In the JC this week, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy makes a powerful argument in favour of Nato intervention in Ukraine.
Western forces, he writes, should impose a no-fly zone, which would very likely entail direct confrontation with Russian jets, and even the deployment of ground troops. When asked what was at stake, he replied: “The future of Europe. And of the free world. Nothing less.”
Mr Lévy’s words hold a great deal of weight. In January, when others were more concerned with the pandemic than the threat of World War Three, he issued a stark warning about “rising extremism” in Russia.
“I have feared its coming since August 2013, when President Obama, in Syria, gave the signal to retreat and ushered in a world without America,” he wrote.
Deriding Western leaders as “sleepwalkers”, he argued that the acceptance of the annexation of Crimea was “reminiscent of the appeasement that produced the 1938 Munich pact”. He added: “Mr Putin has declared war on Europe and the West.”
Sadly, his fears look like they are coming to pass. In response to the invasion, Nato has visited harsh sanctions upon the Putin regime, and has threatened retaliation if the violence spills onto its territory. But cowed by Putin’s threat of nuclear war, and uncertain of their own powers of deterrence, Western powers have stayed out of the fight.
There are profoundly Jewish dimensions to the war in Ukraine. Putin has sought to justify the invasion by claiming to be targeting “Nazis”; the president and defence minister of Ukraine are both Jewish; and the country’s large Jewish population, with its rich yet blood-soaked history, is being torn apart again, symbolised by the strike on Babyn Yar earlier this month.
As Mr Lévy points out, there is a parallel between the defiance of the Ukrainians and that of the founders of Israel, who faced down overwhelming odds to emerge victorious. Jews have learned the hard way how to stand up to tyranny. The line from the Talmud comes to mind: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”
As the extent of Putin’s butchery becomes ever clearer, Mr Lévy’s call for intervention will be harder and harder for Western leaders to ignore, even in a nuclear armed world.
