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Was the Refusal to Fight Russia Worth It, Europe? Mass Murder, Global Recession, and US Paying Most [1]
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Date: 2022-10-03
As we enter the eighth month of Vladimir Putin’s total war on Ukraine’s people, there is a terrible irony in the weak responses from France and Germany. From the beginning, their leaders have made clear that their top priority was not to see Putin’s reign of terror and suppression of democracy throughout a whole region ended. Rather, it was to avoid any possibility that nuclear weapons might be used. It was never clear what this policy would mean if Russia started attacking a NATO nation such as Latvia or Poland: would Germany and France again refuse to fight Putin and let him succeed in that case too? The irony is that this patent weakness has apparently made Putin more willing to use a battlefield nuke in order to annex as much of Ukraine as possible.
In the meantime, France and Germany have allowed at least 10,000 Ukrainian troops and 6000 civilians to be killed (the real figure could be much higher: the UN says at least 24,000 civilians are dead). And tens of thousands have been wounded. On the Russian side, casualties are even harder to estimate, but at minimum 10,000 Russian soldiers have perished. The CIA has suggested that as many as 80,000 Russians have been killed or wounded.
The destruction within Ukraine is catastrophic beyond words: the World Bank and EU have estimated that rebuilding Ukraine could cost over $350 billion even if the war ended today. And it will get worse: Putin’s new draft makes even clearer that Ukraine will not be able to recapture its vital Black Sea coastline in the south or its industrial heartland in the Donbas unless the great powers of Europe finally step in to eliminate Russian bombers, artillery, and missile sites.
The economic and social costs are rippling around the world, as global recession and famine loom. Global corporations have lost at least $59 billion from the massive sanctions on Russia, which has entered a steep recession and lost many thousands of bright young people in tech jobs who have fled. Georgia is filling up with tens of thousands of Russian men desperate to escape Putin’s maniacal tyranny. Natural gas prices in Europe have tripled in the last 12 months, and may rise from 200 euros per megawatt hour to over 300 during the coming winter. The price shocks are hammering the poorest households across the continent.
Similarly, until some Ukrainian wheat began to flow again under a UN-brokered agreement in August, the price of bread had almost doubled in 2022 in most sub-Saharan African nations. At least a quarter of Ukraine’s 2022 harvest is lost. And next year’s harvest is also likely to be well below 2021, given the need to plant now, which will drive global wheat stockpiles even lower. All of this, of course, came just as nations were struggling to rebuild supply chains after Covid.
Then there are the long-term strategic and moral costs. China and Russia have also grown closer together, upping the threat that resurgent totalitarianism will tyrannize more of the human race in coming years. The world’s dictators have learned that if they threaten a nuclear attack, western nations will not fight their forces directly, even when they bomb apartment buildings, rape and pillage, and engage in ethnic cleaning within a European nation. Ukrainians and people in other eastern European nations see that they count for less in the eyes of Paris and Berlin. Even though German troops caused almost a million Ukrainian deaths in World War II, the German government will not risk losing a single member of their own armed forces to defend Ukraine – and will not even send them promised heavy weapons. Given Germany’s historical debt to Ukraine, this stance is moral treachery dressed up as self-righteous pacifism.
Americans also see that they once again have to take the lead and foot most of the bill in resisting a facist invasion of a European nation – just as in Bosnia three decades ago. The figures are egregious. Poland has contributed almost twice as much military aid as Germany, and France has contributed virtually nothing. American military shipments are almost three times the combined total of all European supplies. Germany sent 500 million euros of weapons to Ukraine in August, while the US announced a package costing six times that German figure on August 23. France offered 100 million euros, a pathetic 1/30th of the US figure.
This kind of thing makes Trump’s doubts about NATO look valid. The message it sends is that NATO will remain united IF and only if Americans are willing to keep losing a game of chicken and thus being fleeced by our continental allies. This outrage is tempered only by the fact that Germany is hosting almost a million Ukrainian refugees. But France has only a tenth of that number, while Poland – a nation with less than a third of France’s annual GDP – probably has well over 1.3 million refugees. Maybe Macron hoped the rest of us wouldn’t notice? If you are thinking of a vacation in France or Germany, I suggest taking your business elsewhere.
The alternative to all this loss and exploitation was simple. France and Germany could have called Putin’s bluff in February and March by bombing the Russian ships carrying missiles that were aimed at Ukrainian town centers, shooting down Russian warplanes, and obliterating Russian bases from which the bombers were taking off. Germany and France could have done even without US help, and without their own military “boots on the ground:” they might have lost a few aircraft and pilots at most.
Understandably Ukrainians remain in shock that Europe’s leading states did not take this obvious route. If Europe had used air power against Russian forces, the Ukrainians would then have triumphed in a matter of weeks. Putin would probably be out of power. Russian natural gas would be flowing through Nordstream I and II; the economy would be booming; and the cause of democracy would look much brighter around the world.
All of this Europe’s old guard sacrificed out of desperate dovishness. And by cowardly standing back and letting Putin’s forces rape and destroy everything within their reach, EU nations have not lowered the nuclear danger, but increased it, along with the continuing risk that the largest nuclear power plant in Europe could melt down and blanket huge areas with radioactive fallout.
Were all these direct costs and missed opportunities worth it to minimize a perhaps 1% chance that Putin would risk using a battlefield nuke? It is now very hard to make that case. On the contrary, it looks like the leaders of continental Europe have once again failed all of humanity by refusing to fight.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/3/2126609/-Was-the-Refusal-to-Fight-Russia-Worth-It-Europe-Mass-Murder-Global-Recession-and-US-Paying-Most
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