How to Deter a Czar

Putin wants to restore the Russian empire, which means keeping #Ukraine close.

But just before the invasion, the media was talking as if Vlad the Invader might not invade after all.

You see, there’s a tendency in the West to overestimate rubles over romanticism; physical force over cultural influence.

By underestimating Putin’s desire to subordinate Ukraine, the West made little attempt to prevent its invasion. Here’s what a competent administration should’ve done:

The carrot: Biden should’ve promised not to add Ukraine to NATO because it’s unnecessarily provocative. Imagine if Russia built military bases on our border. Ever since the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. has been against foreign intervention in our hemisphere let alone on our border. Declaring that Ukraine will not be added to NATO would be similar to what JFK did to avoid war during the Cuban-Missile crisis where we removed our nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy.

The stick: Biden should’ve signed into law sanctions and aid that would’ve automatically taken effect if Russian troops crossed a clearly defined red line such as Ukrainian territory “not occupied since 2014.” The US should’ve then jetted around the world to get as many nations as possible to sign on. This would’ve been better than scrambling post-invasion to figure out our sanctions and partners. It’s like rushing to finish your homework as the teacher is going around checking it. By signing this preemptive treaty it would’ve made the cost of an invasion more transparent so Russia would know we wouldn’t just slap their wrist again as we did after Crimea.

A big part of the sanctions should’ve been on Russian oil and natural gas where as a matter of national emergency Biden should’ve opened up the US drilling floodgates as well as tapped into our Strategic Petroleum Reserve so we could promise our European allies that we’d meet their energy needs if Russia invaded Ukraine. The US only uses a tiny fraction of its energy production capacity because Democrats have succeeded in reducing U.S. nuclear energy, natural gas, and oil, therefore, making the world more dependent upon authoritarian regimes for energy. Ultimately, by encouraging the world to move from Russian energy to American energy this would’ve been a realpolitik way for the US to benefit from the invasion.

A bad sanction the Biden administration has implemented is freezing the Central Bank of Russia’s dollar reserves and removing Russian banks from SWIFT because by punishing countries who store dollars we accelerate the dollar's demise as the world’s reserve currency. Putin saw this sanction coming, which is why Russia has so few dollars in its reserves relative to other countries. When you couple rising gas & wheat prices with less international trust in the dollar you get massive inflation.

If we did what I've suggested here then best case Russia would’ve accepted the NATO compromise and worst case we would’ve made a lot of money from selling more energy.

But instead, we’re sending an additional $13.6 billion to Ukraine. In 2019, the US government shutdown because House Democrats didn’t want to spend $5.7 billion on building more wall on the southern border to help reduce the unprecedented amount of illegal immigration and drugs flowing into the country. Why are we willing to spend billions enforcing other countries’ borders, but not our own? And why has Ukraine been so ill-prepared for this invasion? The Ukrainian government has been extremely corrupt and incompetent and so why is it up to American taxpayers to bail them out? Republicans and Democrats are stepping over each other on who can appear tougher on Putin from behind their podiums, which it’s good if Democrats are distracted from implementing their destructive statist agenda, but Republicans should stay focused on freeing America first.