This feels familiar. Russia was, after all, the national adversary of my youth. My dad was not particularly easy to perturb, but I clearly recall his anxious face one October afternoon in 1962 as the United States and Russia – in the guise of the Soviet Union – squared off over the emplacement of missiles in Cuba and arguably made their nearest advance ever to the brink of nuclear war.
For years afterward Russia was the enemy. Our schools held duck-and-cover drills and offered classes on how to provision a fallout shelter. We learned ways to protect our families from blast and radiation – it involved sandbags.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. But after 30 years in the wilderness Russia is back, demanding and receiving the world’s attention by threatening to invade the sovereign nation of Ukraine with 175,000 troops. It turns out that Russia is still the enemy.
The invasion of one of our allies is an act of war, and the Biden administration promises “strong measures” in response. But it also indicates that it will not commit American troops to save Ukraine. But what about saving Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia or other former Soviet states that Vladimir Putin would love to reacquire?
Our best hope is that Putin is staging pure political theater, threatening to invade Ukraine to enhance his standing and political leverage abroad and at home. Besides, it’s simply in the nature of insecure strongmen to bluster and strut right up to the brink. It’s a dangerous game. Usually it’s hard to tell precisely where the brink is.