going, and so things could get a little crazier.
Garcia-Navarro: So where does that get out President Biden, Farah, in your view?
Stockman: He'south in a really tough infinite. This is the 2d big foreign policy crisis. And a lot of people will say, well, the mode the U.Due south. got out of Afghanistan is partly responsible for this. Wait, we need to testify that NATO is going to be stronger and more united and more than active along its actual borders than ever before and evidence Putin that whatever he's doing right now is going to produce the exact opposite results of what he wants to achieve. I think that'south the best effect nosotros can get correct at present.
Only longer term, I think this idea that we can just buy gas from anyone, no matter whether they share our values, that we can just rely on other countries to produce our medicines. And as long as it'southward the cheapest, information technology doesn't matter. I recall Biden has got eyes wide open virtually how vulnerable that makes us and makes our allies and that he's, from day one, been working on how to make the Us more self-sufficient and more able to protect allies.
Because this is a long war. Information technology'south not going to begin and finish with Ukraine. So I simply call back this is a big moment, and it should exist a wake-upwards call for united states to really think nigh how we desire to interact with the world and how nosotros need to be with our allies in social club to prepare for a futurity that almost Americans aren't even aware is coming.
Garcia-Navarro: Frank, I'1000 going to end with what I started with. I'k going to inquire you, what now?
Bruni: [CHUCKLES] Boy, Lulu, do I wish I had the reply. For now, we wait. We listen very carefully to what Farah but said about the magnitude of this moment and the fact that in a world where we like our gratification quick and we tend to lose rails of and lose involvement in things very, very rapidly, we amend hunker downward and realize that we're going to exist living with what happened today and what happens in the coming days for a long time. We're going to be living with information technology in any number of ways. And if we tell ourselves anything different, we are beingness dangerously naïve.
Douthat: We've been talking a lot about the long term, and this is a huge change for the long term. But we are recording this podcast on the beginning twenty-four hour period of hostilities. And a great deal of that long term will be determined in the very short term by what kind of resistance Ukrainians put up to this invasion. M strategy questions bated, we should all be hoping that they put upwardly some pretty fierce resistance.
Lulu Garcia-Navarro is a Times Stance podcast host. Farah Stockman is a member of the editorial board. Ross Douthat is a Times columnist. Frank Bruni is a contributing Stance author.
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Times Opinion audio produced by Lulu Garcia-Navarro and Alison Bruzek. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kristina Samulewski. Original music by Carole Sabouraud and Isaac Jones and mixing past Isaac Jones. Audience strategy past Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special cheers to Kristin Lin, Kaari Pitkin and Patrick Healy.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/opinion/ukraine-putin-russia-times-opinion-writers.html
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