Keyboard Warriors Need to take a Chill Pill
Published at 06:20 on 1 March 2022
Yes, there is a big, scary Russian convoy working its way to Kyiv.
No, NATO should not bomb it.
It’s sort of shocking I have to say it, but Twitter is full of idiots advocating just that, even though it is a direct violation of one of the unwritten rules of avoiding World War III: nuclear-armed powers should never directly fight each other.
The same goes for a no-fly zone. That also should be permanently off the table, for the same reason. Any NFZ would have to be enforced, and that would mean a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russian aircraft.
Also, Ukraine should not get express special-treatment entry into the EU just because they asked for it. Full EU membership is a long process (Turkey is still going through it, after decades.) It’s that way for a reason: it’s a very tight integrating of economies, and nations should be reluctant to do that unless all parties are certain they are compatible.
The EU is right now having no shortage of dealing with headaches involving Poland and Hungary, both of which have right-wing governments that are backsliding into authoritarianism and kleptocracy. Both were welcomed into the EU, and in hindsight this welcome seems to have been too hasty. Let’s not repeat that error.
Ukraine is not a first-world democracy. Its prewar GDP per capita is roughly ⅓ of Russia’s. That’s less than Bulgaria, currently the poorest EU member state. It’s Transparency International corruption perceptions index is 32, less than the Philippines and only one notch above Mexico. The Azov Battalion is not just Russian propaganda; Ukraine really does have a neo-Nazi regiment in its military. (Putin’s “de-Nazification” pretext was chosen for a reason; the best pretexts do generally have some truth to them.)
None of this means that Ukraine shouldn’t be helped. None of this means that Putin is not himself the worst fascist on the world stage, and that the problem he poses won’t only get worse if his regime is not made to pay for what it is doing in Ukraine. It just means that this must be done realistically.
Another place where we must be realistic is realizing, as I wrote earlier, that Russia (by virtue of multiple poor decisions on their part) is partly responsible for Ukraine’s success up to now, and that the Russians are almost certain to correct some of those errors and start faring better as a result. It still would be no big surprise if Russia ends up occupying Kyiv and most of the rest of Ukrainian territory.
That matters less in the long run than most keyboard warriors might think, because an outgunned insurgency can (and has many times in history) worn down a militarily superior occupying force over time. But the same well-meaning but ignorant individuals talking about NATO bombing Russian convoys probably aren’t aware of that, either.
Being realistic is always the best policy.