• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

The Korean War killed more than four million people -- the majority civilians -- and was quite possibly avoidable. 

A significant triggering event of North Korea’s invasion of its southern neighbor was a January 1950 speech to the National Press Club by then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson that outlined the U.S. “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific. It included Japan -- but specifically excluded Korea.

Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, then-leaders of North Korean allies China and the Soviet Union, interpreted this omission -- together with the U.S. withdrawal of troops from the Korean peninsula months earlier -- as a “green light” from the U.S. that it would not intervene if the two countries invaded South Korea. So that’s exactly what they did in June of that year.

Most historians believe that if the Truman administration had not so dangerously signaled a desire to be less involved in the Korean peninsula, particularly in that high-profile speech, the war and millions of deaths might have been avoided. 

Likewise, many believe that weak and ambiguous messaging from the U.S. and NATO over the past decade on whether they would defend Ukraine gave Putin and Russia a similar “green light” for its unprovoked full-scale invasion in 2022.

That reading was not a big stretch, given the lack of pushback and defense from either the U.S. or NATO in 2014 during Russia’s illegal “little green men” invasion of Crimea and the Donbas regions of Ukraine.

I fear that the recently published U.S. National Security Strategy, with its criticisms of European nations, and its stated intent to withdraw America from military entanglement in the region -- along with key U.S. leaders’ related speeches and social media posts distancing the administration from Europe -- is giving Putin a green light to expand his invasion beyond Ukraine, to the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The U.S. administration's security strategy speaks of economic issues first and foremost, not the defense and security of free and fair democracies, nor the defense of allies.

It does not speak of North Korea. It does not speak of China. Both are clearly lined up as adversaries of the U.S. and are building up their own military capabilities and ability to fight the U.S. on the battlefield as strong allies (together with Iran) to Russia and its Ukraine invasion.

Even Pope Leo -- probably the most important American in the world -- spoke out last week against the aggressive position that the U.S. administration is taking against its longtime European allies, which is clearly playing into Putin’s hands.

Putin has been clear and explicit in speeches over the past year of his intention to "re-federate" lands, such as the Baltic nations that were previously under the control of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

Putin does not want peace. If he did, he could just order his army to stop invading. The last thing we need to do is give him “permission” to broaden his attack and his genocide into more nations.

Russia’s economy, which is fragile and out of cash, is super-heated with its military footing. Putin now has more than 2 million under arms and is suffering casualties at a 10X level to Ukraine, with little captured territory to show for it. Even a massive cash infusion today would not give the Russian economy a soft landing.

So Putin needs to keep going. He needs to keep invading.

What to do?

The U.S. needs to support Europe’s efforts to use the $200+ billion of frozen Russian assets for critical rebuilding in Ukraine (civilian energy, for example), and for needed weapons systems, such as missile defense and long-range weapons. We need to remove restrictions on U.S.-made weapons provided to Ukraine. We need to use the “minerals agreement” drawdown to sell Ukraine U.S.-made weapons. We need to vote on the Graham/Blumenthal tariffs bill, which will sanction buyers of Russian oil like China and India. And we need to fully enforce sanctions that are already implemented, including going after the shadow fleet.

If we do that, Putin will lose. Ukraine will win. The free world will win.

If we continue with dangerous rhetoric like the National Security Strategy, we will see Russia’s horrible invasion grow even more out of control.