Putin Appears Poised to Attack

Will he or won’t he? That is the question garnering the attention of political-military analysts in Washington and capitals around Europe this week. It appears that President Vladimir Putin is poised to order the Russian military to invade Ukraine again. Unlike the 2014 Russian occupation in the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine, however, it appears this time Russian military planners have spent considerable time prepping and refining all the details.

Over the last year Russia conducted a number of large-scale military exercises near the Ukrainian border. In effect Putin’s troops were a practice invasion force. Instead of the forces leaving the area at end of the exercises, the Russian president ordered some of the troops and heavy materiel to be left behind along the Ukrainian border. It is a move that analysts in Washington are labeling a “forward-deployment” in preparation for a potential invasion that may come in the next few weeks. The staging will allow Russia to move quickly when it decides to activate its forces. The Russian propaganda machine also is active delivering warlike rhetoric that Evelyn Farkas, writing in the publication Defense One, says “has saturated Russian airwaves” along with Putin’s ultimatums. The situation remains fluid. Last week demonstrations in Kazakhstan appeared to dampen the tempo when Putin sent 3,000 paratroopers to the country to help quell the violence. According to analysts, the personnel and financial commitment by Moscow may have delayed but did not stop Putin’s strategic plan for Ukraine.

The Biden White House has been speaking with European leaders and President Putin in a diplomatic effort to tamp down the situation along the Ukrainian border. Farkas says that the “basic reason… talks with Russia will fail is that the United States and its allies have nothing they can immediately offer Moscow in exchange for a de-escalation. So far ultimatums out of Washington, including the threat of economic penalties and sanctions has done little to alter the tension.

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Farkas argues that “US leaders should be marshalling an international coalition of the willing, readying military forces to deter Putin and, if necessary, prepare for war.” There is some indication that if Russia invades there is nothing left to restrain Putin from moving farther beyond Russia’s current borderlands in a land grab that could result in the restoration of all the pre-1991 borders. This would restore what Putin often has referred to as the unjust stripping of land from Great Russia. If US and other world leaders refuse to stand up to Putin now it will have repercussions throughout the world. One analyst called it the beginning of the end of the current world order. It could embolden China to move up it time schedule for retaking Taiwan if Beijing viewed Western, democratic leaders as impotent in the face of a military operation.“Nuclear Russia is a revisionist, revanchist power acting already as if there is no international order or United Nations, ignoring the Geneva Conventions, UN Charter, Helsinki Accords or any of the host of regional agreements Moscow has signed,” according to Farkas. The uprising in Kazakhstan may have convinced Putin that the recent democratic uprisings or “color revolutions” are a threat to Russian national security as they incentivize domestic Russian minority groups. The events of the past week are morphing into a broader issue as Putin is challenging the rules-based international order, NATO, and the the Western alliance in the United Nations. To date Putin has challenged and won at every step along the way. Since the dissolution of the USSR Putin has established Russian bases in Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Moldova. In 2008 when George was making overtures concerning membership in NATO Putin invaded two small northern provinces in the country. According to the NATO charter a country cannot become a Member state if it does not have control over its territory. Russian troops continue to occupy 20% of Georgia. Putin continues to grow bolder with each move. The Russian leader now is demanding a guarantee from President Biden that NATO will not move further east and that the United States will not support NATO in a move against Russia. It may be time to build a new coalition of the willing, who can restrain Putin while it still is possible.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Department during the Reagan Administration.

Quick Analysis

U.S. Navy Losing Dominance

From the Caribbean to the Mediterranean to the Pacific, the naval forces of Russia and China have challenged the once-dominant position of the United States. On July 18, U.S. Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson, in a speech at the Aspen Institute, warned that Russian warships have been making port visits to Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, and 22 nations in the U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility has signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the commander of Southcom told attendees of the Aspen Security Forum. Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson said the nations that have signed on to the Chinese initiative don’t see the investments the U.S. has been making in their countries. “All they see are the Chinese cranes,” she said. “These projects are in the billions of dollars. … They are big-time projects.” Richardson said it would be OK with her if those investments were for doing good in the hemisphere. “But it makes me a little suspicious when it’s in the critical infrastructure.” Critical infrastructure, she said, includes deep-water ports, cybersecurity, energy and space. “I worry about the dual use nature of that. These are state-owned enterprises by a communist government. I worry about the flipping of that to a military application,” Richardson said, referring to China. Regarding the Russian port visits, Richardson said U.S. vessels have been shadowing those vessels to ensure the safety and security of the United States. Also, the Russians continue to make high-level government visits to Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua with their foreign affairs minister and the head of the Russian legislative body, she said, adding that the U.S. could be doing more in its own government exchanges. “I really believe that economic security and national security go hand in hand here in this hemisphere, and we have got to work both of them together very, very quickly,” she said. In the Mediterranean, according to the Bulgarian Military A fleet, including the missile cruiser Varyag and the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov, has successfully navigated the Suez Canal, transitioning from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, as confirmed by the Pacific Fleet [PF] on Wednesday. The authoritative GIS Reports notes that “In the crucial Indo-Pacific, the tide has changed dramatically against America. the balance of naval power in the Western Pacific has been altered in favor of the Chinese Navy. For instance, the U.S. Navy went from having a 76-warship advantage over China in 2005 to having a 39-combatant deficiency in 2023, based on similar ship and submarine comparisons. That is a swing of 115 naval platforms in 23 years. This is a strategic trend that will continue uninterrupted for at least the next decade.” Rep. Mike Rogers has previously pointed out that The Biden Administration’s 30-year ship-building plan reduces the Navy’s ability to protect its aircraft-carrier strike groups and eliminate enemy minefields, reduces the Marine Corps’ ability to conduct forcible-entry missions, and reduces by almost 10 percent the Navy’s capacity to launch missiles. Public estimates indicate that China will eventually develop a global force of submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles, posing an obvious risk to the U.S. China’s surface-combatant forces already greatly exceed that of the U.S. Photo: Vessels attached to a flotilla with the navy under the PLA Southern Theater Command sail toward the designated area during a comprehensive combat training exercise in late June, 2024. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Huang Jiacheng and Wang Jian)

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