The Ukraine is far away from the US. In fact, a 2014 survey of 2000 Americans found that only about one-sixth of those asked could locate the Ukraine on a world map. Probably the number is a bit higher today because of the intense media coverage over the past month or so. But still, why should Americans care what happens there?
Europe should care, because Russia is in their back yard, but why should we care, safely behind our two ocean barriers? It’s true that the war there will cause immense suffering and displace many people, but that certainly didn’t seem to bother us while we ourselves were creating chaos and mayhem in the Middle East over the past two decades, so why should it bother us in the Ukraine? What pressing national interest of ours is involved here, if any? It’s a good question.
Let me suggest we don’t really care what happens in the Ukraine itself, that we have no pressing national interest in whether Russia takes them over or not. But we do have a very pressing national interest in what might or might not follow as a result of this war.
Putin is hell-bent on reasserting control over the buffer states that were lost when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Ukraine and Belarus were two important buffer states, and he has now taken over Belarus and is attempting to take over the Ukraine. But the next logical targets on his list are all NATO members – especially Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Putin might, for example decide next to capture the corridor between Poland and Lithuania that separates Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave from the rest of Russia. Why does that matter? Because under Article 5 of the NATO agreement, if Russia attacked any of these NATO members we would be OBLIGATED to help defend them – we would be at war with Russia.
We could, of course, refuse to honor our obligation, but that would surely permanently lose us all our allies around the world. And those alliances are what keep us safe in the end, and prosperous, so that would be a stupid thing to do.
Now Russia is not an existential threat to us. Russia, for all its massive size, has an economy about the size of Brazil, a disastrous demographic profile, and while Putin has modernized the Russian military, they are nowhere near the threat that the old Soviet Union was. NATO would win any war with Russia, but it would likely be long and bloody and painful and messy, and might in the end involve nuclear exchanges, and even the loss of major cities in the US. So we would very much want to avoid this.
So while we may not care what happens to the Ukraine, we certainly do care what happens to Putin and Russia as a consequence of this war. We really don’t want him to come out of this confident enough to move on to attacking NATO countries. And by the way, we really don’t want Xi in China to decide we are so weak he can go ahead and invade Taiwan.
Again, we may not care that much about Taiwan (though if they were invaded, we can forget about lots of our clever little gadgets like iPhones and computers – Taiwan makes the chips that make them run). But we do care whether China can dominate the Pacific Ocean, which is one of our protective barriers, and taking Taiwan would be a first step toward that.
So no, we may not care about the Ukraine directly, but we certainly do care about what might follow. We would very much like Putin to get a bloody nose from this adventure, so that he is not tempted to move on NATO members. And we really would like not to come out of this looking so weak and indecisive (whether we actually are or not) that allies and opponents both begin to question our resolve.
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