Before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, we were lucky to have Ronald Reagan as president.
Fast forward to 2022.
With the war raging on the border of NATO member-states in Ukraine we should consider ourselves fortunate that President Volodymyr Zelensky is leading this eastern European nation. President Zelensky has led Ukraine’s fight spectacularly while refusing the Kremlin’s offers to stop hostilities if Ukraine cedes territories previously occupied by Russia — Crimea and parts of Donbass.
The resolute stance of Ronald Reagan in the waning years of the Soviet Union was instrumental in the demise of the “evil empire” – as he correctly called it – ending a precarious nuclear faceoff between the Soviet Union and NATO.
For the next 30 years, we lived with relative peace of mind, free from the scare of a nuclear Armageddon.
That is until an aging Russian autocrat – who is still referred to as President Vladimir Putin – miscalculated and overplayed his hand Feb. 24 when he openly invaded Ukraine in a failed blitzkrieg as he delivered on his long-intimated promise to rebuild the Soviet empire, the demise of which he notoriously called “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century."
Backed by financial and material help from the West – most notably by thousands of portable anti-armor and anti-aircraft systems – Ukraine has inflicted significant losses onto the invading Russian military and stalled its advance.
Meantime, the Putin regime has changed its tactics, now using its depleted military to primarily assault civilian rather than military targets, indiscriminately shelling and bombing Ukrainian cities and killing or injuring an estimated 1,500 civilians including children and pregnant women as of early last week.
The Russian propaganda machine has also adjusted to the protracted war, shifting its main made-up excuse for the invasion from “fighting Nazis in Ukraine” to an equally implausible excuse of preventing an alleged attack by NATO via Ukraine.
So far, the propaganda effort has been working in Russia where most people support the war, which the Russian propaganda refers to as a “special operation,” lying about its scale and heavy losses among the Russian military and the Ukrainian civilians, and playing down the humanitarian catastrophe of a 3-million-people exodus from Ukraine to the West.
As to the Western audience, the Kremlin propaganda’s message is different – keep supporting Ukraine and we will not stop at Ukraine, meaning the Russian will next invade a NATO country. The message was delivered last week by Vladimir Solovyov, a leading Russian propagandist on Russian national television.
We should not fall into this trap. Stopping Mr. Putin in Ukraine is our best hope to make sure NATO – including the United States – does not have to face off with Russia in a military conflict, risking a nuclear war. NATO was built on a principle that an attack against one member state is an attack against all, so a Russian attack on say – one of the Baltic States or Poland – would automatically involve the United States.
Mr. Putin understands one thing and one thing only – force. Appeasing him is exactly what has led us to this situation.
Moreover, we owe our support to Ukraine.
In 1994, Ukraine transferred its nuclear arsenal to Russia, in exchange for assurances by the United States and the United Kingdom — and ironically by Russia as well — to assure Ukraine’s security, as reflected in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.
It is time the West delivered on those assurances and kept supplying Ukraine with lethal weapons they requested – including warplanes – while toughening up financial and economic sanctions to include a universal ban on the Russian fossil-fuel exports.
Financial Times reported last week that Ukraine and Russia “have made significant progress on a tentative peace plan including a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces, according to five people briefed on the talks."
Make no mistake however — "if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces," Russia will invade again.
Short of direct military involvement, the West must do everything in its power to help Ukraine defeat Russia — unconditionally – so it gives up its illusions of grandeur and nostalgia for its imperial past — for good.
Once the Russian military crawls out of Ukraine back to Russia, the West should condition a gradual easing of sanctions on Russia giving up its nuclear weapons – so that it can never again hold the world hostage to them.
Let’s help President Zelensky defeat what’s left of the “evil empire” whose miserable existence President Reagan — President Zelensky’s fellow actor-turned-politician — helped end so famously.
“To those abroad scared of being ‘dragged into WWIII,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs, wrote last week on Twitter. “Ukraine fights back successfully. We need you to help us fight. Provide us with all necessary weapons. Apply more sanctions on Russia and isolate it fully. Help Ukraine force Putin into failure and you will avert a larger war.”
Amen to that.
First Published March 20, 2022, 4:00 a.m.
