Letter to Fence-Sitters
We have a civilization to defend, and it must be fiercely defended also against those who countenance the triumph of evil by looking the other way.
Dispatches
1) Max Boot, “This isn’t just Ukraine’s war. It’s our war, too. Act accordingly,” Washington Post, June 20, 2022 (7:00 a.m. EDT);
Turkey and NATO admission for Finland and Sweden
Turkey is a NATO member which is trying to sit on the fence in the conflict between Russia, Ukraine and the West. Currently they are blocking rapid Swedish and Finnish membership in NATO.
Two can play at this game.
If Turkey can’t see its way to welcoming Sweden and Finland into a strengthened NATO alliance, as Russia is invading Ukraine, it’s time for the U.S. and other NATO countries to start playing hardball with Erdogan.
If for Turkey NATO is purely a transactional affair, it’s time for NATO countries to start charging for those transactions.
Maybe the U.S. could start moving some of its air base activities in Turkey to Greece or Bulgaria.
Turkey needs to know that if it blocks Sweden and Finland from NATO accession, it is going to have huge problems with the U.S. and other NATO countries.
A good place to start would be with visas.
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Letter to Fence-Sitters
Before anyone can answer a clarion call, there must be a clarion call. This is my clarion call.
It is time for the U.S., NATO and EU countries, and other allies and supporters of Ukraine, to start playing hardball with all the other countries which look the other way as Russia invades and seeks to conquer parts or all of Ukraine by sheer military force. This assault includes the systematic commission of barbaric war crimes not seen on this scale since World War II.
We have a civilization to defend, and it must be fiercely defended also against those who countenance the triumph of evil by looking the other way.
All civilized countries should condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its wanton and systematic atrocities against civilians and civilian targets.
The Russian assault on Ukraine amounts to a frontal assault on both the U.N. Charter and international humanitarian law (the law of war).
Countries must now be forced to choose: either you support our civilizational project, our United Nations Charter and our international humanitarian law, or you can side with the aggressor, Russia, and the barbarism of its attacks on civilian targets.
You must either condemn Russia for these actions, and join the international sanctions against Russia, or look the other way. If you do the latter, we will make you pay the price for countenancing evil.
We will increase tariffs and limit your access to our markets, and restrict your access to key technological inputs to your manufacturing processes.
If you think your acquiescence in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and atrocities against its people is cost-free, think again.
We will impose costs on you for your cowardice, for your indifference to our civilization, and the United Nations Charter and international law which represent its crowning achievements.
We will impose heavy costs on you for siding, in effect, with evil.
If you take the side of the barbarians, we will over time treat you also as barbarians.
This treatment will take the form of emergency tariffs imposed under the GATT national security exception to most-favored-nation treatment. It will take the form of visa restrictions that make it impossible for your sons and daughters to study at universities in the West, or for you and your families to visit places like New York, Paris, London, and Rome. It will take the form of sharp limitations on your access to western technology and capital.
These changes will not come all at once. It will be necessary to build political support for these policies in Western countries.
But over time you will attain something of the pariah status the barbarian countries which you support have already attained.
If you try to remain on the fence and in doing so actually support those attempting to overthrow our civilization, you will be thrown off that fence.
You will either join us, or be left to forge your future with the barbarians who would overthrow the international legal order and our civilization.
Our civilization embodies the achievements of a thousand years of European progress which, before the latest Russian assault, were widely shared and supported by the vast majority of nations in the world.
The United Nations and international law have been the products of centuries of efforts to regulate human affairs by reason, embodied in law, instead of by brute murderous force.
You must get off the fence: you and your people must now choose your path and your future.
You must choose between civilization and reason and law, or a world of brute murderous force.
If you choose the latter, we will oppose you with all our power, with all our intelligence, and with all our moral force.
Thanks for your comment.
I submit that the old-world approach of trying to stop a murderer while he is still committing murders, by force if necessary, is still a good approach.
I submit further that the old-world approach of us versus them remains valid in some situations, as when mass murders are being committed and the barbarians are trying to burn your village down.
New approaches are of course needed and can be useful, but not when a wild horseman wielding a sword is charging at you with the intent of severing your head.
What do you propose should be our actions toward the fence-sitters?
I like this editorial. However it is the old world approach of us verses them that leads to ever increasing levels of violence and death and destruction. We must find a better way.