The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
Wars and military escalations breed clichés that are exclusive, yet elusive.
So the Vietnam War’s best and brightest spent a decade chasing their illusory “light at the end of the tunnel.” And today’s Situation Room strategists are turning each other into nodding but clueless bobbleheads every time they emptily say somebody just needs to create an “offramp” for Vladimir Putin.
Everyone knows what that means: Just come up with a “face-saving” offer that Russia’s poker-faced president can accept — and avoid blundering ahead with a massive Ukraine invasion he now realizes could become an easy yet disastrous Russian victory.
But nobody knows what that “offramp” can be. Or how to make it sufficiently meaningless yet seemingly meaningful. Because everybody is going about it the wrong way. They’re all trying to build the wrong kind of offramp.
What has really happened is that Putin discovered his master plan — the reason he sent more than 100,000 troops to surround Ukraine on three sides — has backfired. Big-time. What he wanted, most of all, is to drive a wedge between the United States and its NATO allies. And his reading of what he’d seen of the United States and Europe this century — the Syria redline, the Afghan abandonment, the Republican Party’s isolationism and Britain’s floundering — meant that America and NATO were ripe for exploitation.
Putin thought that if he moved on Ukraine, the weakened West would go limp. He’d divide the U.S. and NATO — his long-desired payback for the shame he felt when the Soviet Union crumbled.
What he has seen is that President Joe Biden and Europe’s leaders have shown strength and solidarity — militarily and diplomatically — in ways he didn’t expect. America and Europe seemed to unite significantly behind a course of sanctions that Putin knows could all but blackball Russia from international banking and even the global economy.
With his move toward invading Ukraine, which Putin proclaims is Russian to its core, Russia’s president wanted to pressure NATO to pull all offensive military forces out of the former Eastern European countries that once were Soviet satellites — and, of course, to pledge that Ukraine can never join NATO.
Now he needs to ask himself: Will Eastern Europe, all of NATO and the United States ever again view Putin’s Russia with a mind that isn’t preset to expect a hostile adversary — and can someday accept an economic and trading partner?
That is the ultimate Ukraine invasion “offramp” that the West can sketch for Putin, and Joe Biden can play a key role as a diplomatic draftsman and global leader. Biden can go to the United Nations and remind the world of an era we all might consider worth resurrecting.
In 2014, Putin spent grandly to rejoin the world in what was, in effect, a Sochi Two-Step. First, he hosted the Winter Olympics — and won a world of plaudits for the facilities he built. Months later, Putin was scheduled to host the G-8 nations’ economic summit. Yes, at Sochi. For the first time, the world would be seeing Russia as a potential partner in the global economy.
But just as the 2014 Winter Olympics were closing, Ukraine sought a trade relationship with the European Union, spurning a deal with Russia. An enraged Putin militarily captured Crimea, which was part of Ukraine. Of course, the G-8 canceled its summit and ousted Russia from the group.
Russia has suffered ever since as a nonplayer in the global economy. If Russia now invades Ukraine, its people will suffer most from the banking sanctions that likely will follow. But Biden can say that won’t happen if Putin doesn’t invade Ukraine. Experts believe Russia’s people will get Biden’s message via social media, even if the state media gets a little snippy.
Maybe, just maybe, the roadway Putin built in 2014 can be repurposed to become the diplomatic infrastructure “offramp” he can veer onto today.
And someday, Ukrainians may look back at 2022 as the year they first got to know Good Neighbor Vladimir.
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