The post-Cold War era has ended now that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine, an independent, democratic nation. Europe is now experiencing its first fighter jet-to-fighter jet, tank-to-tank military invasion since World War II. There is speculation a full-style incursion could end tens of thousands of lives, and generate a brutal counter-insurgency.
Why should Hoosiers care about a war in a faraway place?
First, Putin appears to be detached from reality and on the course of a war criminal. Tom Nichols of The Atlantic writes of the kleptocratic dictator after he addressed the world on Monday: “Putin’s slumped posture and deadened affect led me to suspect that he is not as stable as we would hope.”
Carl Bildt of European Council on Foreign Relations, added, “If I compare with his speech in March 2014 when he annexed Crimea, this was far more rambling, all-over-the-place and unhinged. And also more dangerous. Now he questions the very existence of Ukraine as a nation. It’s a man with immense power who’s lost contact with reality.”
Putin blamed the events that led to an independent Ukraine on Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and when he announced the invasion Wednesday night, he talked of eliminating phantom “Nazis” from this neighboring state. It was chilling.
While former president Donald Trump applauded Putin’s “genius” for placing “peacekeepers” in Ukraine, terming it “wonderful,” the reality is that Putin is an unstable dictator who commands the world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal, and he used terrifyingly subtle words threatening to use them when he announced the invasion on Wednesday.
Russia is the second largest producer of oil. The $4 and $5 a gallon gas prices out on our West Coast are only days away from becoming a reality in Indiana after President Biden and allies announce further sanctions.
Then there are the cyber attacks that have already hit a number of Indiana counties over the past year (LaPorte, Lake and Lawrence), cities (Gary and Carmel), school districts (Eastern Hancock), hospitals (Greenfield), utilities and corporations.
Or as Dan Coats, former director of national Intelligence, told the Indianapolis Economic Club in June 2021, “Every day, foreign actors — the worst offenders being Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — are penetrating our digital infrastructure and conducting a range of cyber intrusions and attacks against targets in the United States. In regards to the state actions, Russia has been the most aggressive foreign actor – no question.”
Once malware and ransomware escapes into the ether, there’s no telling where it will end up or the damage it can do.
If you’re on an IT staff for a Hoosier municipality, school or university, hospital, utility or corporation, you might be lying awake at in the middle of the night wondering what is going to come flying out of Putin’s Pandora’s box.
Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institute and Council on Foreign Relations expects that unless the U.S. and NATO can ramp up the costs to Putin, he won’t stop at Ukraine.
“The most immediate threat will be to the Baltic states,” Kagan explains.
The one uncalculated aspect of this dramatic incursion is if this becomes a Putin overreach – think LBJ’s Vietnam in 1965, Brezhnev’s 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or Bush43’s 2003 Iraq move that toppled Saddam Hussein and ignited a five-year insurgency. They were swamped by horrific optics, thousands of body bags and domestic unrest. All of these American and Russian leaders commanded sophisticated militaries; all ended up fighting brutal, asymmetric guerrilla insurgencies.
Or as former general and CIA director David Petraeus observed, Putin “lacks the troops and the popular support needed to succeed in taking over the country for any significant period of time.”
What we are witnessing is an end to an era of relative peace in Europe.
