Swimming with Sharks

The author attends a highbrow security conference- and reads the tea leaves.

Heads up- this article is by far my longest yet.

Ah, Warsaw.  A European Capital unlike any other.  Destroyed by the Nazis as punishment for the ill-fated Warsaw Uprising, Warsaw was rebuilt after the Second World War as a model socialist city with high-rise block apartments and wide boulevards.  After Poland’s rapid transition to capitalism in the 1990s, Warsaw has been reborn yet again, this time as a showcase of Poland’s economic rise with stylish, modern flats, quality infrastructure, building cranes, and high-rise glass office buildings.  Warsaw also happens to be the only European capital I have traveled to alone on multiple occasions thanks to my, as some will say, excessive love of Poland and Polish culture.  And this Warsaw is where I went to swim with sharks.

The shark tank I entered is called the Warsaw Security Forum, a little brother of the ultra-highbrow Munich Security Conference.  At this conference there were many high-level dignitaries, including Polish President Andrzej Duda, former Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus, and chess grandmaster-turned Vladimir Putin foe Garry Kasparov.   A critical theme of the Warsaw security forum was the interconnectedness of today’s security threats around the world, evidenced by the increasing coordination of the United States’ foes China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.  I even met a Venezuelan at the conference and expressed my hope that one day the Maduro regime will fall.  The theme of interconnection of threats fit in nicely to the mission I set myself upon for attending the Warsaw Security Forum in the first place- is financial investment in Ukraine’s military capabilities worth it for the United States and the American people?  As Ukraine has become such a divisive issue in American politics, as proved by Volodymyr Zelensky’s Pennsylvania debacle, this question will become ever more poignant in the months and years ahead.

The main purpose of American military assistance to Ukraine, at least according to the United States government, has been to thwart an outcome most Americans would deem catastrophic.  In Washington’s telling, should Ukraine collapse under the weight of the Russian military and become absorbed into a Greater Russia, Russian President Vladmir Putin’s troops will embark on a Hitler-like rampage across Europe.  The Russian shock-and-awe will supposedly start with the Baltic States, then Poland, and ultimately not stop until, as Russian television propagandists claim, the Atlantic Ocean is reached.  While there is still no definitive intelligence or statements from high-ranking Kremlin officials definitively promoting such a new Russian empire, or as they would definite it, security perimeter, concerns of a Russian military offensive against NATO countries have always served as the main justification for the enormous American and European military investment into the Ukrainian military. 

I am not writing this assessment to belittle or dismiss some of the counterarguments of the Ukraine skeptics in the United States.  Ukraine has long been identified as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, where bribery is a daily ritual and public officials steal from the state like Bernie Madoff stole from his clients.   Likewise, the optics of sending American taxpayer dollars to a far-off military conflict while we grapple with a catastrophe on the US-Mexico border and humanitarian tragedies in the mountains of North Carolina and the coasts of Florida are… less than ideal.  Concerns about nuclear escalation, openly encouraged by Putin and his cronies, are real, even in my book, as is the skepticism of Putin having any plans beyond Ukraine.  However, some of the more outlandish claims made by certain American politicians and media personalities are not worth my time debunking.  If you are seriously convinced by these confused individuals, then you have no reason to continue reading.  For countering the more legitimate arguments against military aid to Ukraine, then you have come to the right place.

The Warsaw Security Forum Itself

So, with the dramatic and terrifying specter of a major war in Europe, I went to investigate the real justifications, as claimed by the conference’s attendees, for American investment in Ukraine.  The first guest I met was a young man named Robert, who works at an notable think tank in Washington.  Robert and I quickly established a rapport that we maintained for the entirety of the conference.  While he admitted that Russian tanks are unlikely to enter Berlin anytime soon, he did make clear where our Ukrainian aid packages were really going- American manufacturers.  Instead of going into the pockets of politicians, whether American or Ukrainian, congressional Ukraine allocations are transferred into American arms manufacturers, often in Republican states.   He also cited the Government Accountability Office and its strict protocols ensuring that our assistance to Ukraine is not misused.   According to the Center for Strategic & International Studies, there is strong evidence for the first claim, with contracts supporting the Defense-Industrial Base awarded in almost every state, in particular Florida Alabama, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan.  As for the second claim the battle in Washington rages on.

As for the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat and a Russian victory, Robert made two sobering predictions.  America would now have a longer NATO border to defend, which would require relegating domestic priorities and possibly eventuate an even larger American military presence in Eastern Europe.  This argument was seconded during a panel by General Petraeus, who addressed Ukraine as an overwhelmingly positive investment for the United States.  According to Petraeus, we can cripple our second-biggest global adversary’s military at a fraction of the cost of physically defending our NATO allies.  Even more importantly for the American people, we can do so without endangering the lives of any American servicemen and women.  This argument is no doubt a powerful one.  I hope to emphasize in the strongest terms that Ukraine supporters like myself are no warmongers.  Instead, we simply never want to be faced with the no-win decision of jumping into a hot war with a nuclear-armed enemy or abandoning our allies in Eastern Europe to Russian military occupation.  Ultimately, it’s best to stop the enemy in its tracks before such a war is unleashed.

Another concern that has been floating around has been Europe’s military capabilities, or rather the lack of them, to match Russia at its full strength.  And my findings were not encouraging.  Another attendee with whom I built a rapport was Stefano, an Italian defense research expert.  When I asked Stefano, who warned me of Russia’s hostile intentions against Italy, about the hard-to-fathom claim that several dozen nations, with a combined GDP 10 times the size of Russia, would somehow be overwhelmed militarily, Stefano warned that the doomsayers were, in fact, correct.   With a Post-Soviet Pax Americana and a shifting threat perception from conventional military readiness to counterinsurgency, Europe systematically demilitarized in the 1990s, leaving the continent completely unprepared for large-scale conflict.  This thesis was candidly confirmed by American Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who candidly admitted Europe’s weakness in of the forum’s panels.  According to the mood at the conference, Europe would most likely be dealt a humiliating defeat in a conflict against the military juggernaut of Russia.  More on this matter later.

In my last minutes at the conference, a former high-ranking NATO military official told me of on-the-ground safeguards in Ukraine preventing corruption of American aid.  While I am sure that programs exist to prevent such corruption I have yet to find substantial evidence that they exist on the ground.  All we can do is trust what our officials are telling us, for better or worse.  While concurring with Robert’s assertion of a greater cost to American taxpayers for the defense of Europe in the event of a Ukrainian collapse, the official also raised a topic underlined at the Warsaw Security Forum- the People’s Republic of China.  In case you are not yet aware, the evidence is now overwhelming that Chinese military equipment keeps miraculously appearing on the front lines in Ukraine on the side of Russia.  

One theme repeated ad nauseam at the Warsaw Security Forum was the so-called “interconnectedness” of today’s global security challenges.  With China, Russia, and America’s enemies forming what appears to be a united front, the United States and its allies are facing a concerted effort from multiple sources to upend the global rules-based order protecting sovereignty of small states and upholding the peaceful resolution of disputes.  Just minutes before I departed the DoubleTree Hilton Conference Center for the last time, the former NATO official gave me a clear message- a victory for Russia in Ukraine would also be a victory for China, America’s most powerful and dangerous enemy.

An Awkward Encounter

However, there was one moment during the conference where I chose to don the mantle of a Ukraine skeptic, albeit a mild one.  In one of the side rooms, there was a conference about preparing societies in Europe for the implementation of civil defense, which in layman’s terms means civilian readiness for large-scale emergencies. One of the panelists was a man named Carl-Oskar Bolin, the Swedish Minister for Civil Defense.  Yes, you read that correctly- the government of Sweden created an entire government department for it, albeit subordinate to the main Ministry of Defense.  Last January, Bolin uttered a startling warning to the Swedish media- There could be a war in Sweden.  All it took were these six (in the Swedish language) words plus a typical cocktail of panic and sensationalism on social media, and next thing you know you had thousands of Swedish teenagers anxiously seeking comfort with the national crisis helpline.  Therefore, I summoned the courage to ask Bolin, in front of approximately 75 other attendees, whether his warnings were excessive and even counterproductive.  After all, if our government went full Chicken Little and warned you in a press conference that the sky was about to fall, and you went outside and found the sky as normal as ever, how could you, with a sound mind, ever believe the government anymore?

Following this candid exposure of Bolin’s mistake, my captivating conversation with a girl from the Finnish embassy in Warsaw was abruptly halted as Bolin and his assistants ushered me out of the room to give me a subtle, oh-so-Swedish dressing-down and full-throated defense of that infamous January press conference.  And just like that, Bolin’s assistant gave me her card and the Swedish delegation was gone.  As Carl-Oskar Bolin is your stereotypical tall, slender Swedish man with a bushy beard of fitting of a Viking, this encounter made feel about two feet tall.  Blessedly, my dignity was restored when I found Johannes, an official at the Swedish Embassy in Warsaw.   I immediately clarified that I meant no hostility or confrontation with the minister, and thankfully, my reassurance was accepted.  Johannes explained to me how the purpose of all the startling statements was to “move the needle” in Swedish public opinion away from the complacency so typical in Europe since the Soviet Union collapsed.  In other words, with Russia’s behavior menacing and unpredictable, a teaspoon of tactical scaremongering suddenly makes perfect sense- even if Russian troops won’t be mounting an amphibious invasion of Stockholm anytime soon.

Investigating the Roots of Russian Misconduct

In order to be a good scholar, one must analyze conflicts from all sides.  Thus, one cannot fully understand Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine without attempting to empathize with the worldview that compelled him to make such an extreme decision.  This maxim is why I read Russian media nearly every day, much to the detriment of my own sanity.  Unless you have a voluminous grasp of history and geopolitics and a thick skin, such an endeavor I do not recommend whatsoever.  And I only carry one of those traits.   My quest to understand Russia is why I elected to arrange, thanks to the help of my friend who works in the Polish government, a meeting at the Polish Institute of Eastern Studies with an expert on the country.  During a brief meeting, this expert named Witek explained in detail the “pre-enlightenment” mentality of the Russian elite.  And the Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin is no exception to this mentality.  To Putin and his cronies, the world is naturally in a state of permanent conflict, and the only real international law is the law of the jungle.  Everyone is a potential enemy and coercion or even violence is the most effective form of Russian statecraft.  To add to the sinister backdrop, states in this bleak worldview are either masters or slaves.  No third option exists.

Putin ultimately made the fateful decision to launch a military campaign against Ukraine when his kitchen sink of coercive measures following Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity failed to meaningfully halt Ukraine’s budding integration with Western structures.  In Putin’s worldview of permanent conflict, the completion of said integration would represent an existential threat to the Russian state.  After all, if Ukrainians can throw their corrupt regime overboard, why can’t their genetic cousins over in Russia?  Add on Russia’s hundreds of ethnic minorities and you have a real nightmare for the Kremlin.  Since Putin naturally cannot tolerate such a scenario he believes would lead to Russia’s break-up and collapse, this old KGB agent executed his diabolical scheme. 

As to whether Putin would go further than Ukraine, Witek was clear.  He did concede that Russian elite is aware that Polish culture is too distinct to simply be absorbed and annexed into a greater Russia after Ukraine.  Instead, should the Russians be given the opportunity to do so, Poland would be transformed into a weak state where Moscow can easily blackmail economically or even militarily.  A good parallel for this dynamic is Russia’s relationship with the poor former Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan.   As for actual military threats, the Russians desire nothing less than to humiliate the United States and Europe once and for all.  And there’s no better way to eventuate such humiliation than to seize a nibble of NATO territory and force the alliance to choose between backing down in disgrace and a large-scale war.

Just as the meeting was wrapping up, Witek offered me two contradictory theses about how Russia views the West.  While they certainly view us a threat for all the reasons I gave above, they also perceive us as weak.  They see how domestic politics in both the United States and Europe has become hopelessly polarized and dysfunctional.  They also saw Joe Biden’s humiliating mental decline and Afghan debacle.  With this man at the helm of the world’s supposedly most powerful nation, it’s no wonder they felt they could get away with rolling the dice in Ukraine.  This paradox of Western threat and weakness will, unfortunately, continue no matter who wins the US election.  In fact, one of the topics most notably absent during the Warsaw Security Forum, except for one panel devoted exclusively to transatlantic relations, was our election.  Rather than a panic about a potential victory for notable NATO skeptic Donald Trump, the mood at the conference was one of continued resolve to protect European security no matter who sits in the White House.  So as the threat from Russia is concerned, American politics is nothing more than a sideshow.

Conclusion

Now as I sit in the comfort of my own home back in the states, I must share my ultimate conclusions from the Warsaw Security Forum.  While the situation could have certainly been more humiliating, my awkward encounter with the Swedish Minister of Civil Defense was ice bucket of reality- this category of conferences with so many elite and governmental officials are not places for open disagreement.  While I never felt directly or publicly insulted, the paradigm of a free and open exchange of ideas at the Warsaw Security forum seemed only superficial, replaced by an atmosphere of groupthink.  While the forum’s sponsors, among which were familiar names like General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, have every incentive to encourage such an atmosphere, I still wish there were room to acknowledge flaws in the overarching narrative.  While I definitely agree with the Warsaw Security Forum’s thesis that Vladimir Putin’s Russia represents a serious threat to peace and security in Europe, and even the United States, we first must right-size this threat before jumping on the bandwagon that his troops will march through Berlin and Paris unless the west follows the defense contractors’ prescriptions and buy even more of their gadgets.

So, what verdict can I give about the future awaiting us should Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine be successful?  Frustratingly, I could not find any smoking gun definitively stating whether he would ever consider launching a full-scale military attack on a NATO country.  Certainly, every indication points to Putin, and most likely whoever his successor may be, continuing their grey-zone war (definition here) against the United States and Europe for years, if not decades to come.  It is a cheap, low-risk, and often highly effective method to throw one’s enemies off balance, and the Russians have been the masters of this practice since the Soviet days.  You may ask, if Russia cannot even take over Ukraine, how could they seriously threaten to take over all of Europe?  While Europe’s militaries certainly have their shortcomings, I suspect much of this narrative of Russia overwhelming Europe in a conflict is, as Johannes tole me, some tactical scaremongering to maintain political support for cold-war style rearmament plans across Europe, just in case the worst really does occur.  After all, with Russian behavior so unpredictable, it certainly can’t hurt to be prepared.

And what about Ukraine?  I have long been skeptical, despite my overall support for the cause, that Ukraine can achieve a miraculous victory by recovering their 1991 borders and then riding off into the sunset.  Beyond the obvious nuclear threats with which the Russians have not been shy, Ukraine seems to be losing town after town, albeit at an enormous cost to Russian military personnel.  Furthermore, Vladimir Putin clearly sees this war as existential not only to his rule but the Russian nation itself.  Thus, neither Putin nor any of the old KGB men around him seem likely to back down in their quest to expand their “security zone” to the west anytime soon.   Based on all my research, the Russians would rather go out in a blaze of glory and bring the world down with them than accept complete defeat in Ukraine.  We absolutely should be clear-eyed about this risk.

However, there are two rock solid strategies to thwart the small yet non-zero risk of a major Russian military attack on a NATO country.   One is to overturn decades of American foreign policy and suddenly permit a shock-and-awe episode of nuclear weapons proliferation and production by multiple European countries.  After all, how could any country without them feel safe if nuclear-armed powers can devour smaller non-nuclear nations at will?  The other strategy is certainly a brutal calculation with which I welcome debate and disagreement.   So long as Russians or soldiers from other hostile nations keep dying in Ukraine, a country with more than ten years military experience fighting the Russians, there is a next-to-zero chance that the Kremlin will suddenly decide to escalate their war by attacking yet another country, whether Poland, Lithuania, or even Sweden.  It would be truly an act madness, more mad than invading Ukraine. 

Thus, it’s far cheaper, and beneficial for American jobs and manufacturers, to continue this proxy war until the Ukrainians conclude that it’s time to make the painful concessions necessary for a ceasefire.  Even if the fears of a Russian blitzkrieg across Europe and Russian troops marching into Warsaw, Stockholm, Berlin, and Paris are exaggerated, decades of Russian misconduct issues to me an overwhelming verdict that the weaker Russia is, the safer we are in the West.  In the future, we can all hope for a Russia who drops its paranoid and militaristic global outlook for good.  As for me, I am unlikely to attend any many more Warsaw Security Forums in the near future.  But you certainly have not heard the last of me on the topic of security in Eastern Europe.