{"id":52502,"date":"2019-12-12T11:07:01","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T00:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=52502"},"modified":"2019-12-12T11:07:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T00:07:01","slug":"us-national-security-and-ukraine-whats-the-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/us-national-security-and-ukraine-whats-the-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"US national security and Ukraine: what\u2019s the connection?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Witnesses appearing before the US House of Representatives\u2019 impeachment hearings have regularly connected<\/a> Russian aggression in Ukraine with US national security. The overwhelming international consensus is that Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea and involvement in hostilities in Donbas are contrary to international law and norms. The US\u2019s military and diplomatic support of Ukraine against Russia is clearly crucial to the Ukrainians. But just how is Ukraine important to the national security of the United States?<\/p>\n

Fiona Hill said that Ukraine \u2018plays an important role in our national security\u2019. David Holmes declared that \u2018it is critical to our national security that we stand in strong support of our Ukrainian partners\u2019. Those judgements are consistent with other witness testimony. It seems so obvious! However, Ukraine is mentioned only once in the 2017 US national security strategy<\/a>, as evidence of Russia\u2019s \u2018willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Russian threat to Europe<\/a> is seemingly palpable. Russia maintains a massive conventional military presence, particularly ground forces, just across the shared border and is actively seeking to disrupt the enlargement of the EU and NATO and to weaken the position of the US in Europe. The employment of military force in Ukraine carries an unambiguous message to Europeans that Russia is prepared to defend its interests and security militarily.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also at least plausible that Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Crimean annexation are defensive actions designed to warn Eastern European states against becoming a source of security threats. Crimea\u2019s annexation can be viewed as a pre-emptive move to counter encirclement and containment and prevent the loss of strategically important Black Sea bases and access to the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

European and US security have been regarded as indivisible for at least a century. While Russian aggression in Ukraine could be intended to destabilise Europe, the Europeans themselves don\u2019t seem that alarmed. Breaches of international law by invasion and annexation are a concern, but they don\u2019t regard it as a direct threat. As Tormod Heier<\/a> has observed, even after Crimea few NATO members \u2018perceive Russia as an existential threat\u2019.<\/p>\n

Nuclear weapons aside, Russia doesn\u2019t pose a direct military threat to US territory in the same way it does to Europe. The US\u2019s nominal GDP<\/a> is 13 times Russia\u2019s and its military expenditure is more than 10 times greater<\/a> than that of Russia. Russia\u2019s power-projection capabilities, by sea or air, don\u2019t compare to those of the US. So the US\u2019s national security interest in Ukraine cannot rationally arise from the perception of a genuine conventional threat to American territory.<\/p>\n

For the witnesses at the impeachment inquiry, the threat therefore must be indirect. The US has evinced a concern that Russia presents a general threat to the rules-based international order. If the world were actually governed by a set of universally observed rules, particularly relating to the use of military force and the conduct of war, a breakdown of such rules could be said to indirectly affect US security.<\/p>\n

Military adventurism and disregard for national sovereignty in Europe dragged America into two world wars. It could be argued that enforcing bans on such behaviour is in the US\u2019s national security interest. Except the US has consistently undermined the rules set out in the UN declaration specifically addressing those matters and ignored the Security Council resolutions that are the consensus application of those rules. Its actions with respect to Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, sovereignty over the settlements, and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital are not only the stand-out examples, but they also draw obvious comparisons with Russia and Crimea.<\/p>\n

The ideological struggle of the Cold War was perceived as a zero-sum game; the loss or gain of distant territory by a third party through military action or subversion was regarded as a weakening of national security.<\/p>\n

The phrase \u2018national security interest\u2019 still carries the automatic weight of that era, although the original substantive context that gave it a global application has vanished. The term today is used reflexively and uncritically to justify an increasing range of actions.<\/p>\n

In his 1941 work The impact of war<\/em><\/a>, distinguished Harvard political scientist E. Pendleton Herring identified the American tendency to treat peace and war as distinct situations as the reason the US was never prepared for the next major war. It was an important insight. Herring popularised the term \u2018national security\u2019 and pioneered thinking on a greater emphasis on military preparations in peacetime.<\/p>\n

Emily S. Rosenberg<\/a> points out that a number of historians since have observed that after 1945 \u2018national security\u2019 became the \u2018commanding idea\u2019 supplanting \u2018national interest\u2019 and \u2018collective security\u2019. The concept was institutionalised in President Harry Truman\u2019s National Security Act of 1947.<\/p>\n

Following this, \u2018advocates of almost everything and anything scrambled to affix the popular label of national security to particular postwar agendas\u2019. The testimony from officials at the impeachment hearings indicates that it remains irremovable from international relations language.<\/p>\n

This is only a problem if it leads to unexamined and lazy, reflexive analysis in strategic policy. There are a number of credible foreign policy and geopolitical reasons that justify the US\u2019s support for Ukraine\u2014like support for human rights, support for humanitarian efforts to end the carnage, or support for the principle of sovereignty. Limiting the spread of Russian influence in Eastern Europe to reassure allies might be another. But to simply use the phrase \u2018national security\u2019 repeatedly to enhance the importance and priority of an issue dilutes the concept.<\/p>\n

It is commonplace nowadays to observe that the world is becoming more complex and, perhaps, more dangerous as economic and military power relativities continue to shift. In such circumstances it seems prudent to have clarity around national interests and to avoid shorthand terms that tend to discourage analysis and articulation of those interests. National security is one of those terms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Witnesses appearing before the US House of Representatives\u2019 impeachment hearings have regularly connected Russian aggression in Ukraine with US national security. The overwhelming international consensus is that Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea and involvement in hostilities …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":52503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[301,714,31,2070],"class_list":["post-52502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-national-security-2","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-us-foreign-policy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUS national security and Ukraine: what\u2019s the connection? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/us-national-security-and-ukraine-whats-the-connection\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"US national security and Ukraine: what\u2019s the connection? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Witnesses appearing before the US House of Representatives\u2019 impeachment hearings have regularly connected Russian aggression in Ukraine with US national security. 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