Relearning our lesson on dealing with extortionists  

The on-going debate on whether to impose a No-Fly Zone to protect the civilians of Ukraine bears an uncanny resemblance to U.S. fiscal policy debates over the past 11 years. Then, as now, an entrenched technocratic elite invoked the threat of a dire event — hyper-inflation, default on the national debt, nuclear war — to insist that only one policy choice was plausible. Then, as now, this elite’s policy arguments relied heavily on dubious assumptions and contained fundamental analytical flaws, but the high stakes dissuaded many from questioning them.

Then, as now, anyone proposing a more humane alternative was ridiculed as soft-headed and irresponsible. And then, as now, a strong-willed bully had broken from long-accepted rules of engagement, insisting that the remaining “civilized” actors alone bore the burden of avoiding catastrophe.

We eventually learned bowing to extortionists yields only more extortion.

Alas, we seem determined to repeat our previous errors.

When a burst real estate bubble launched the Great Recession, sober voices insisted that increasing national debt could trigger a confidence crisis and wreck the economy. Heeding them, President Obama proposed a stimulus package considerably smaller than many progressive economists recommended, three moderate Republican senators trimmed it further, and no further stimulus was attempted.

Even the Federal Reserve’s modest “quantitative easing” to accelerate the recovery was attacked as “debasing the currency” and inviting hyper-inflation.

The result was a long, slow, grinding recovery, with elevated unemployment lasting almost a decade. In the name of prudence, we acquiesced to years of pain for millions, trillions of dollars in lost output, and countless careers stunted.

By contrast, when the coronavirus pandemic triggered the sharpest contraction ever measured in this country, Congress responded with five major economic stimulus laws, culminating in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The result was to increase economic output by several percentage points and launch the fastest economic recovery in U.S. history. To be sure, we have seen higher inflation, although that was likely inevitable from our sudden shift from consuming services to buying goods, and supply chains tangled by the pandemic and our trade war with China. Inflation is unnerving, but not remotely as harmful as the protracted hardship during the recovery from the prior recession, and it shows no sign of accelerating out of control.

In 2011, House Republicans threatened to force a default on the national debt if Democrats did not accept dramatic domestic spending cuts. President Obama initially failed to take seriously this sharp break from the long tradition of bipartisan debt limit increases and destroyed his bargaining position by swearing off other means to avoid a default. When Republicans would not budge, President Obama capitulated to prevent default. The result was huge budget cuts in 2011 and again in 2013, eroding government services and slowing the economic recovery.

I do not mean to suggest any moral equivalence between Congressional Republicans of the Obama era and Vladimir Putin: There is none. But there is a strategic analogy: Both broke longstanding norms to threaten catastrophic consequences if they did not get what they wanted — and the reactions and responses are not entirely dissimilar. 

Just as self-proclaimed champions of economic orthodoxy decreed then that we could not help the unemployed without risking hyper-inflation and a crisis of confidence, much of the national security establishment now decrees that we cannot impose a No-Fly Zone in Ukraine without inviting nuclear war. And just as the economic establishment demanded that President Obama capitulate to avoid the horrors of default, the establishment now insists that we accommodate Putin to avoid the horrors of nuclear war.

Listening to the No-Fly Zone opponents, one might think that the peril of nuclear war leads NATO and Russia to scrupulously avoid any risk of conflict. In fact, throughout the Cold War and since, both navies and air forces engaged in considerable horsing around, not infrequently resulting in accidents. U.S. ground troops entered Syria without permission from the Syrian government and fought a pitched battle with Russian forces that the government had invited.

A No-Fly Zone over Ukraine would not be a huge departure from these confrontations (and no doubt many others that never became public). Those incidents did not escalate into broader war because broader war is not in either side’s interests. It still is not.

No-Fly Zones we established over weaker countries included bombing our adversaries’ air defense facilities. We would not do that in Ukraine as many of them lie within Russia. This matters little, as Putin likely would test us anyway. Our response would have to be modulated — just as it is when Russian planes buzz our aircraft carriers. Escalating is not in Putin’s interest; if it were, he has already proven that he needs no excuse. 

On the other hand, a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine, unlike all others we have established, would have indisputable legal authority: The Ukrainian government has invited us to close its own airspace. And a Ukrainian No-Fly Zone would be more even-handed — restricting Ukrainian drone flights as well as Russian ones — than No-Fly Zones we imposed where one side had complete air superiority.

Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko were dreadful men. They did not stay their hands out of decency but because they understood transgressing key limits would have intolerable consequences. Putin differs from them primarily in that he believes that the West has lost its resolve. The weakness we showed when he bullied tiny Georgia in 2008 and again when he dismembered Ukraine in 2014, as well as the impunity with which we let him meddle in our and our allies’ internal politics, have persuaded him that he can take much more. Words will not disabuse him of that view. 

When bowing to extortionists making horrific threats, one must have either a realistic belief that their demands will cease or a willingness to continue capitulating if they do not. We have no reason to think Putin’s ambitions end in Ukraine. Unless we are willing to back off and let him use chemical and biological weapons on Ukrainian civilians and then take as much of Europe as his imperial vision desires, we will have to confront him sooner or later.

If we continue showing weakness, Putin will not respect NATO’s borders. Brezhnev took alliance boundaries seriously, but wishing Putin were Brezhnev does not make it so.

Russia’s unprovoked invasion and atrocities in Ukraine are blatant, shameless transgressions of today’s international order and Russia’s own commitments. Our failure to respond forcefully will green-light more of the same.

President Obama’s capitulations did not end congressional Republicans’ destabilizing threats to trigger a default: His weakness merely encouraged more threats and brinkmanship. The threats only stopped when Democrats subsequently refused to accede to extortion and insisted that both parties were equally responsible for preventing a default. 

Similarly, freeing Putin to rain down bombs on Ukrainians will not end his aggression or the danger of nuclear war. Unless we are willing to capitulate without limit, we cannot single-handedly prevent a wider war. Paradoxically, this show of weakness only exacerbates that danger by encouraging more adventurism. At a minimum, we should return to our longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” rather than needlessly guaranteeing Putin a free hand.

A No-Fly Zone will not end the heinous artillery bombardments of civilian areas — but it would have stopped Russian planes from bombing the Mariupol theater sheltering hundreds of children. As Russia makes unmistakably clear that this is a war of annihilation, a No-Fly Zone is an appropriately calibrated response.

David A. Super is a professor of law at Georgetown Law. He also served for several years as the general counsel for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Follow him on Twitter @DavidASuper1