This completely misstates the problem whose roots lie in the understanding of four very common words: could, can’t, won’t and will. One way to respond to the rhetorical question above is to facetiously answer: “no it’s better to wait until Putin reaches the border of Poland or tries to take over Finland.” After all Finland has been mentioned in the press as a future Putin target and Poland has declared itself worried.
But that is a digression. Back to the four words. If the question
should ever arise: ”are you suggesting we should mobilize and take off
on another foreign adventure to secure Finland … or the Ukraine … or the
Baltic” the first question to ask is can we?Can is a statement of capability. The question of whether America should help secure the Ukraine is different from the issue of whether it can. What’s destabilizing is the revelation that Obama can’t. It’s a crisis of capability brought about by policy mismanagement. A policeman can shoot you with his service weapon though most people know sane policemen won’t. But if the public learned that policemen can’t shoot — because there’s no ammunition or no gun — that is a a more serious issue altogether.
As another commenter put it on this site: if the USAF didn’t have the capability to nuke Chicago there should be a Congressional investigation demanding to know why. That would indicate a failure of capability.
President Obama has made it appear that he simply chooses not to stop Putin — won’t — as if it were a question of choice. But the allies are increasingly coming to suspect that he can’t because of cuts he’s made to America’s levers of influence, including hobbling its oil industry, in order to divert those resources to domestic political constituencies. It’s not that he won’t halt Putin, but he can’t.
His inaction is a necessity. It’s like having no lifeboats on the Titanic. You don’t choose not to get into a lifeboat, there’s nothing to get into.
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