Rethinking Integrated Deterrence
By Michael Fincher
September 22, 2023
The conflict in Ukraine exposes the Biden administration’s thinking as wildly naïve and completely unprepared for a conflict NATO spent seventy years expecting and preparing to fight. The United States now seems woefully unprepared for a war it isn’t even fighting.
A year and a half ago Western nations sanctioned and seized official Russian assets and those of private citizens. They also pulled Western corporations out of Russia; stopped working with banks and trading currency; and the West largely banned Russian nationals from private associations and sporting events. Russia was hit with nearly every sanction and condemnation imaginable, their Nordstream pipeline was even destroyed, their people are demonized by American and European officials and by groups of citizens on the internet.
Realists and skeptics suggested early on that these approaches would prove counterproductive, and they were correct; sanctions completely failed to slow or stop the conflict. Instead, Ukraine is a meatgrinder that is eating depleting critical stockpiles of American and European munitions.
Russia suspended participation in the 2010 New START Treaty in February of this year. The relationship between Russia, China, and other nations in Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America has never been stronger. The BRICS are gaining more influence, looking for ways to move off the Dollar as the currency of international trade, and recently, forty additional nations sought to join them. Bilateral trade between China and Russia has increased 40% from last year. American action has even managed to make Saudi Arabia and Iran friends.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/09/22/rethinking_integrated_deterrence_981346.html
