Former Va. Gov. Jim Gilmore, Says Ukraine Invasion Starts Global Struggle With Authoritarianism

By Bob Lewis, Virginia Mercury

March 4, 2022

The unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the start of a 100-year global struggle between the forces of authoritarianism and the democratic nations of the world, former Virginia Gov. and U.S. emissary to Europe Jim Gilmore said Thursday.

“This is a long war that is ahead of us here. I’m not talking about the Ukrainian war; I’m talking about the war between the authoritarian countries and the freedom countries. This is going to be maybe a 100-year war to determine what the future of the world is going to be,” said Gilmore, who served for two years as the U.S. special ambassador to the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In a webinar sponsored by the conservative Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, Gilmore said that President Joe Biden’s foreign policy “weakness” emboldened Russian leader Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, a sovereign Russian neighbor that was part of the Soviet bloc.

But once the invasion began, he said, Biden showed strength.

“I believe the president has done a 180,” Gilmore said. “I believe he figured it out. I believe that he is now behaving much more strong. He has sent troops into Eastern Europe, which is absolutely the right thing to do. If you’re not going to use troops (in Ukraine), he’s threatened real sanctions, and we need to be doing real sanctions. I’ve said publicly that whatever sanctions he’s thinking about, he ought to do them and double them.”

Gilmore said it seems inevitable that, despite a tenacious resistance Ukraine has mounted against Russia’s superior firepower, Russia would likely overrun the country. However, it will never bend Ukraine’s fiercely patriotic people to its will or have peace as long as it occupies the country, he said.

“But we can arm the Ukrainians, who are doing pretty good,” Gilmore said.

Had the United States provisioned the Ukrainian military with anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles over the past few years, the 40-mile column of Russian tanks and artillery stalemated on a highway north of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv “would be toast right now, literally toast.”

“I don’t know how Putin thinks he’s going to do his original plan. He’s not going to reverse Ukraine and make it a satrap of Russia,” he said.

Gilmore said he sees no danger of a nuclear confrontation from the war in Ukraine.

“I just don’t think you use nuclear weapons in a situation like this unless your country is completely threatened and nobody is threatening Russia proper at this point,” he said.

Putin’s gamble that the invasion would fracture the Western alliance has disastrously backfired, Gilmore said. The United Kingdom has leaned heavily into severe economic and social sanctions against Russia. Germany, highly reliant on Russia for energy, is resolute on punishing Putin, he noted, and even the historically neutral nations of Finland and Switzerland are doubling down on sanctions against Russia.

Gilmore was appointed special ambassador to OSCE based in Vienna by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2019. He said he believed Biden might retain him after he achieved a leadership post within the organization, but was swiftly replaced not long after Biden’s inauguration last year.

He served as a U.S. Army counterintelligence officer in Europe during the 1970s. As governor from 1998 to 2002, he swiftly took charge of Virginia’s response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and was on the scene with Virginia first-responders at the Pentagon the day after a hijacked airliner crashed into its western wall.

This story was originally published by the Virginia Mercury. For more stories from the Virginia Mercury, visit Virginia Mercury.com.