Council on Foreign Relations: Up to the United States and its partners to show Putin wrong with 'Afghanistan' type resistance

The moment, after a standoff stretching for months, has arrived. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is underway.

On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin said that he has decided to carry out a “special military operation” in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this week, he had ordered his military into two regions in eastern Ukraine, giving the lie to the claim — often repeated by Russian officials — that he had no intention of invading. As well as an act of aggression, it’s a blatant violation of the basic legal principle that international borders are not to be changed by force and that sovereign countries are free to make their own decisions.

It is also unwarranted. There are two types of war: wars of necessity, to protect vital national interests and involving the use of military force as a last resort, such as World War II and the Persian Gulf war of 1991; and wars of choice — armed interventions taken either in the absence of vital national interests or despite the availability of options not involving military force. Into this category fall the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and, after a limited initial phase, Afghanistan.