It’s time to get the pitchforks. The Cold Warriors have a consistent record of being wrong.
They’re wrong about military power. In the eyes of the hawks, former CIA official Paul Pillar recently noted, “it is all seen as one big contest in which setbacks for one side somewhere on the global playing field mean that side is losing overall.”
But, as he notes, it makes no sense at all to commit a military action that will produce no useful response simply in order to enhance your nation’s prestige and image of forcefulness on the world stage. In support of this, writer Peter Beinart cites political scientist Daryl Press, whose analysis of a century of “deterrent” wars found that they never work: “Those countries that have fought wars to build a reputation for resolve,” Dr. Press concludes, “have wasted vast sums of money and, much worse, thousands of lives” without achieving that outcome.
They’re wrong about Russia. Mr. Putin stands to gain absolutely nothing from eastern Ukraine. Even the most “Russian” of the eastern districts has no more than one-third Russians in its population, and they are by no means united behind Moscow. Adding such regions to Russia would give him economically useless territory that would likely be plunged into perpetual civil war. This is not empire-building; his territorial thrust puts him in a position of weakness, not strength.
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