Before Going to War, Consider Who’s in Charge
Let’s not go charging into the valley of death with our junto of fatuous fanatics in command.
By Stephen Balch
March 23, 2022
America is drifting toward war, wafted by a chorus of political and punditical sirens. A great many of them are conservatives, including popular media personalities with large audiences. They’ve been warned by other conservatives about the risks of confrontation with Russia that deeper intervention in Ukraine poses.
But since few want to abandon the Ukrainians altogether, the conservative camp faces a quandary. How much risk is too much risk? Is riskiness more a matter of the quantity or the quality of support we provide to Ukraine? Is it more a matter of optics or battlefield utility? Does it matter from exactly whence it immediately arrives? Is it important how much it steers the antagonists toward possible off-ramps? These would be difficult questions for even a consummate diplomatist to answer. Not an eager player of Russian roulette, for whatever it’s worth, I incline toward overall prudence. Keep the supplies flowing at pretty much their present rate and hope deadlock leads eventually to an agreement that neither side will like but that both can politically accept. Or so it seems to me.
Perhaps such a mutualistic outcome isn’t possible. Perhaps one side or the other will have to be clearly defeated before full-scale war comes to an end. If so, and it’s the Russians who are going down, we face a significant likelihood that Putin will try to save himself by expanding the war or using nuclear weapons. Defeat would not be fatal for Russia, but it would probably be so for him. Avoiding that disaster will call for mature statesmanship (perhaps brinksmanship) together with a great deal of luck.
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