With Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has fulfilled the worst-case scenarios predicted by Western analysts and pundits.

The Republican Jewish Coalition stated today:

The Republican Jewish Coalition strongly condemns the unprovoked Russian military attack against Ukraine. With this terrible move to war, Vladimir Putin aims to destroy the nascent democracy in Ukraine, to threaten the former Soviet republics in eastern Europe, and to weaken the NATO alliance.

The free world must stand up to this violent expansionism now, and the US must lead that effort from a position of strength and in solidarity with our allies.

We call on the Biden administration to accelerate the implementation of punishing sanctions on Russia and its leaders and call on Congress to pass legislation to broaden sanctions authority.

In this very difficult time, our thoughts are with the people of Ukraine, especially the Jewish community, and with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish.

Here is some important commentary to help us understand the meaning of Putin’s actions and the background to this conflict.

Anne Applebaum: Calamity Again

Ukraine’s determination to become a democracy is a genuine challenge to Putin’s nostalgic, imperial political project: the creation of an autocratic kleptocracy, in which he is all-powerful, within something approximating the old Soviet empire. Ukraine undermines this project just by existing as an independent state. By striving for something better, for freedom and prosperity, Ukraine becomes a dangerous rival. For if Ukraine were to succeed in its decades-long push for democracy, the rule of law and European integration, then Russians might ask: Why not us?

Virginia Allen: The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, Explained

Yesterday, Virginia Allen interviewed Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy, for her podcast at the Heritage Foundation. He explains the recent history of Ukraine, Russia’s actions in Crimea and in the “separatist regions” of Luhansk and Donetsk, and ways the US and its allies could respond. (Audio and transcript at the link.)

Robert Kagan: What we can expect after Putin’s conquest of Ukraine

Today, Putin seeks at the very least a two-tier NATO, in which no allied forces are deployed on former Warsaw Pact territory. The inevitable negotiations over this and other elements of a new European security “architecture” would be conducted with Russian forces poised all along NATO’s eastern borders and therefore amid real uncertainty about NATO’s ability to resist Putin’s demands.

This takes place, moreover, as China threatens to upend the strategic balance in East Asia, perhaps with an attack of some kind against Taiwan.

…These simultaneous strategic challenges in two distant theaters are reminiscent of the 1930s, when Germany and Japan sought to overturn the existing order in their respective regions.

…Long ago, American defense strategy was premised on the possibility of such a two-front conflict. But since the early 1990s, the United States has gradually dismantled that force. The two-war doctrine was whittled down and then officially abandoned in the 2012 defense policy guidance. Whether that trend will be reversed, and defense spending increased now that the United States genuinely faces a two-theater crisis remains to be seen. But it is time to start imagining a world where Russia effectively controls much of Eastern Europe and China controls much of East Asia and the Western Pacific. Americans and their democratic allies in Europe and Asia will have to decide, again, whether that world is tolerable.

Mark Antonio Wright: How the West Should Respond

Click through to read his nine-point outline of well-calibrated and serious actions that the US and its allies could take next.

The staff at The Dispatch offer some takeaways from this historic moment:

• Most of the US intelligence released publicly in recent weeks turned out to be correct.

• Putin has been lying about his intentions for months.

• This is more or less the worst-case scenario.

• Expect to see sanctions ratcheted up quickly.

• The world will never be the same.
  
  (Read their full comments at the link.)

Jacob Nagel, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes:

Despite all the warnings, it appears the American delegation headed by Robert Malley – following the resignation of three of his senior colleagues, chief among them Richard Nephew, over the extent of US concessions to the Iranians' demands – has swayed global powers to consent to an exceedingly problematic deal that will pave a certain path for Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb in the coming years.

Open letter to Amnesty International

Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, co-signed a letter from the Vandenberg Coalition which condemns Amnesty International’s recent report characterizing Israel as an apartheid state. The letter says that the Amnesty International report is “untruthful, deceptive, and antisemitic” and calls on the Amnesty International board of directors to denounce it.

Amnesty International’s problematic Israel report

Melissa Langsam Braunstein has more analysis of Amnesty International’s false and dangerous report.

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