The two-day celebration of NATO’s 70th anniversary in London this week was a success. Neither the United States, France, nor Turkey quit the world’s longest-lasting alliance in a huff. This was without a doubt the lowest bar for accomplishment in…
A Useful Stalemate in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s undeclared war on once-fraternal Ukraine has destroyed Moscow’s influence on Kiev, forged genuine Ukrainian identity in resistance and ended in a roughly stable stalemate in the eastern 3% of Ukraine that Russia now controls. However bitter…
Truce At Last?
The fighting seems to be dying down in eastern Ukraine. This would mean “advantage Kiev.” There are growing signs that twelve months after the first Minsk agreement was signed, an armistice is taking hold in eastern Ukraine. It would be…
The Waiting Game
No, the West has not (yet) lost Ukraine in Vladimir Putin’s Russian roulette, and the fragile Minsk truce and Western sanctions on Moscow over its land grab in Ukraine have not failed. A more nuanced reading of the current state…
Do not arm Ukraine
Sending guns to Kyiv will only escalate the conflict Now is not the time to play to Russia’s military strength by flooding Ukraine, the world’s tenth-largest exporter of arms, with advanced Western weapons that Kiev’s armed forces have not…
Russian Escalation in Donbas
Ever since Russia snatched the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine last March and ended Europe’s seven-decade ban on coercive border change, Moscow has possessed enough raw military might to occupy mainland Ukraine as well. Throughout 2014, however, for tactical reasons, the…
The End of Deterrence?
Ukraine is at the mercy of Moscow now, the West is watching helplessly With two agreements about the future of eastern Ukraine now in place – one official brokered by the OSCE, one still secret between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko…
A Face-Saving Invasion
Sending troops into eastern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin risks NATO involvement The long-feared direct Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine has now begun, unannounced. This is no war of necessity, but the ultimate war of choice – an arbitrary personal…