Rubin: Bleed Russia.

T. Belman. Rubin is old school. I suggest that the US should partner with Russia. Cut a deal. Trump and Cruz both support this. Divide Syria and both defeat ISIS. Cede eastern Ukraine and Crimea to Russia. After all a majority of the citizens are Russian. Consider allowing Russia back into Libya in order to instill order in place of chaos. Libya can’t be allowed to be controlled by ISIS which would enable ISIS to control North Africa. Russian control of Syria would protect Europe from Muslim infiltration.

By Michael Rubin, COMMENTARY

When Governor Mitt Romney described Russia as the greatest geoplitical foe the United States faced, President Obama ridiculed him. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” the president quipped. And yet today hardly an American warship departs Norfolk, Virginia or Mayport, Florida that is not tailed by a Russian submarine or shadowed by a Russian spy ship. Russia continues to prop up puppet states on Georgian territory, occupy Crimea and huge chunks of Eastern Ukraine, and sabre-rattle toward the Baltics. While the Kremlin suggests it has joined the international fight against the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), the operations it has conducted — carpet bombing of non-ISIS targets and villages — constitute as clear a case of war crimes as anything conducted by any state in the last couple decades. While Hillary Clinton continues to insist the ‘reset’ policy she championed as secretary of state was a success, Russia has not only revitalized its nuclear arsenal and doctrine but it has actively begun to demonize the United States and its leaders as enemies.

Some American diplomats and analysts argue that the United States is at fault for the deterioration of relations. Garry Kasparov, the former chess grandmaster turned democracy activist, puts these arguments to rest in his recent book, Winter is Coming. Not only did the West provide Russia with billions of dollars directly and through the International Monetary Fund, but it also pumped tens of billions of dollars more into the Russian economy through trade and investment. Western powers also pressured Ukraine and Kazakhstan to give up nuclear weapons left behind on their soil as the Soviet Union collapsed, thereby assuring Russia of regional dominance. And, finally, the West made neither demand nor effort to dismantle the Soviet security apparatus, no matter that it was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people over decades. Had it forced the dismantlement of the infrastructure of repression, a young KGB lieutenant-colonel named Vladimir Putin might never have been able to call upon colleagues to once again consolidate control.Russia is on the warpath. Whereas Secretary of State John Kerry and his team see diplomacy as some sterile struggle to win deals and make compromises, Putin sees diplomacy as a zero-sum game: for Russia to win, everyone else must lose. Every compromise Kerry makes is simply a concession Putin pockets before pressing his advantage. When he dangles cooperation in Syria before Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State throws Ukraine under the bus as the necessary price of bringing Russia to the table. And when Putin cajoles his American counterpart into creating an even playing field in Syria, the Russians ensure that their allies gain the advantage. In effect, the even playing field Kerry imagines is simply the betrayal of American allies while Russia (and Iran) bolster their own.Obsequiousness is not a strategy, nor does self-restraint due to fear of an adversary bring peace. Kerry castigated the Syrian opposition for not endorsing his concessions, accusing their desire to hold firm as equivalent to seeking war with Russia. In effect, American policy has become analogous to a German shepherd rolling over and peeing itself because a nearby poodle barks loudly.

So what should the United States do? Obama will not alter course, and Kerry will hemorrhage credibility until the day he retires back to his yacht. But, the next president will be faced with a United States that is significantly diminished on the world stage as compared to what Obama inherited in January 2009. No president might want a renewal of the Cold War, but the decision may not be theirs: It is Putin who has unilaterally sought to return the bilateral dynamic to the struggles of the past, in effect to see if he can change the outcome. To refuse to counter an onslaught out of the desire to avoid a new Cold War is not to avoid it; rather, it is to surrender.

Both realists and neoconservatives and proponents of any flavor of foreign policy philosophies in between should find common agreement not only on the necessity to counter Russia’s resurgence but also broadly how to do so. Realists like to weigh national interests in terms of a naked calculation between costs and benefits. To counter Putinism, it is essential to raise the cost for Russia of Putin;s adventures. The type of defense which the Council on Foreign Relations’ Max Boot outlines is, of course, necessary, but more is as well. Russia engaged in the same sort of slash-and-burn terror in Chechnya that it now does in Syria. What turned Russia back from Chechnya was the fact that Russians began coming back in body bags. Civil society may be weak in Russia, but the Chechen rebels were masterful at reaching out directly to the mothers of soldiers. Russian journalists have already pointed out that for all of Putin’s propaganda about locals being the bulk of the force fighting in eastern Ukraine, elite Russian units have suffered hundreds of casualties.

Kerry is afraid that Russians may be killed by the United States in Syria, for he fears Putin’s response. But the United States need not bomb Russians directly; it can simply ensure that those who are vulnerable to Russian aggression have the ability to kill or capture any Russians on the ground inside Syria (given the radicalism of even the more ‘moderate’ Syrian opposition, the potential cost of providing surface-to-air missiles would be too great to bear). The Turkish shoot-down of the Russian Sukhoi-24 is instructive: to lose a Russian jet fighter or bomber to Turkey is equivalent to the United States having a bomber shot down by Nicaragua; it would be deeply embarrassing. Turkey may be a NATO member, but it is hardly a first world power in the Kremlin’s mind. If Russian forces find themselves prisoners to Syrian Turkmen or the Free Syrian Army, it would be tragic for the individual prisoner but it would demonstrate that Russian adventurism in the Middle East will not simply be a story of glory.

With regard to the Ukraine, any future U.S. president need not worry about arms provided there falling so easily into the hands of radical Islamists. The Ukrainians should have the means to shoot down Russian aircraft and strike any Russian or Russian proxy forces inside the Ukraine from afar. They should be treated no worse than the Afghans in the 1980s. If the United States seeks plausible deniability, all the better, but the chief goal of Washington should be to make the cost of any Russian presence in the Ukraine unsustainable. Nor should Russian possession of the Crimea be written off as a fait accompli, as Obama and Kerry seem prepared to do. The Budapest Memorandum signed by both Russian and American representatives recognized Ukrainian sovereignty over the Crimea; agreements should mean something. It should be the goal of the next administration to see Russian forces forced from all territory of the Ukraine including the Crimea, just as George H.W. Bush refused to compromise on Iraq remaining in even a square inch of Kuwait.

It may even be wise to take the fight into Russia, providing moral support and indirect assistance to movements along the periphery of Russia which seek freedom from Russian domination. This might simply mean revamping Voice of America and Radio Free Europe to broadcast in far more languages spoken in Russia, and to beam programming into Russia in new and innovative ways instead of simply relying on the old bandwidths.

Would Russia lash out? Perhaps. But then again, the cases of Georgia, Ukraine, and now Syria suggest the West has nothing to lose as Putin will move on offense whenever he seeks to distract his constituents from the economic morass into which he has steered Russia. Putin does not understand the language of ‘reset;’ he must be countered in language and action he understands. Fortunately, Putin is not as strong as he might appear. If he recognizes that his strategy not only will bring economic doom to the Russian Federation but also that he cannot sustain patriotic bluster amidst a steady stream of body bags, he will turn back or, at least, slow down as he licks his wounds.[/sociallocker-bulk-5]