“One of the problems in this crisis is that people have tried to find the magic bullet that explains everything,” says Rajan Menon of Defense Priorities.
This week, American and Russian officials are engaged in a diplomatic brawl over rising tensions in Ukraine. While Russia has denied that the 100,000 troops stationed on the Ukrainian border are gearing up for an invasion, President Joe Biden has begun to weigh how the U.S. will respond if Russia does invade. The past month has featured arms shipments to Ukraine, debates about NATO enlargement, and talks of sanctions against Moscow. And while American officials are responding to the situation with a sense of urgency, they’re missing important parts of the big picture. Rajan Menon, director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities and expert on Russia and Ukraine, criticizes what he sees as misconceptions and oversimplifications of the conflict. “One of the problems in this crisis is that people have tried to find the magic bullet that explains everything,” Menon tells Reason. “And whether it’s on the Russian side or our side, there are many, many pieces going on.” There’s no perfect solution to current tensions, but that hasn’t stopped some U.S. officials from quickly looking to American military might. The Pentagon has put 8,500 U.S. troops on “heightened alert” for potential deployment to Eastern Europe, and Biden has said that the U.S. will send troops to NATO countries ” in the near term ” (but not ” a lot ” of them). Just last week, the U.S. sent Ukraine a shipment of munitions as part of a $200 million security assistance package. There are several issues with the instinct to jump straight to military-based actions, whether they involve boots on the ground or not. First, fewer than one in six Americans believes the U.S. should send American soldiers to defend Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion. Second, as Menon argues, “Ukraine is not an ally…an ally is a country to which we have made a defense commitment.” Painting Ukraine as an ally distorts U.S. obligations and “misleads the American public.” Third—and overlooked by politicians and pundits alike—is that Biden arguably does not have the authority to deploy troops in the way he’s suggested. Any effort by the president to enter U.
