The West must not grant Putin the fruits of his evil
TO ASK A VARIATION OF WHAT SECRETARY OF STATE
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT SCREAMED AT COLIN POWELL DURING THE BALKANS WAR,
“WHAT’S THE POINT OF HAVING THIS SUPERB MILITARY IF WE CAN’T USE IT?”
West cannot let this war end by granting Vladimir Putin the fruits of his evil. Some 100,000 human lives are being held as chips in a grand negotiation in Mariupol, Ukraine. Doctors Without Borders has reported that medicine ran out days ago, people are exposed to the elements because housing has been systematically destroyed, and there are only a few days, if any, left of food reserves. And then there’s Bucha. There are no words, but the images are shocking.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy faces an impossible question: Negotiate for peace and save the lives of people in Mariupol, Bucha, the Donbas, and soon Odessa, or keep fighting to win the war, or at least negotiate on his terms, not Putin’s.
Putin is betting on these looming tragedies to push Zelenskyy to agree to a deal giving Russia most of what it wants. Zelenskyy has already sent strong signals that he’s willing to let go of what he called the NATO “dream,” at least for now. And probably his pledge to “discuss the future of Crimea” means he’d let that heavily pro-Russian population go as well. The fate of the Donbas seems to be headed toward the status quo ante given the unlikely scenario that Ukrainian forces could take them back. In the end, this scenario would mean the thousands killed and the utter destruction of most of the country would have brought both sides around to where they more or less were at the start.
Zelenskyy is being forced by this hostage taking to weigh the long-term security of his country against those lost lives and the years of rebuilding the country faces. There will also no doubt be a sizable loss of talent as many of those who fled the war choose to not return. Stemming that exodus has to be in his calculus as well. There’s no easy answer for him. It will be hard for a decent man like Zelenskyy to condemn his people to a longer war for the sake of an as-yet-to-be-won greater good.
Putin is coldly counting on that fact and tightening the noose where his forces are capable of it. Every day the evidence piles up that Russian soldiers were told by commanders to purposefully disregard the risk to civilians, or to make civilian casualties the aim of operations, as President Joe Biden has accused Putin of doing. The Kremlin understands that Ukraine shares the values of Europe, values that make human rights the core of international relations. While the war might have started because he wanted to push Ukraine away from those same values, for now, Putin will use them to press his position. There is no bigger pressure point right now than the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Mariupol where a relief convoy has again been stopped, and the certain knowledge that what happened at Bucha won’t be the last war crime committed on civilians.
NATO must do more to save Ukrainians from these horrors or else lose the right to claim it values human rights as more than an expediency. Sure, there is risk in using NATO to open civilian escape routes, or to pressure Putin elsewhere, like establishing no-fly zones, or safe areas, to ensure that Moscow cannot use civilians as poker stakes. But to ask a variation of what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright screamed at Colin Powell during the Balkans war, “What’s the point of having this superb military if we can’t use it?”
The West should be asking itself this question, daily. There are risks to using our superbly capable hard power, but we got to that level of superb capability because the men and women who built and trained these militaries believed in defending the very lives and principles at risk in Mariupol.
Those values matter, and Ukrainians share those values. The collective West should not let Putin use them against a country and a leader who has defended them so fiercely. Zelenskyy shouldn’t have to choose between quitting the fight and letting Mariupol die. There are creative ways to mitigate the risk of military support to Ukraine. The West should give Zelenskyy the option of saving those lives and continuing his righteous fight. All it is, is one percent.