Fresno Bee commentary: Pro, con views of establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine
The call to use U.S. military forces to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as called for by that country’s president as Russia attacks his land, is being debated more in America. Here are opposing views of setting up a no-fly zone:
Pro: No-fly keeps Putin in his place
By Daniel O. Jamison, a retired attorney in Fresno
Russian President Vladimir Putin would have been expected to offer the history of invaders from Europe, from Napoleon to Hitler, and his view that the breakup of the Soviet Union insulted 1,000 years of Russian history, as the reasons for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for his hostility to NATO and for his announced desire to reacquire Stalin’s Iron Curtain countries.
Instead, a bizarre explanation is given for invading Ukraine. He claims Russia needs to destroy neo-Nazis and drug addicts who threaten Russia. Although some Ukrainians initially collaborated with the Nazis in World War II, the Jewish president of Ukraine is not a threatening neo-Nazi.
What Putin really fears is not military invaders from Europe, but an invasion of the ideas of Western freedom and democracy into Russia that will undermine him and his regime. His main aim is to crush freedom-loving peoples in Ukraine and the former Warsaw Pact countries. Stalin feared this too, but at least Stalin could claim that the death and destruction Hitler had wrought on the Soviet Union justified his insistence on a divided Germany and the buffer of the Warsaw Pact. That time has passed.
For autocrats like Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the ideas and values of western democracies are so threatening to their absolute rule that military force to crush them is justified if Western nations will let it happen. Putin now waves the nuclear saber. If Russia lacked nukes, is there any doubt the West would aid Ukraine militarily? Will the West allow Ukraine to be a precedent for future nuclear bullying that will enable Russia to reacquire the former Warsaw Pact countries, for Xi to attack Taiwan? The vital interests of America and NATO are at stake.
As President Franklin Roosevelt struggled to find ways to aid Great Britain when it stood alone in 1941-1942 against Hitler’s U-boats and aerial bombing, he lamented that he did not think he could convince isolationist America’s farm boys to take up arms to defend the West against the Putin and Xi of that day. It took Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor to supply the nation’s moral force for war.
In 1962, President John Kennedy knew that history. In 1962, as a 9-year old child I watched with my father on black and white TV the Russian ships cruising toward Kennedy’s “Quarantine” of Cuba to stop delivery of nuclear missiles to Cuba. Tension was palpable, the threat of nuclear war was real and immediate, but the steps were critically necessary to prevent Khrushchev from threatening to blackmail, if not attack, the United States with nuclear missiles in Cuba. Russia’s smashing of Ukraine, Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons for Western interference, and the threat that poses to NATO and America, are akin to Russia’s placing nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962. It must be stopped.
Early on, Western leaders should not have unequivocally declared that the West’s military will not be used to defend Ukraine, but instead should have expressly stated all options were open. In so many words, we have announced we were willing to sacrifice Ukraine for “peace.” In the face of Putin’s nuclear threat, we continue to declare we will not put boots on the ground or in the air for fear of World War III. What would Kennedy do? We have a nuclear saber, too.
The correct course is to inform the Russians that (1) NATO and the United States are immediately establishing a no-fly zone to enable humanitarian and military supplies to reach the Ukrainian people and forces; (2) if Russia interferes, its offending air defenses and aircraft will be destroyed; and (3) if Russia escalates the matter further, NATO and the United States will escalate further, including use of our nuclear forces if required.
Time is of the essence for Ukraine and for the West. No Russian first strike, tactical or strategic, could eliminate a response that could vaporize Russian forces or cities. Unhinged as he seems to be, Putin and those around him can be expected not to want Russia vaporized.
Western leaders must rally the moral force of their citizens without delay for what must be done.
Con: No-fly is no solution
By Martin Schram, Tribune News Service
As days stretched into weeks, our news screens have been bombarding us with images of brave and determined Ukrainian civilians seeking shelter and sometimes getting killed as Vladimir Putin’s war of choice exploded over their homes, schools, hospitals.
As we watched, we were all Ukrainians. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was the brave leader who made us all want to fight for what is right. And we all grieved but could not look away as our screens filled our safe lives with unspeakably horrific pictures of Putin’s military demolishing a Ukraine maternity hospital. We saw bloody pregnant women on stretchers and knew that other women and probably newborns had to be somewhere under the rubble. We heard TV anchors and correspondents saying — and read our most famous newspapers reporting — it was a “bombardment,” an “airstrike.”
Our news screens recycled Zelenskyy’s weeks of frustration that the United States and NATO would not provide the “No-Fly Zone” that could help Ukraine stay safe or at least survive. We tensed with rage, but understood, as our president and other NATO leaders explained that if our military enforce da “No-Fly Zone” it meant shooting down Russia’s jets — and that could plunge us into a nuclear World War III.
But very few of us heard what two retired U.S. army generals — both frequent TV network analysts — had to say, separately. And, as we’ll see later, apparently very few of the TV news anchors or their news-decider bosses heard them, either.
Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling said a crater he saw on his screen looked like “a long-range strike” by ground launched artillery or missiles. “The majority of these strikes are being conducted by artillery and missiles,” Gen. Hertling said. The trigger is being pulled by a soldier who could be many miles away from the target. “So a No-Fly Zone is no panacea,” he added. “This is the Russian way of war.”
Late that night, retired Gen. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmett said those war-torn homes, apartments, schools and hospitals we’d been looking at were mainly victims of “continuing fire from hundreds of ground-launched rockets and missiles.” Most were fired from 12 to some 60 miles away from their targets, he said. A “No-Fly Zone” would not affect those deadly assaults.
But the anchors didn’t then ask their military analysts how, or even if, Ukraine’s military could protect besieged Ukrainian citizens from ground-launched assaults that could indeed be causing the abhorrent devastation. And the news-deciders continued recycling the vain pleas and frustrations, of Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian political figures who still wanted the West to provide a protective “No-Fly Zone.”
Then C-SPAN provided wall-to-wall coverage of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual hearing in which the semi-famous and not-at-all famous heads of all the intelligence agencies delivered their assessment of the national security threats America faces. Congressional fact-finding investigations often turn out to be stages for political posturing — and eye-glazing finders of few facts. Which might explain why they attract few viewer eyeballs.
But this time was the exception. And perhaps the most globally meaningful facts were found during an exchange late in the hearing, initiated by perhaps the Senate’s most meaningful and even reasonable figure who does not maneuver to twirl in the spotlight. Maine’s certifiably independent Sen. Angus King began asking the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, about what is causing all the damage such as that Ukraine hospital attack that has shaken the world.
“What’s hitting them?” the senator asked. “Is it mostly bombing from aircraft or is it missiles and artillery?
And the DIA head replied: “It is a combination of mostly missiles and artillery and mobile rocket launchers.” Lt. Gen. Berrier added that actually, the Russian air force “is having a tough time” flying missions over Ukraine now, as defensive antiaircraft weapons supplied by the U.S. and others in NATO seem to be having an effect.
“So the talk about a ‘No-Fly Zone’ wouldn’t really impact what’s causing the damage?” Sen. King pressed. “ … A ‘No-Fly Zone’ wouldn’t inhibit missiles, rockets and artillery?”
Lt. Gen. Barrier replied: “That is correct.”
And now you know the rest of the story that has so dominated the news coverage on both sides of the Atlantic.