Obama refuses to arm Ukraine

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The U.S. and the European Union did something marginally positive yesterday, toughening sanctions against Russia by widening the list of Russian banks who will have their access to American capital restricted, while also blocking technology sales to Russian oil companies. It's better than the weak sauce that was previously announced, but it doesn't solve the immediate problem, which is that Ukraine is under seige and needs muscle and firepower to defend itself. That is not going to come from the U.S., because Barack Obama doesn't want it to look like we're in a new Cold War. After all, he very specifically told Mitt Romney the Cold War is over! And in Obama's mind, the way he wants to see the world must be the way the world is: Writing in the Wall Street Journal, William Galston lays out the problems with refusing to arm Ukraine:

The New York Times reported July 26 that the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are developing plans to provide the Ukrainian government with the specific locations of surface-to-air missiles controlled by the separatist forces backed by the Russians, which would enable Kiev to target them accurately. But this proposal reportedly faces an uncertain fate. The reason, an unnamed senior official told the paper: "The debate is over how much to help Ukraine without provoking Russia." Provoking Russia? The country that seized and annexed the Crimea? The country that is inciting civil war? The country that provided the missiles that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17? We're worried about provoking the country that is threatening the peace of Europe? All this should have a familiar ring. Many officials in the departments of State and Defense and the intelligence agencies long supported arming the Syrian rebels. Robert Ford, our brave and principled ambassador to Syria, resigned his post in February because he could no longer in good conscience support the Obama administration's refusal to do so. While the White House dithered, the moderate Syrian opposition lost ground both to President Bashar Assad's forces and Islamist extremists.

All of eastern Ukraine, and perhaps all of Ukraine eventually, will be in jeopardy if the west doesn't equip it to fight back against Putin's aggression. As Galston demonstrates, the idea that the Russians would restraint themselves but for "provocation" by the U.S. and the West is the product of left-wing fantasy about how and why nations operate on the geopolitical stage. Obama might have learned something from Romney's explanation about the difference between a national security threat and a geopolitical foe. Russia doesn't do anything because we provoke them and they get mad. International power is not exercised because of emotional hissy fits (except maybe by Obama). It is exercised because rational actors assess their strategic interests and the opportunity to pursue them. Putin wants to control Ukraine and he has made an assessment that he won't have to pay much of a price for seizing it. That's not because we "provoked" him. It's because he has no fear of anything we might do. In other words, he's pretty confident we won't do much of anything. No one fears any action Barack Obama might take because he is feckless and disinterested in countering aggression on the international stage. He sees no benefit to himself politically and he can't think of a way it helps him to pursue a socialist economic agenda domestically. He also just plain doesn't care. He can barely be bothered to pay for equipment to defend the United States, let alone some country halfway around the world that is supposed to be part of the Soviet Union anyway. Putin knows this. Now that Obama is re-elected he can be more flexible, and Vladimir has more freedom to run wild. Ukraine could have been a valuable ally to the democratic West. It wanted to join the EU and develop a friendly relationship with NATO. Then again, ask the Brits, the Israelis and the Poles what the value is of being an Obama ally. Maybe Kiev is better off fending for itself against the Russians.