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Russia, unfortunately, has already violated the existing humanitarian-corridor agreements — shelling, according to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, an evacuation route out of Mariupol. If Russia cannot be trusted to cooperate on a humanitarian no-fly zone, or if it outright rejects the idea, then NATO could weigh whether the responsibility to protect civilians, in this narrow case, justifies imposing a limited safe zone unilaterally. That would be a much tougher call.
Besides humanitarian corridors, there are other options to weaken Russia’s air dominance. U.S. and NATO aircraft and our teams in the region can jam Russian communications. We can provide real-time intelligence, and our Special Operations forces can advise the Ukrainian military on how to best organize and execute their resistance operations. Cyber-operators can help Ukraine remotely from various nations
No one wants to broaden the war; no one wants a nuclear-armed NATO alliance fighting a nuclear Russian Federation. But there is no automatic escalation from one Russian aircraft downed by a NATO fighter to full-blown war — let alone to the use of tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. (In admittedly very different circumstances in 2015, NATO member Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft that had stayed too long in Turkey’s airspace; the Russian plane had been flying sorties over Syria. There was no counterattack.) That calculation admittedly involves the assumption that Putin is, to some degree, a rational actor. But our faith that he won’t start World War III over Russian deaths caused by U.S.-made Stinger missiles rests on the same assumption.
By publicly dithering about providing fighter jets, and rejecting out of hand even limited humanitarian no-fly zones, we are setting unnecessary limits on ourselves and deferring to Putin — while the Russian army remorselessly kills Ukrainian civilians. We must remember that every time Putin deters us from countering him forcefully, the danger that he will continue to overreach only increases. We must be willing to accept some risk now to save human lives. We might also save ourselves from even greater risks — and sacrifices — later….
FiveThirtyEight explores IF Americans would support a NO Fly Zone and even deploying the US Military against the Russians….
Poll after poll makes it clear: Americans don’t want to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. In an Ipsos/Reuters poll from March 3-4, adults opposed sending troops to Ukraine, 61 percent to 39 percent. In a YouGov/CBS News poll from Feb. 24-28, Americans opposed sending U.S. troops to defend Ukraine, 71 percent to 29 percent. In a YouGov/The Economist poll from Feb. 26-March 1, they thought sending soldiers to Ukraine to fight Russian soldiers was a bad idea, 54 percent to 19 percent. And a Feb. 25-27 poll from Data for Progress found that likely voters opposed taking military action against Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, 64 percent to 23 percent.
These numbers are hardly surprising in a country not far removed from two unpopular, drawn-out foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What’s more of a surprise, though, is that Americans are actually open to going to war with Russia under different circumstances: namely, if Russia continues its aggression and invades one of the U.S.’s fellow members of NATO….
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