WHY UKRAINE MATTERS, AND OUGHT TO BE SECURED FROM DANGER
THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2021
by Walter Zaryckyj
Last week, several political elders of the Ukrainian American community held an emergency meeting to strategize about the responses our community could provide in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s growing military buildup on the border of Ukraine and the distinct possibili ty of an invasion (of some unspecified mag nitude). While a number of individuals participating were assigned the obvious task of immediately mobilizing various members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, perceived as friends of Ukraine on the Hill, to show support for the threatened nation, others were asked to provide talk ing points that could help elicit such sup port. I was steered into the latter group and, after putting in some admittedly sleep less nights to produce something useful, came to the next meeting with a memo (channeling my inner Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski meets Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges). Several meeting participants who read the memo encouraged me to circulate it more widely, which is the purpose of this article.
The talking points in the original memo (all in reference to the consequences of Russia occupying some or most of Ukraine after an invasion) amount to a bakers’ dozen (which is a reference to the work Paul Goble has done monitoring Russia over the last two decades) and are divided into the following categories: transconti nental/continental impact, local regional impact, wider regional impact and the probability of major food supply chain dis ruptions.
Contemplated even briefly, the consequences of Russia occupying some or most of Ukraine are powerful enough to conjure up some darn scary apocalyptic visions.
Under the category of global conse quences, the memo included the following bullet points:
1) Allowing Russia to forcibly take more territory from Ukraine or possibly dismem ber the country (a founding member of the U.N.) would do to the United Nations what the slowmotion dismantlement of Czecho slovakia ultimately did to the League of Nations in 19381939; the rubble would most likely not bounce back this time as it did then.
2) Allowing Russia to make further inroads into Ukraine would remind all new lyminted or aspiring nuclear powers (North Korea, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia) to avoid nonproliferation accords (such as the Budapest Memorandum) like the plague.
3) When Ukraine controlled Crimea, the peninsula was a zone free of nuclear weap ons (per the Budapest Memorandum); with Russia exercising ‘de facto’ sovereignty over Crimea (and with Russia likely looking to grab the nearby Kherson region that is rich in water supplies), the territory could soon harbor nuclear weapons (or be prepared to do so).
4) A number of old naval installations and airfields in Crimea were built during the Soviet era to shelter nuclear delivery systems of continental, if not transconti nental, reach. Clearly, Crimea’s geographic position, even if accounting only for inter mediate nuclear delivery systems (like the TU22M3), would threaten most of Europe, most of the Middle East and very large stretches of Central Asia (if Russia were to actually weaponize said systems).
Under the category local/regional con sequences (for example, the Black Sea coastline), the memo included the follow ing bullet points:
5) The capture of large portions of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast would threaten to turn a body of water with three NATO states (Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey) and two aspiring NATO states (Georgia and Ukraine) into a Russian lake.
6) Turning the Black Sea into a Russian lake would immediately pose a potential threat to the Danube Basin and could trig ger a new RussianSerbian entente that would again threaten the peace in the Balkans.
7) Turning the Black Sea into a Russian lake would permanently make Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the east (and most likely a number of the central Asian states) dependent on Russia.
8) Looking south, turning the Black Sea into a Russian lake would force Turkey, a long time (if not always wellbehaved) NATO ally, to seek its own accommodation with Russia.
9) Given that Turkey might finally give Russia freereign to passage through the Bosphorus Straight, the eastern Mediter ranean (with allies Israel and Jordan) would be exposed to new Russian misad ventures.
Under the category of wider regional consequences (the Mediterranean and beyond), the memo included the following bullet points:
10) A solid Russian naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean would give Russia the ability to influence the North African shoreline (via Libya), depriving the U.S. of possessing a strategic platform for getting to Europe (if need be) that it had in World War II and the Cold War.
11) A substantial Russian naval pres- ence in the eastern Mediterranean would eventually allow Russia to penetrate into central and even southern Africa with its hybrid mercenaries (the Wagnerians).
12) The largely untapped natural resources of Africa (for example, the cobalt needed for batteries) would then be avail-able to the Russians.
And, finally, in order to make a baker’s dozen, the memo also included the follow-ing bullet point on the likelihood of major food supply disruptions (or famines in the southern hemisphere):
13) With an estimated 5-7 million Ukrainians likely on the run and major transport facilities in ruins, Ukraine would automatically stop being a major global supplier of food products. As Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov pointed out, the country’s disappearance from the worldwide food marketplace would likely not only disrupt the global food supply chain, but it could trigger famine in the poorer areas of the world.
For any one of the 13 reasons listed above (and note that all of them could ultimately be in play), yet another Russian invasion of Ukraine would impact global security in various ways. Many of the fright ening scenarios that would result from such Russian action would immediately impact the West (the EuroAtlantic world and its network of democratic allies global ly), but the ‘specter of starvation’ (a subject Ukrainians know all too well) should be enough to spark global concern.
Here’s to praying that it does!
Walter Zaryckyj is executive director of the Center for U.S.-Ukrainian Relations. The center provides informational platforms for venues for senior-level representatives of the political, economic, security, diplomatic and cultural/academic establishments of the United States and Ukraine to exchange views on a wide range of issues of mutual interest, and to showcase what has been referred to as a “burgeoning relationship of notable geopolitical import” between the two nations. Dr. Zaryckyj completed his undergraduate and graduate work at Columbia University. He taught political sci- ence at New York University for nearly three decades before moving on in recent years to do post-doctoral research work on Eastern Europe.
