Here, on occasion, you will find some brief thoughts that have not made it into my columns or other contributions elsewhere, but that you may find especially relevant in these parlous times!
I am persuaded that Joe Biden, and the Polish government for that matter, might be doing just the right thing by treading cautiously in the matter of leaving NATO fingerprints on those MIG-29 jets that Ukraine so desperately wants—and needs —to take control of its skies.
Certainly, flying those planes with American crews out of an American cum NATO base in Ramstein, Germany, might indeed provoke the wrath of an utterly irrational and increasingly desperate dictator like Vladimir Putin. This might even extend to the point of encouraging the Russian leader to order the deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons he is so willing to wave in the faces of those who would challenge his right to work his unfettered will on the Ukrainian people.
So, here's an alternative.
Leave the MIGs on the runway in Poland, the keys in their ignitions. (I know they really don't start up like your SUV, but if you really want to know how to start up, taxi and take off an MIG-29, click here for a first-rate tutorial video.) Then, "invite" over those MIG-trained Ukrainian pilots—some 2 million Ukrainians seem to have had little trouble crossing the frontier into Poland lately. Point them in the direction of the MIGs…and they're off and running. Oh, before that, you might just want to spray paint over the Polish Air Force tail markings.
Now, there is certainly the issue that the Russians may well have deployed units of their state-of-the-art S-400 surface-to-air missile systems in Ukraine. But at that point, it will be up to the Ukrainian air force and air defense systems to master them.
What I might suggest, however, is that Israel consider loaning (or even selling) Ukraine some version of their Iron Dome system produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. It's been shown 90% effective in taking down rocket and artillery shells fired from up to 40 miles away before they've landed in Israel. They cost some $50 million per battery with each intercept between $100,000 to $150,000. But Congress has just appropriated $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine. And who better to negotiate any such deal as Vice President Kamala Harris, now in Poland and searching, desperately, for a solution she could call her own. Kamala, it's all yours.
Just imagine how much frustration that could wreak on Vladimir Putin.
JCPOA ?? What is this?
According to Haaretz, Israel fears pissing off Putin because he controls the skies over Syria which IDF occasionally needs to access for defensive purposes. Please note that if former totally cool and widely admired US President Barak Obama had not written the red line he laid down for Assad in vanishing ink Russia might not have become a strategic issue for Israel -- and six million Syrian refugees might be snug in their beds instead of having had their homes bombed out from under them to keep the awful Assad in power.
In fact, as regards Ukraine, if adorable Barry had sent just a few big boats through the Bosphorus (and a few under it) and if he'd given the Ukrainians just a teensy bit of the security and defensive assistance we had guaranteed them in exchange for giving up their large collection of nukes, Putin would certainly not have taken Crimea and sponsored insurrections on the mainland.
But adorable Barry chose instead to send the Ukrainian armed forces cozy blankies and warm socks. After all, he had told the world we had a "pivot to Asia" to attend to. Europe loved Barry, but he really just wasn't that into them.
Your MIG-29 idea sounds like the plan that I initially heard described in cable-news reports. Then it turned into the more formal (and dangerous) scheme that was nixed by the U.S. As for the Iron Dome, have we established that Israel is taking sides in this conflict now?