Retweeted by Vindman 2x: The 2nd installment of Molly McKew's essay on Ukraine

[femmedem]

Last edited Tue Mar 8, 2022, 09:12 AM - Edit history (1)

[Part 2] Ukrainian sacrifice has created the opportunity for a better future with Russia.
Ukraine sees how to fight Putin. But they also see a chance for a different future between the West and Russia. We must take it.

This is part 2 of a three-part series on changing our approach to the war in Ukraine.

Part 1 argues that there is no way to return to “normal” with Putin, and looks at how and why we must change our thinking on the risk/opportunity calculus we are getting so wrong.

Part 2 looks at the considerable opportunity that Ukraine is forging for us — at the different, better future we might have if we are brave enough to take it.

Part 3 will look at what can be done in short order to help Ukraine win.


"...There are many ifs about what any breakdown or transition of power in Russia would actually look like. But if there is any opening, I think we all know it will not be like the ‘90s. No one will come to the table with naive optimism or illusions about the recent past. Russian doors will not be open to “Western” advice and support, not to risk a repeat of the ‘90s dysfunction and economic catastrophe. And yet 20 years of Putinism won’t dissolve in a day. Some of his ideas — about historical identity, for example — will persist. It seems likely that one of those is that the distinct, unique history of Russia sets it apart from the timeline of Western history, beyond incidental moments of convergence. But this doesn’t have to be a cold, distant, hostile separation that requires hard divisions of land and treasure between us.

I think it’s easy to imagine that the best way to achieve this can be if there isn’t a hard division between us — but instead, there is Ukraine between us. Not Ukraine, the “buffer state” — but Ukraine, the new regional power, the new center of gravity that is expanding the footprint of the free world, not clinging to the edge of it."

SNIP

"The longer you remain blind to the opportunity that Ukraine has bought for us — the longer you can only see through the risk calculations of yesterday’s wars, yesterday’s structures of power — well, this failure of imagination will be remembered as one of the greatest failures of American global leadership. And it will be absolutely inescapable because the unmarked graves of this generation of Ukrainians will be no less quiet in history than the graves of those who Stalin chose to starve because they were an inconvenience to him.

When it is wisdom to watch a nation of 40 million people be dismantled and destroyed by a tyrant who has appetites that have not yet been sated; when it is wisdom to watch the slaughter in real time on social media, and not act; when it is wisdom to condemn the people of one nation to die, and the people of two more to unending oppression — well, then there is a reason that people came into the streets of foreign cities to hear the President of Ukraine. This is the sanity — amidst all the other madness — that they have chosen to latch onto..."

More: https://www.greatpower.us/p/ukrainian-sacrifice-has-created-the?s=w

The first part of this essay, previously posted on DU, is here: https://www.greatpower.us/p/there-is-no-way-back-part-1?s=w

[SheltieLover]

1. Kicking for visibility

[femmedem]

2. Thanks, SheltieLover.

It was getting lost.

[wnylib]

3. Thanks for posting this series.

It shows a positive vision into the future which depends on what we do now. Hope the ideas expressed in it somehow reach the right people in DC and in Europe.

[femmedem]

4. Thanks, wnylib.

I hope so, too. Vindman's promoting this series on Twitter will help.