Ukraine

“Christ, Edward! No!” Edward Luttwak has just lunged at me with a knife in the study of the house he shares with his wife in a suburb of obdurate anonymity near Washington, DC. He is giving an unsolicited demonstration of how to most effectively stab someone. “Let your hand go limp, then feint a punch with your non-knife hand,” he says with gusto, his left fist fluttering around my face, “then stab into the diaphragm upwards. The air will go out of them like a balloon and they’ll drop to the floor. They may live another twenty years, but they’ll certainly be out of action for the next twenty minutes.” The demonstration has come after a brief typology of knives for my benefit — also unsolicited.

The war in Ukraine is being fought on two fronts: the battlefield and the information space. From the beginning of Russia’s interference in Ukraine in 2014, the information war has been a key factor in the Kremlin’s strategy for victory. Because of this, Ukraine has taken a series of wartime measures to stabilize and protect itself, from political restrictions to media regulations. Some in the West have used these measures to paint Kyiv as undemocratic, but such rhetoric rings hollow. What these criticisms miss is the fact that Ukraine, unlike other Western democracies, has been in a state of war for eight years.

Mid-afternoon Tuesday, a missile struck the town of Przewodow in eastern Poland close to the Ukrainian border, killing two. The incident immediately set off alarm bells around NATO and the world, as Poland, a member of the military alliance, could invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, bringing all 30 members to its defense. The Polish government is considering invoking Article 4 of the treaty, which allows any member state to call a meeting of all members to discern if "territorial integrity, political independence or security… is threatened." NATO was due to meet on Wednesday anyway, but the tragedy in Poland has superseded the gathering’s planned lineup.

With the recapture of the key southern port city of Kherson, Ukraine has achieved yet another success in its nearly nine-month war with Russia. But as winter approaches and conditions worsen, both sides will face new challenges, and the West’s support will be tested. As the Institute for the Study of War indicated in a recent assessment of the conflict, it is unlikely that combat activity will drop significantly in the coming months. As the early winter rains roll over Ukraine, the region’s infamous mud will prove to be an impediment to maneuver warfare. That period will then give way to the freezing temperatures that characterize the Eastern European winter. Those temperatures will put an end to the mud, allowing forces to more effectively continue operations.

If you listened only to the rhetoric of so-called national conservatives, you would think progressives were their polar opposites. But on the issue of foreign policy, it seems like they can find some common ground. It was reported on Tuesday that the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Biden asking him to negotiate with Russia. It was later reported that the same letter had been hastily withdrawn after massive backlash within the Democratic Party. The missive was apparently written and signed in June, updated recently, and somehow carelessly published without all of the signatories’ consent. Either way, it seems to represent something real within the Democrats' progressive wing.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu haven’t really been on speaking terms. That is, until last weekend, when the two defense chiefs conversed with each other twice in three days. The readouts released by the Defense Department are about as brief as brief can get. They don’t tell us much about what was said, other than the general observation that Austin, a former four-star army general, swatted away Moscow’s explanations for the war in Ukraine. What the conversations illustrate more than anything is just how rare they've been. Indeed, the reason why so many news outlets wrote about the Austin-Shoigu calls was because they were extraordinary.

Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that he was not bluffing about using nuclear weapons against the West in his war on Ukraine is one of the strongest indications yet of the risks the liberal world now faces in opposing authoritarian aggression. In the face of Russian aggression, or in committing the United States to defending Taiwan, as President Joe Biden did yet again recently, Washington and its partners face the possibility of direct confrontation with the world’s most powerful, nuclear-armed militaries. For the first time in a generation, Western powers risk being checked by adversaries willing to threaten massive conventional and nuclear warfare. The era of cost-free intervention to uphold the liberal world order is over.

Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz announced this week that Israel would maintain its policy of not supplying weapons to Ukraine. This drew criticism, including charges that Israel has a moral obligation to help Ukraine and is instead foolishly prizing its relations with Russia. Critics also note that Israel’s archenemy Iran is providing weapons and advisors to Russia. They further point out that Israel’s Ukraine arms embargo puts it out of step with Israel’s most important partners in the West, especially the United States. Yet aiding Kyiv is a far riskier bet for Jerusalem than for most Western capitals. This is no easy call, and the one Israel made is probably the right one.