Ben Kerido / From Israel with Love Blog
Over 100,000 Russian troops are massed at the Ukrainian border and poised to invade the ally of the United States, NATO, and Israel. In response, European troops and weapons are being deployed all over eastern Europe near the Russian border. A frigate from Denmark is en route to the Baltic Sea and fighter jets have been sent to Lithuania. Military vessels from Spain are also joining NATO naval forces along with Spanish jets moving into Bulgaria, along with two F-35’s from the Netherlands. French troops are slated for Romania, and the UK is considering a deployment. And on the American front Biden and Co. have reluctantly discussed sending between 5,000 and 8,500 American troops into Ukraine, and have already shipped many tonnes of weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainians. Meanwhile, the US State Department is releasing statements calling for Americans to leave Ukraine, especially the family members of staff operating in the US embassy in Kyiv.
Kyiv!
This isn’t Kabul, Baghdad, or Saigon. Kyiv is the capital city of a major eastern European nation and NATO ally.
Biden and Co. have followed in the footsteps of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who attempted to appease Adolf Hitler by allowing the Nazis to invade and annex part of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Pact (without Czech consent, mind you). Joe Biden already slipped up and implied that a Russian “minor incursion” or “small invasion” is excusable and even allowable. The message from Biden to Putin was clear: “If you only invade a relatively small part of Ukraine, we will look the other way and let you do what you want.”
Winston Churchill understood that Neville Chamberlain’s strategy was doomed to fail, calling it “an unmitigated disaster.” And history has made it painfully obvious who was right. And now – foolishly and even shockingly – Biden and Co. have led the United States down a similar path of Chamberlain-esque attempts to appease our enemies, ranging from Russia to China to Iran to even the Taliban. Beginning in Afghanistan, Biden and Co. have diminished any real effective deterrence the United States might have had against hostile players in the global arena. And now we are seeing the results.
Vladimir Putin shrewdly knows that his gamble in Ukraine can only result in victory; the question is merely how much will he win. Biden and Co. have already indicated that the United States has little will to fight, and has all but offered the portions of eastern Ukraine dominated by ethnic Russians on a silver platter for invasion and annexation. Otherwise, Putin is anticipated by some defense experts to launch a lightning strike on Kyiv in order to overthrow the anti-Russian government and install a satellite government loyal to Moscow.
Either way, the message the United States has already sent to its allies is that America will abandon them when the going gets tough. This position has the potential to completely shift the balance of power geopolitically, disrupting or even dissolving NATO and forcing vulnerable nations to find new alliance partners. Case in point, in December of 2021 the Ukrainian government already reached out to Israel, discussing heightened recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in exchange for military and defense advantages.
Israel is also facing a pending disaster on multiple levels based on the nightmare scenario unfolding in Ukraine. First and foremost, Israel must now face a unique political challenge of balancing its strong alliance with Ukraine with its agenda of not antagonizing Putin and Russia any more than necessary. Presently, Russia is directly linked to hostile aggression from Iran both by proxies in Syria as well as their nuclear weapons program. Russia ostensibly is willing to influence Iran to keep their hostility in check, but everything with Putin has a price – and usually a very dear one.
Additionally, up to 75,000 Ukrainian Jews eligible for Israeli citizenship are potentially in jeopardy. According to reports the Israeli government is meeting with parastatal organizations, namely the Jewish Agency and Nativ, to discuss contingency plans for bringing those Ukrainian Jews into the land of Israel. However, the reality rarely discussed in Israel and the rest of the Jewish world is that these organizations are often painfully slow in their assistance of immigration, or aliyah. This aliyah immigration process frequently takes years to be fully finalized under good conditions with all documents in order, and lately they have not been able to process more than 20,000 applications per year despite a growing backlog. It is not clear how the Israeli government using parastatal organizations like the Jewish Agency and Nativ will successfully manage such a rapid expediting of up to 75,000 Jewish immigrants. Even more complicated is how the transport of these 75,000 Jews would even take place if civilian travel is disrupted and if military extractions are unfeasibly both practically and/or politically.
In summary, the pending Russian invasion has the potential to be a Biden-induced disaster of unprecedented catastrophic proportions for not only Ukraine, but also for the United States and all of NATO, with destructive ripples reaching all the way to Israel, the Middle East, and beyond.
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