LOOKING FOR THE WATER'S EDGE

LOOKING FOR THE WATER'S EDGE

In June 1948, the United States Senate passed the Vandenberg Resolution.

Named for isolationist-turned-internationalist Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, the resolution supported "Progressive development of regional and other collective arrangements for individual and collective self-defense in accordance with the purposes, principles, and provisions of the [United Nations] Charter" and "Association of the United States, by constitutional process, with such regional and other collective arrangements as are based on continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, and as affect its national security."

At the time, Vandenburg was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his party controlled Congress. Vandenberg had also run for President in 1940 and would again be a candidate in 1948.  Though he lost that race to New York's then-Governor Thomas Dewey, it was widely expected that the GOP would win the White House in the November election and retain control of Congress.  That, of course, did not happen.  Nevertheless, and in keeping with his Resolution, Vandenberg and like-minded Republicans supported the North Atlantic Treaty signed in April 1949 and the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to implement it two years later.

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty provides that "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in the exercise of their right of individual and collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

At its birth, NATO had twelve member states.  These were the US, Canada and Iceland in North America, the United Kngdom, and eight other members from continental Europe. The continental members were Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Portugal and Italy. Since then, and at various times, eighteen additional states have joined.  Greece and Turkey became members in 1952.  West Germany was permitted to join in 1955.  France left in 1966 but returned in 2009.  After Franco died, a democratic Spain  joined in 1982. And after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the break-up on the Soviet Union in 1991,  Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined in 1999, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020.

Though NATO was created largely in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union in the late 1940s, the relationship between it and Russia was initially cordial and sometimes even supportive in the two decades following the Soviet break-up in 1991. Even prior to that break-up, there were informal talks between Soviet and NATO military leaders. Formal contacts between Russia and NATO were begun in 1991, and these ultimately led in 1997 to the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security and creation of the NATO/Russia Permanent Joint Council.  During the '90s, NATO's European members reduced their defense spending and massive amounts of conventional armaments were removed. For their part, the CIS countries (former members of the Commonwealth of Independent States that briefly existed after the Soviet Union disintegrated) joined NATO's so-called Partnership for Peace, which provided a forum for regular coordination and consultation between them and the NATO member states. And in 2011, NATO and Russian even conducted joint military exercises.

In 2014, when Russia illegally invaded and annexed Crimea, that period of good will ended.  

Since then, Russia has insisted that NATO is a threat to it, especially given the existence of member states on its border.  For their part, and especially in the wake of the annexation, the eastern European member states view Russia, not NATO,  as a threat and favor the presence of NATO forces on their land.  For its part, Russia contends it was given informal assurances in 1990 that NATO would not expand east at the time East Germany was reunited with the West and became part of NATO, and while there are memoranda of private conversations between western leaders and Mikhail Gorbachev to that effect, the formal treaty on German resettlement contained no such provision.

On February 24, Russia illegally invaded Ukraine.  

In the run-up to the invasion, Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, claimed that Ukraine was being run by Nazis, was not a real nation, and could never be allowed to join either the European Union or NATO because doing so would pose an existential threat to Russia. None of this is true, the first bizarrely so in view of the fact that Ukraine's Jewish president is the grandnephew of Holocaust victims and the son of a man who fought the Nazis in World War II.  

Putin is a clear and present danger to a world order that has existed since the close of World War II.  

It is rules-based and therefore liberal in the classical sense of that term.  

It has also avoided a repeat of any world war and, most importantly, of a nuclear exchange for more than seventy-five years.

Following his ascension to the presidency in 2000, Putin  has effectively made himself Russia's president for life. He has silenced any opposition via means both fair and foul, the latter of which includes assassinating would be challengers. He coopted Russia's oligarchs and other kleptocrats and seized enough of the booty created in the post-Soviet privatization of Russia's economy to become one of the world's wealthiest (perhaps the wealthiest if some intelligence assessments are believed) individuals.  He reportedly sees himself as a latter-day Peter the Great destined to restore Russia as a respected world power and save civilization from western decadence. He lists gay marriage as one of the results of that decadence. And though he was a  trained KGB  spook for the atheist Soviets, he has also recast himself as a paragon of the Russian Orthodox church.

Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, however, has not gone at all according to plan.  

Both Putin and the west expected the war to be short and Ukraine to be overrun by Russia's clearly enormous and ostensibly superior military.  Instead, as the war moves toward the end of its third week,  the Russian army -- which is neither nimble nor all that mobile in the face of supply chain issues, or motivated given the low morale of troops, many of whom never expected to be fighting their Slavic brothers -- has faced stiff resistance from Ukraine's military and the country's now-armed citizenry and suffered significant losses.  Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, personifies courage as he openly defies Putin, unifies the country's  parties and marshals its resistance, all from the besieged capital of Kyiv, which he has not left. And Putin, deprived of any quick victory, is bombing civilians (a war crime), threatening the use of nuclear weapons, and warning NATO to stay put.

NATO member states in general, and the United States in particular, have made it clear that they do not intend to fight the Russians in Ukraine and risk a World War III.  Ukraine is not a member of NATO and Russia's invasion did not trigger any Article 5 obligation. President Biden, however, has succeeded in uniting the west behind the most severe set of economic sanctions ever imposed and those sanctions are bringing Russia to its economic knees.  He has also made it clear that, if Putin escalates to attack a NATO state, the US and all the other members will honor Article 5. Though Ukraine has asked NATO and the US to impose a no-fly zone on the country's air space, that too has been rejected on the ground that to do so would amount to going to war with Russia.

Support for Biden's war policy has been bipartisan.  Congressional Republicans and Democrats have supported Ukraine and public support has been overwhelming.  There  have, however, been naysayers.  Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney refers to these as the "Putin wing of the Republican Party".  In it are Fox's Tucker Carlson, North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Donald Trump.  Tulsi Gabbard, though a Democrat and former Representative from Hawaii, is also a member.  

At the outset of the invasion, Carlson called it "a border dispute" and openly wondered why anyone "would hate Putin".  Last week, a video surfaced in which Cawthorn called Ukraine's president "a thug" and "corrupt" and Gabbard appeared to echo the false Russian claim that there were US bio-weapons labs in Ukraine. Trump himself has careened from calling Putin "smart" and "savvy" to asserting the invasion never would have happened were he president, apparently because Putin would have understood that Trump was unhinged enough to threaten the same nuclear response that Putin himself has hinted at.  Predictably,  Trump has also called Biden "dumb" and "weak".  

None of this was or is accurate.  Biden has performed the yeoman's work of putting NATO and the transatlantic alliance back together and allowing it to emerge whole and effective. This comes after four years of Trump working to kill NATO and embolden Putin's authoritarianism, both of which were the central causes of Putin's assault.  Put simply, Putin never thought the west could re-unite after Trump. And were Trump president, it would not have. As for  Zelensky, he is standing his ground in Kyiv ready to take a bullet for his country, a character trait rare among corrupt thugs (who, generally speaking, make sure others are in any line of fire that they themselves always avoid).  And Putin, whatever his innate intelligence, was clearly not smart or savvy enough to predict Ukraine's response or its effectiveness.

In February 1949, just as the North Atlantic Treaty was being considered for ratification by the Senate, Arthur Vandenberg recommitted himself and (he hoped) America to the bipartisanship and internationalism he had embraced in 1941.  "The form of things, to be sure, has changed," he said, “and responsibilities and initiatives have shifted.  But the basic need remains.”

He then spoke words that have become iconic:

"It will be a sad day for the Republic if we ever desert the fundamental concept that politics shall stop at the water's edge.  It will be a triumphant day for those who would divide and conquer us if  we abandon the quest for a united voice when America demands peace with honor in the world.  In my view nothing has happened to absolve either Democrats or Republicans from continuing to put their country first. Those who don't will save neither their country nor their party nor themselves."

So . . .

Memo to the Putin Republicans and Rep. Gabbard:

You're swimming.