This is just one of those situations where I feel like I’m seeing the same posts completely differently as a lot of people. I do not want war with Russia. I would rather let Ukraine fall. It seems like everyone pretty much feels that way.
I agree with your point about Ukraine. We are talking tough and puffing our chests while gambling with Ukrainian lives, one way or the other. Further, I believe any Russian leader would share Putin's attitude toward Ukraine joining NATO. It has nothing to do with Putin's other sins in other areas.
The US is becoming the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of foreign powers: breaking things and leaving others to deal with the mess.
Below is a good piece by George Kennan from 1997 arguing that NATO expansion would doom the possibility of really, finally, ending the Cold War.
The way i see it, we're encouraging Ukraine to keep its goal of joining NATO, something Russia will not allow. From Russia's POV, the further expansion of NATO east is an unacceptable threat to their security. So, Russia will fight to prevent it. WE can't always get what we want. And Ukraine in NATO is something we do not need. It was a successful gamble to include the Central European and Baltic states in NATO. Particularly when Russia was a lot weaker. This is a step too far.
I simply do not believe that our stance with regard to Ukraine since 2008 has been in our national interest. Nor in Ukraine's. You can deal with the world and men like Putin as you find them or you can deal with the world and men like Putin as you'd like them to be.
My Transylvanian-born late husband was a labor prisoner in the Donbas as a teenager right after WWII. He wrote a book titled DONBAS, a word I lived with intimately for almost 40 years that almost nobody else had ever heard. Around the turn of the century we went back to visit the place of his imprisonment. All I can tell you is, when he was a prisoner and still half a century later, everybody in that eastern part of Ukraine, along the border with Russia, was Russian (with the exception of university students and entrepreneurs in the capital of the region, Donetsk, which was more cosmopolitan, if you can say that about a city with working coal mines inside its boundaries and a university focused on mining engineering). They spoke Russian, they thought of themselves as Russians.
Now, Ukrainian nationalists will tell you that that's where the Ukrainian people originated and that it was Stalin who depopulated it of Ukrainians and filled it with Russians. Whose truth is the true truth? I don't know.
All of the independent nations now bordering Russia that were once part of the Russian and Soviet empires were "Russified" before and during the Soviet Union, which involved two things: shipping the "natives" out en masse (this was part of Stalin's "nationalities" specialty that Lenin assigned to him) and moving Russians *in*.
Russia's current policy is to use the presence of Russians in places like Georgia, the Baltics, and yes, Ukraine, as a justification for their bellicose foreign policy and military adventures, including (and especially) fomenting the creation of "breakaway states" (Transdniestria, South Ossetia, and so on).
With the Crimea, they simply annexed it outright from an independent Ukraine.
I am not in favor of a NATO war with Russia - which is good, since they aren't going to do anything realistically anyway - but you can see why the Baltic states jumped at the chance to join NATO the millisecond the option was available to them.
Finland has also weighed joining NATO, but is confident that their current military response would be adequate to deter (another) invasion from the east, and is unlikely to do so in the near to mid future.
"Most of eastern Ukraine has basically always been part of Greater Russia"—that really strikes at the heart of my question: Was the Donbas region always Russian, or Russified by Stalin? The Ukrainian nationalist claim seems to be that a distinct Ukrainian people (narcissism of small differences?) originated just there and their descendants were removed by Stalin. I know Stalin did plenty of that, but was the Donbas one of the places where he did it? I don't know the answer.
Putin has now said he's going to recognize the breakaway republics in Eastern Ukraine. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60454795 My sense of the Donbas, and granted this was 20 years ago, is that the old-timers and the young toughs will be exultant and the transplants from the Western part of the country, the beneficiaries of the "Ukrainization" of the region will flee.
Yes, I realize - my family came here from Finland. What did happen in Ukraine under Stalin, however, is that an enormous number of Ukrainians were shipped out under Stalin during the manmade collectivization famine, and in their place, an enormous number of Russians were also brought in to replace them. Someone had to work on those collective farms.
There have always been Russians in Ukraine, but Russification happened anyway under Stalin - just in a different (and much bloodier) fashion than Russification took place under Peter the Great, Catherine, etc.
The other thing they all have in common is that Russia's military and political leaders seem to act as if their national sovereignty is essentially a joke, and that the only reason any of them are still independent at all is because Russia is graciously allowing them to be ... for now.
The Donbas region I don't think was ever a rich agricultural region like the "breadbasket" wheatlands of western and central Ukraine. The Donbas is flinty and severe, and the wealth is underground—coal. But the mines are wet in the best of times, and now many of them are flooded and idle, a reporter there told me.
Educating conversation. Question to both of you. Even if the people in a given area culturally Russian, that doesn't mean the support Putin or that they don't want a true democracy, does it? Maybe the Ukraine government isn't innocent, but they are more legit and elected than Putin, right? Didn't these "Russian" citizens at least have a chance to vote for or against the current Ukrainian leadership? Isn't the current Ukrainian administration at least somewhat more legitimate than Putin's, who's elections are almost as fake as China's and North Korea's?
I'm really asking this shit honestly. I don't think real democracies are defacto less evil than non-democratic ones. But I do think, if the elections were legit, that they're more representative of their citizens than strong-man regimes. No?
Correct - there is no default position on Putin, for example, for ethnic Russians outside Russia. Russians are every bit as likely to have differing opinions as anyone else. However, it is also correct to note that many Russians in the former Central Asian states and even the Baltics still look to Russia as a guarantor of things like language rights and so on.
The only legitimacy Ukraine's rotten governments have is that they are, at least, Ukrainian. It's the Ukranian people's problem, and is not a pretext for Russian aggression.
A huge number prefer ex-commie fairly socialist economic and cultural security, especially anti-gay, anti-trans "woke" junk, over a capitalism that hugely rewards the rich with most of whatever increase there is in GDP. Language and religion are the two biggest cultural issues, with relative economic status for many more important than absolute economic growth.
Real democracies always have far more important disagreements among groups of people about the best policies. "Unity" is anti-democratic.
Russification was definitely a real thing--not always as a nefarious Stalinist plot, mind you--but Ukraine is a different case than, say, Kazakhstan or Latvia. Ukraine was divided into Russophone cities and Ukrainian villages for centuries. They're still de-Russifying old signs and streets in Kyiv. Bulgakov, Malevich, Babel, Gogol, Vasily Grossmann, Akhmatova, and plenty more were born in present-day Ukraine but not remotely Ukrainian in any social, political, or linguistic sense.
At least Moldova was a Soviet Republic in its own right (Romania, of course, was a separate state), but Russia created the bizarre *Moldovan* breakaway republic of Transnistria, joining other breakaway states recognized by Russia alone like Abkhazia, Artsakh and South Ossetia. It's basically been the go-to playbook of post-Soviet Russian and military policy.
I've actually heard a global strategist use the "replacing the ship's planks / does the original boat arrive at port" metaphor for the people residing in Ukraine. It's a useful thought exercise but, like you point out, it doesn't really provide a useful answer.
I watched that Ken Burns series on Vietnam a while back. At every step of the escalation, there was one guy in the room saying it wasn't going to work. Duly ignored, of course.
The support of the Shah, Samoza, Batista, was like the official US mission was Operation Generate Blowback.
Your last para pointed to the most important reason to avoid war. It is deeply immoral and destructive to your country over the long term to engage in wars from which your family, your friends, and your class are excused.
I don't agree with everything you say here, but you bring up some great points and this post inspired me to dig deeper into a conflict I don't know too much about. But one question.
Is America really about to go to war as you say? Are we placing thousands of troops at the border? Are we mobilizing? Are we even increasing arms to Ukraine? These aren't rhetorical questions. I really don't know. I barely read headlines these days. (Turned off most news after 2020 summer riots and Jan 6. Those stupid events depress me more than Covid).
All the tidbits I do see seem to imply that the worst we'll do if Russia invades is some real sanctions. (Which will fuck up our inflating economy and send gas prices sky high, right?)
I'm against war now too. I'm rarely for war. Iraq was a huge mistake. (Afghanistan was more complicated. I supported capturing or killing Bin Laden, which Bush fucked up. I didn't support us leaving troops there for 20 years).
Maybe there's no good answers. Like Covid, maybe what we do doesn't matter. I do think Putin is evil. I think his psyops is why we have MAGA vs WOKE. I did actually read the Mueller report. Trump wasn't his puppet but Putin was clearly involved is helping elect that retard. And he helped fan the flames of QAnon, Proud Boys, AntiFa and all the other stupid fucking things many of us believe in.
I don't think there's any good answers. I think we just have to hope nukes don't get involved. I gotta finish my coffee. I'm rambling. Someone shut me up.
Fair enough. But isn't that history always a proxy war as opposed to an actual conflict with Russia directly? I can't see a Biden administration being stupid enough directly engaging with Putin in a hot war of our soldiers on the ground. I doubt even the Bush/Clinton hawks would do that. (Nor Trump of course).
Are you saying you're against any involvement? Weapons? Sanctions? Do you at least see that a Putin invasion is a bad thing no matter what we do?
I can’t help seeing this situation as eerily reminiscent of Hitler/Sudetenland/Poland/boom. Maybe this is the opening gambit for Russia to gobble up its ex-satellites and create the cold war redux. No one in their right mind wants a European shooting war. (We’d lose it anyway). But after Russia adds Ukraine to its empire, having already gathered in Belarus, are we really willing to countenance a captive Poland? We had better hope that winken Blinken and nod over there in the White House have something in mind in their dealings with Putin beyond begging the Germans to keep the pipeline closed.
Didn't Putin himself admit that the US plus NATO have a way larger force then Russia? If Putin was literally Hitler I think we would indeed win a shooting war, God forbid that ever happens. But Putin is at least implying that he'd use nukes. Much like Trump use to imply he could use nukes. The problem is that Putin is much smarter & crazier than Trump and might actually use them. Hopefully Biden is surrounded by people smart enough to keep that from happening.
But I don't think there's any good solutions here. We have to hope Putin dies. He's almost 70.
How would we lose? All Russia does is export natural resources. They don’t have the manufacturing and transport infrastructure to win a war with the west. China sure as hell could - but not Russia.
I have the same question. There actually seems to be a big disconnect between the media pro-war types and actual politicians. It’s unusual. I could definitely be wrong, but it doesn’t look to me like Biden or either party in Congress is pushing for war. Don’t see any enthusiasm among citizens of any stripe either.
I see the politicians doing a Barney Fife routine. Don't make me do it! I'll reach in my shirt pocket and load my gun if you keep that up. We have constructed a media landscape that has confused these people into believing their opinion matters. Biden doesn't need their approval to do something stupid.
Are we putting troops in Ukraine? Does Ukraine agency not matter? Or are you saying Ukraine has already been hijacked? I was strongly against the Iraq war. Our military blob learned little from Viet Nam. But I don’t see Ukraine (so far) as Iraq 2.0
Fourteen months on, we have troops in Ukraine and Ukraine has no agency: it is completely dependent on US funding to carry out the basic functions of government.
I couldn't agree more. With respect to Ukraine, John Mearsheimer has been forcefully arguing for years that NATO expansion is a big mistake. I've heard him speak about Ukraine in this regard since 2014, and most recently on Andrew Sullivan's podcast. But I'm afraid Anne Applebaum's more interventionist point of view (also expressed on Sullivan's podcast, the following week) is what resonates with the US foreign policy establishment.
My partner, who is a bit more hawkish than me on foreign policy, would answer your big question as follows: the undoing of the US's role as global cop would leave in its place a dangerous power vacuum that a hostile power like China or Russia would be only too glad to fill. Obviously my counterargument to that is that the US's insistence on acting as the final arbiter of justice & purveyor of force *in itself* creates the very conditions that it claims it is trying to police. Even he, however, agrees with me that Ukraine cannot join NATO.
But his answer also illustrates the real difficulty of convincing the people in charge that restraint (or, in their derisive view, a lack of action) is the answer - it just feels counterintuitive. In an impossibly thorny situation like this, people always want to feel like they have choice and control to effect a scenario in which we get everything we want. And choosing to ignore that urge and understanding it for what it is - an illusion - requires sincere intellectual and emotional humility.
I'm hoping fear of a huge public backlash from voters (and, maybe, Putin self-interestedly deciding the risk/reward makes this effort not worth it?) will help us muddle through this mess.
I don't think I could take another four years of Trump. Not just because of, you know, Trump (though absolutely because of Trump), but also because I don't think I can take four more years of hysterical end-of-days panic and smug owning-the-MAGA-hats rhetoric from the entire lib-left end of things.
Any Republican will do. Hopefully Trump will be dead by 2024 and the GOP can find someone sunny and optimistic who can actually win a majority of votes.
Great post. Many years ago, I heard Chomsky make a similar point, and it blew my mind. Why are we allowed to do things that other countries are not? Why are we special?
Putin must be stopped…but it’s okay for us to invade and occupy countries? Why? The only difference is that we claim we’re the good guys, bombing people to help them. And because our “security” is at stake. (Russia’s security does not matter, just ours.)
When Russia “meddles” in our election (on social media), we melt down for months. But we can take out leaders we don’t like and replace them with our guy. That’s different.
The idea that we’re a force of good in the world is simply not compatible with our body count. We might do some good things on occasion, but after Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s legitimate to see us as bad guys.
> Why are we allowed to do things that other countries are not? Why are we special?
Each country pursues its interests or the interests of its elites. International relations are shaped by power and not by ethics. Fairness has nothing to do with it. It's not that America is "allowed" to do these things; it's that no other nation is powerful enough to stop it.
America is, in contrast, powerful enough to at least make Russia or anyone else think twice before acting against its interests (or whatever those in power concieve those interests to be). Other nations can make it too expensive for America to do what it wants (witness Iraq and Afghanistan), but, for the moment, the U.S. is top dog.
This reminds me of the one the COVID posts. Yeah, it would be nice if we could "do something" to stop COVID and war, but the thing we actually can come packaged with tons of consequences and questionable efficacy.
We can't stop every war. I was despondent last year as friends, students, and family members in Armenia fought in Karabakh. I desperately wanted the US, France, and Russia to fully honor their treaty obligations and initiate an immediate ceasefire. I wanted, deep down, to at least see American drones shooting down Azerbaijani drones, if nothing else. That was the first, and hopefully last time I came close to cherishing the massive taxes I pay to the US war machine. But I also knew, deep down, that Karabakh isn't America's war any more than Yemen or Tigray are, or than Ukraine would be.
I hate, hate, hate the Russian government and military for the pain it's caused my friends in Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine (and within Russia, for that matter). I have little patience for what-aboutism or arguments about Russia's "sphere of influence," as if proximity or historical precedent is a justification for war crimes in Chechnya and bloody adventures in Ossetia. Putin's wars are terrible, and should be opposed with every legal, non-violent method we have. But we can't fight every war.
All it takes is people merely agreeing that Russia's military adventurism is just as bad as America's, but there's still a huge segment of the American body politic that only seems to believe it's bad when America does it instead of, you know, the thing itself simply being horrible.
"Authoritarian" and "government" are both a but generous with regards to Ukraine. It's a comically dysfunctional state ruled loosely by competing oligarchic interests.
There's a *lot* that I despise in the Hanania take that Freddie linked to above, but I think he's essentially correct when he says that the average Ukrainian is about as likely to fight and die for the honor of the Ukrainian government than I am for the Philadelphia Parking Authority.
It isn't the Ukrainian government they would be fighting for. The attitudes toward free speech, women's rights, gay rights, self-determination are far different today in downtown Kiev than they would be under the control of Moscow. Russia has changed a lot in the last 20 years, as has Eastern Europe--and they've gone in different directions.
There's 2 perspectives I'm reading. The notion of a war with Russia over Ukraine dismissed as an inconceivable but hyped up media/dem dog wag and this more serious cautionary take against any possibility whatsoever. Regardless of the likelihood, I'm becoming more convinced by the latter than the former. Even posturing this way seems reckless.
Coincidentally, I obtained all the Adam Curtis films over the weekend. Started re-watching all his stuff from Pandora's Box again.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on one of his newer films/series.
(pause while I duck to avoid the impending barrage of rotten fruit)
... ok, with that out of the way ...
I'm a right winger, and nobody's dove. I do not believe wars should be avoided at *any* and *all* costs. War is, occasionally, necessary.
What does, bafflingly, seem to currently separate me from hawks on the left *and* right is my now apparently archaic belief that we should only go to war as a *last* resort, when all other options have been exhausted, and only in the most remarkable circumstances (like actual wars of aggression - not "we need oil").
I am apparently even more outdated by believing that they only we should actually ever declare war is by doing it the way the constitution tells us we must - something we have not done as a nation since we declared war on Japan in 1941.
Furthermore, I still cling to the outdated notion that if we do make the horrible decision to go to war, the only option is an American victory, with the terms of ending the conflict crystal clear. We spent twenty years in Afghanistan because there was no "end goal" once the Taliban was gone - just a completely useless attempt at "nation building". Afghanistan did not want to be a country like Belgium, and was never going to be one. The war was a fiasco precisely because it had no goals, and indeed, not even an enemy who had the power to surrender to us if we "won".
America is not threatened in the Ukraine. I do not want Russia to invade Ukraine, and I want them to stop their military adventurism in the Caucuses and elsewhere. But let's be clear - I would never support America intervening militarily because as awful as it is, it is simply not worth America going to war over.
I am on the American political right, and have been since I was old enough to vote in the late 80's. If you remember William F. Buckley's definition of conservative politics, it was standing athwart from history, shouting "halt!" - my politics are essentially that.
However, modern conservatives stand in a very strange position where the left has spent decades trying to out do one another in their avant-garde progressivism, that we now look downright rebellious and new by trying to re-orient the political conversation back even 10-15 years ago.
Keep in mind that what passes for right wing in Rhode Island may pass for a communist west of the Mississippi. Your mileage may vary.
Certainly by the standards of most of Freddie Deboer's readership, I would be indistinguishable from Augusto Pinochet, but that's the nature of political discourse online.
Aw, you guys -- I'm all over the goddamn map politically, and I agree, too. DeBoer commentariat unity on clear and unambiguous congressional declarations of war! (Hopefully not too frequent.)
Absolutely *not* a RWer, and I totally agree with you. It's a brute cost and benefit analysis on this one. Russia simply does not seem a threat remotely commensurate with the Dem-led sabre-rattling. I don't think there's any need to try to put oneself in the shoes of a regime like Putin's to see that.
There are, however, other powers American policymakers and ordinary people should be much more wary of, re: the point in the post about "would we tolerate the Chinese expanding their footprint to this degree." The answer to that is, the U.S. basically already does, and has since 1989. COVID's fallout is exemplary of how dramatic the implications of that "footprint" have become in an age where it's not necessarily nuclear arms that are the weapons most capable of explosive, nearly instant damage across entire continents, with years if not decades of painfully lingering effects.
Which comments seem pro war with Russia to you?
This is just one of those situations where I feel like I’m seeing the same posts completely differently as a lot of people. I do not want war with Russia. I would rather let Ukraine fall. It seems like everyone pretty much feels that way.
I agree with your point about Ukraine. We are talking tough and puffing our chests while gambling with Ukrainian lives, one way or the other. Further, I believe any Russian leader would share Putin's attitude toward Ukraine joining NATO. It has nothing to do with Putin's other sins in other areas.
The US is becoming the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of foreign powers: breaking things and leaving others to deal with the mess.
Below is a good piece by George Kennan from 1997 arguing that NATO expansion would doom the possibility of really, finally, ending the Cold War.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html?searchResultPosition=1
Not any kind of expert, but how exactly is it "we" who are gambling with Ukrainian lives? The US is not the aggressor here.
The way i see it, we're encouraging Ukraine to keep its goal of joining NATO, something Russia will not allow. From Russia's POV, the further expansion of NATO east is an unacceptable threat to their security. So, Russia will fight to prevent it. WE can't always get what we want. And Ukraine in NATO is something we do not need. It was a successful gamble to include the Central European and Baltic states in NATO. Particularly when Russia was a lot weaker. This is a step too far.
I simply do not believe that our stance with regard to Ukraine since 2008 has been in our national interest. Nor in Ukraine's. You can deal with the world and men like Putin as you find them or you can deal with the world and men like Putin as you'd like them to be.
Every word.
My Transylvanian-born late husband was a labor prisoner in the Donbas as a teenager right after WWII. He wrote a book titled DONBAS, a word I lived with intimately for almost 40 years that almost nobody else had ever heard. Around the turn of the century we went back to visit the place of his imprisonment. All I can tell you is, when he was a prisoner and still half a century later, everybody in that eastern part of Ukraine, along the border with Russia, was Russian (with the exception of university students and entrepreneurs in the capital of the region, Donetsk, which was more cosmopolitan, if you can say that about a city with working coal mines inside its boundaries and a university focused on mining engineering). They spoke Russian, they thought of themselves as Russians.
Now, Ukrainian nationalists will tell you that that's where the Ukrainian people originated and that it was Stalin who depopulated it of Ukrainians and filled it with Russians. Whose truth is the true truth? I don't know.
All of the independent nations now bordering Russia that were once part of the Russian and Soviet empires were "Russified" before and during the Soviet Union, which involved two things: shipping the "natives" out en masse (this was part of Stalin's "nationalities" specialty that Lenin assigned to him) and moving Russians *in*.
Russia's current policy is to use the presence of Russians in places like Georgia, the Baltics, and yes, Ukraine, as a justification for their bellicose foreign policy and military adventures, including (and especially) fomenting the creation of "breakaway states" (Transdniestria, South Ossetia, and so on).
With the Crimea, they simply annexed it outright from an independent Ukraine.
I am not in favor of a NATO war with Russia - which is good, since they aren't going to do anything realistically anyway - but you can see why the Baltic states jumped at the chance to join NATO the millisecond the option was available to them.
Finland has also weighed joining NATO, but is confident that their current military response would be adequate to deter (another) invasion from the east, and is unlikely to do so in the near to mid future.
"Most of eastern Ukraine has basically always been part of Greater Russia"—that really strikes at the heart of my question: Was the Donbas region always Russian, or Russified by Stalin? The Ukrainian nationalist claim seems to be that a distinct Ukrainian people (narcissism of small differences?) originated just there and their descendants were removed by Stalin. I know Stalin did plenty of that, but was the Donbas one of the places where he did it? I don't know the answer.
It invites a whole history of the Cossacks and Tatars.
Putin has now said he's going to recognize the breakaway republics in Eastern Ukraine. https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60454795 My sense of the Donbas, and granted this was 20 years ago, is that the old-timers and the young toughs will be exultant and the transplants from the Western part of the country, the beneficiaries of the "Ukrainization" of the region will flee.
Yes, I realize - my family came here from Finland. What did happen in Ukraine under Stalin, however, is that an enormous number of Ukrainians were shipped out under Stalin during the manmade collectivization famine, and in their place, an enormous number of Russians were also brought in to replace them. Someone had to work on those collective farms.
There have always been Russians in Ukraine, but Russification happened anyway under Stalin - just in a different (and much bloodier) fashion than Russification took place under Peter the Great, Catherine, etc.
The other thing they all have in common is that Russia's military and political leaders seem to act as if their national sovereignty is essentially a joke, and that the only reason any of them are still independent at all is because Russia is graciously allowing them to be ... for now.
The Donbas region I don't think was ever a rich agricultural region like the "breadbasket" wheatlands of western and central Ukraine. The Donbas is flinty and severe, and the wealth is underground—coal. But the mines are wet in the best of times, and now many of them are flooded and idle, a reporter there told me.
So 1990 and the "fall of the Soviet Empire" were just temporary?
Educating conversation. Question to both of you. Even if the people in a given area culturally Russian, that doesn't mean the support Putin or that they don't want a true democracy, does it? Maybe the Ukraine government isn't innocent, but they are more legit and elected than Putin, right? Didn't these "Russian" citizens at least have a chance to vote for or against the current Ukrainian leadership? Isn't the current Ukrainian administration at least somewhat more legitimate than Putin's, who's elections are almost as fake as China's and North Korea's?
I'm really asking this shit honestly. I don't think real democracies are defacto less evil than non-democratic ones. But I do think, if the elections were legit, that they're more representative of their citizens than strong-man regimes. No?
Correct - there is no default position on Putin, for example, for ethnic Russians outside Russia. Russians are every bit as likely to have differing opinions as anyone else. However, it is also correct to note that many Russians in the former Central Asian states and even the Baltics still look to Russia as a guarantor of things like language rights and so on.
The only legitimacy Ukraine's rotten governments have is that they are, at least, Ukrainian. It's the Ukranian people's problem, and is not a pretext for Russian aggression.
A huge number prefer ex-commie fairly socialist economic and cultural security, especially anti-gay, anti-trans "woke" junk, over a capitalism that hugely rewards the rich with most of whatever increase there is in GDP. Language and religion are the two biggest cultural issues, with relative economic status for many more important than absolute economic growth.
Real democracies always have far more important disagreements among groups of people about the best policies. "Unity" is anti-democratic.
Russification was definitely a real thing--not always as a nefarious Stalinist plot, mind you--but Ukraine is a different case than, say, Kazakhstan or Latvia. Ukraine was divided into Russophone cities and Ukrainian villages for centuries. They're still de-Russifying old signs and streets in Kyiv. Bulgakov, Malevich, Babel, Gogol, Vasily Grossmann, Akhmatova, and plenty more were born in present-day Ukraine but not remotely Ukrainian in any social, political, or linguistic sense.
Thank you for this.
Moldova is another example. It used to be part of greater Romania. https://apnews.com/article/europe-russia-international-news-language-political-issues-d081874e81aa4d41b9914b478b965293
At least Moldova was a Soviet Republic in its own right (Romania, of course, was a separate state), but Russia created the bizarre *Moldovan* breakaway republic of Transnistria, joining other breakaway states recognized by Russia alone like Abkhazia, Artsakh and South Ossetia. It's basically been the go-to playbook of post-Soviet Russian and military policy.
I've actually heard a global strategist use the "replacing the ship's planks / does the original boat arrive at port" metaphor for the people residing in Ukraine. It's a useful thought exercise but, like you point out, it doesn't really provide a useful answer.
I watched that Ken Burns series on Vietnam a while back. At every step of the escalation, there was one guy in the room saying it wasn't going to work. Duly ignored, of course.
The support of the Shah, Samoza, Batista, was like the official US mission was Operation Generate Blowback.
Your last para pointed to the most important reason to avoid war. It is deeply immoral and destructive to your country over the long term to engage in wars from which your family, your friends, and your class are excused.
In reality, the entire political class suffers from Trump's bone spurs.
there's always Blumenthal..o wait.
Bravo Robin G
I don't agree with everything you say here, but you bring up some great points and this post inspired me to dig deeper into a conflict I don't know too much about. But one question.
Is America really about to go to war as you say? Are we placing thousands of troops at the border? Are we mobilizing? Are we even increasing arms to Ukraine? These aren't rhetorical questions. I really don't know. I barely read headlines these days. (Turned off most news after 2020 summer riots and Jan 6. Those stupid events depress me more than Covid).
All the tidbits I do see seem to imply that the worst we'll do if Russia invades is some real sanctions. (Which will fuck up our inflating economy and send gas prices sky high, right?)
I'm against war now too. I'm rarely for war. Iraq was a huge mistake. (Afghanistan was more complicated. I supported capturing or killing Bin Laden, which Bush fucked up. I didn't support us leaving troops there for 20 years).
Maybe there's no good answers. Like Covid, maybe what we do doesn't matter. I do think Putin is evil. I think his psyops is why we have MAGA vs WOKE. I did actually read the Mueller report. Trump wasn't his puppet but Putin was clearly involved is helping elect that retard. And he helped fan the flames of QAnon, Proud Boys, AntiFa and all the other stupid fucking things many of us believe in.
I don't think there's any good answers. I think we just have to hope nukes don't get involved. I gotta finish my coffee. I'm rambling. Someone shut me up.
Look at the history of this country in the past half century and you might understand why I'd like to get a jump on opposing the next war
Fair enough. But isn't that history always a proxy war as opposed to an actual conflict with Russia directly? I can't see a Biden administration being stupid enough directly engaging with Putin in a hot war of our soldiers on the ground. I doubt even the Bush/Clinton hawks would do that. (Nor Trump of course).
Are you saying you're against any involvement? Weapons? Sanctions? Do you at least see that a Putin invasion is a bad thing no matter what we do?
I can’t help seeing this situation as eerily reminiscent of Hitler/Sudetenland/Poland/boom. Maybe this is the opening gambit for Russia to gobble up its ex-satellites and create the cold war redux. No one in their right mind wants a European shooting war. (We’d lose it anyway). But after Russia adds Ukraine to its empire, having already gathered in Belarus, are we really willing to countenance a captive Poland? We had better hope that winken Blinken and nod over there in the White House have something in mind in their dealings with Putin beyond begging the Germans to keep the pipeline closed.
Didn't Putin himself admit that the US plus NATO have a way larger force then Russia? If Putin was literally Hitler I think we would indeed win a shooting war, God forbid that ever happens. But Putin is at least implying that he'd use nukes. Much like Trump use to imply he could use nukes. The problem is that Putin is much smarter & crazier than Trump and might actually use them. Hopefully Biden is surrounded by people smart enough to keep that from happening.
But I don't think there's any good solutions here. We have to hope Putin dies. He's almost 70.
How would we lose? All Russia does is export natural resources. They don’t have the manufacturing and transport infrastructure to win a war with the west. China sure as hell could - but not Russia.
And we left and now 95% or Afghans are starving. They wanted us out and we are out. Now they can deal with the consequences.
You underestimate Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces
Versus
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2018/11/02/how-president-trump-saved-the-last-tank-plant-in-america/?sh=27fc2e6e3d01
I have the same question. There actually seems to be a big disconnect between the media pro-war types and actual politicians. It’s unusual. I could definitely be wrong, but it doesn’t look to me like Biden or either party in Congress is pushing for war. Don’t see any enthusiasm among citizens of any stripe either.
I see the politicians doing a Barney Fife routine. Don't make me do it! I'll reach in my shirt pocket and load my gun if you keep that up. We have constructed a media landscape that has confused these people into believing their opinion matters. Biden doesn't need their approval to do something stupid.
Are we putting troops in Ukraine? Does Ukraine agency not matter? Or are you saying Ukraine has already been hijacked? I was strongly against the Iraq war. Our military blob learned little from Viet Nam. But I don’t see Ukraine (so far) as Iraq 2.0
Did I not directly address the question of Ukrainian self-determination?
You did at the top of your essay, before pivoting back to the idea that this conflict is really “our” war — US vs. Russia.
Fourteen months on, we have troops in Ukraine and Ukraine has no agency: it is completely dependent on US funding to carry out the basic functions of government.
I couldn't agree more. With respect to Ukraine, John Mearsheimer has been forcefully arguing for years that NATO expansion is a big mistake. I've heard him speak about Ukraine in this regard since 2014, and most recently on Andrew Sullivan's podcast. But I'm afraid Anne Applebaum's more interventionist point of view (also expressed on Sullivan's podcast, the following week) is what resonates with the US foreign policy establishment.
My partner, who is a bit more hawkish than me on foreign policy, would answer your big question as follows: the undoing of the US's role as global cop would leave in its place a dangerous power vacuum that a hostile power like China or Russia would be only too glad to fill. Obviously my counterargument to that is that the US's insistence on acting as the final arbiter of justice & purveyor of force *in itself* creates the very conditions that it claims it is trying to police. Even he, however, agrees with me that Ukraine cannot join NATO.
But his answer also illustrates the real difficulty of convincing the people in charge that restraint (or, in their derisive view, a lack of action) is the answer - it just feels counterintuitive. In an impossibly thorny situation like this, people always want to feel like they have choice and control to effect a scenario in which we get everything we want. And choosing to ignore that urge and understanding it for what it is - an illusion - requires sincere intellectual and emotional humility.
I'm hoping fear of a huge public backlash from voters (and, maybe, Putin self-interestedly deciding the risk/reward makes this effort not worth it?) will help us muddle through this mess.
Personally I am hoping "really bad polling numbers" would do the job.
I don't think I could take another four years of Trump. Not just because of, you know, Trump (though absolutely because of Trump), but also because I don't think I can take four more years of hysterical end-of-days panic and smug owning-the-MAGA-hats rhetoric from the entire lib-left end of things.
Any Republican will do. Hopefully Trump will be dead by 2024 and the GOP can find someone sunny and optimistic who can actually win a majority of votes.
Great post. Many years ago, I heard Chomsky make a similar point, and it blew my mind. Why are we allowed to do things that other countries are not? Why are we special?
Putin must be stopped…but it’s okay for us to invade and occupy countries? Why? The only difference is that we claim we’re the good guys, bombing people to help them. And because our “security” is at stake. (Russia’s security does not matter, just ours.)
When Russia “meddles” in our election (on social media), we melt down for months. But we can take out leaders we don’t like and replace them with our guy. That’s different.
The idea that we’re a force of good in the world is simply not compatible with our body count. We might do some good things on occasion, but after Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s legitimate to see us as bad guys.
Give it a try.
> Why are we allowed to do things that other countries are not? Why are we special?
Each country pursues its interests or the interests of its elites. International relations are shaped by power and not by ethics. Fairness has nothing to do with it. It's not that America is "allowed" to do these things; it's that no other nation is powerful enough to stop it.
America is, in contrast, powerful enough to at least make Russia or anyone else think twice before acting against its interests (or whatever those in power concieve those interests to be). Other nations can make it too expensive for America to do what it wants (witness Iraq and Afghanistan), but, for the moment, the U.S. is top dog.
I agree. I meant it rhetorically, because this is the myth we tell US citizens—that our behavior is ethical because we’re good.
This reminds me of the one the COVID posts. Yeah, it would be nice if we could "do something" to stop COVID and war, but the thing we actually can come packaged with tons of consequences and questionable efficacy.
We can't stop every war. I was despondent last year as friends, students, and family members in Armenia fought in Karabakh. I desperately wanted the US, France, and Russia to fully honor their treaty obligations and initiate an immediate ceasefire. I wanted, deep down, to at least see American drones shooting down Azerbaijani drones, if nothing else. That was the first, and hopefully last time I came close to cherishing the massive taxes I pay to the US war machine. But I also knew, deep down, that Karabakh isn't America's war any more than Yemen or Tigray are, or than Ukraine would be.
I hate, hate, hate the Russian government and military for the pain it's caused my friends in Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine (and within Russia, for that matter). I have little patience for what-aboutism or arguments about Russia's "sphere of influence," as if proximity or historical precedent is a justification for war crimes in Chechnya and bloody adventures in Ossetia. Putin's wars are terrible, and should be opposed with every legal, non-violent method we have. But we can't fight every war.
All it takes is people merely agreeing that Russia's military adventurism is just as bad as America's, but there's still a huge segment of the American body politic that only seems to believe it's bad when America does it instead of, you know, the thing itself simply being horrible.
I agree that both American and Russian military interventionism is bad.
I am still waiting for you to agree with me here.
If you want to have a brain aneurysm, I suggest you listen to this interview with Democratic Rep Jeffrey Meeks, where he quotes Martin Luther King's "an injustice anywhere" as a justification for continuous US troop and weapons buildup in eastern Europe: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076514284/a-congressional-delegation-visits-kyiv-to-pledge-solidarity-with-ukraine
This has been the farthest left position allowed on NPR since this crisis began
"Authoritarian" and "government" are both a but generous with regards to Ukraine. It's a comically dysfunctional state ruled loosely by competing oligarchic interests.
Maybe some of them would, but they're morlocks with their faces glued to the Moscow zombie-tube.
Agreed is that what Russia will become on Putin's passing?
Nothing has happened in Russia in a thousand years that might give cause for optimism.
There's a *lot* that I despise in the Hanania take that Freddie linked to above, but I think he's essentially correct when he says that the average Ukrainian is about as likely to fight and die for the honor of the Ukrainian government than I am for the Philadelphia Parking Authority.
It isn't the Ukrainian government they would be fighting for. The attitudes toward free speech, women's rights, gay rights, self-determination are far different today in downtown Kiev than they would be under the control of Moscow. Russia has changed a lot in the last 20 years, as has Eastern Europe--and they've gone in different directions.
This would have been true before 2014.
There's 2 perspectives I'm reading. The notion of a war with Russia over Ukraine dismissed as an inconceivable but hyped up media/dem dog wag and this more serious cautionary take against any possibility whatsoever. Regardless of the likelihood, I'm becoming more convinced by the latter than the former. Even posturing this way seems reckless.
Coincidentally, I obtained all the Adam Curtis films over the weekend. Started re-watching all his stuff from Pandora's Box again.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on one of his newer films/series.
First of all, I'm a right winger
(pause while I duck to avoid the impending barrage of rotten fruit)
... ok, with that out of the way ...
I'm a right winger, and nobody's dove. I do not believe wars should be avoided at *any* and *all* costs. War is, occasionally, necessary.
What does, bafflingly, seem to currently separate me from hawks on the left *and* right is my now apparently archaic belief that we should only go to war as a *last* resort, when all other options have been exhausted, and only in the most remarkable circumstances (like actual wars of aggression - not "we need oil").
I am apparently even more outdated by believing that they only we should actually ever declare war is by doing it the way the constitution tells us we must - something we have not done as a nation since we declared war on Japan in 1941.
Furthermore, I still cling to the outdated notion that if we do make the horrible decision to go to war, the only option is an American victory, with the terms of ending the conflict crystal clear. We spent twenty years in Afghanistan because there was no "end goal" once the Taliban was gone - just a completely useless attempt at "nation building". Afghanistan did not want to be a country like Belgium, and was never going to be one. The war was a fiasco precisely because it had no goals, and indeed, not even an enemy who had the power to surrender to us if we "won".
America is not threatened in the Ukraine. I do not want Russia to invade Ukraine, and I want them to stop their military adventurism in the Caucuses and elsewhere. But let's be clear - I would never support America intervening militarily because as awful as it is, it is simply not worth America going to war over.
I am on the American political right, and have been since I was old enough to vote in the late 80's. If you remember William F. Buckley's definition of conservative politics, it was standing athwart from history, shouting "halt!" - my politics are essentially that.
However, modern conservatives stand in a very strange position where the left has spent decades trying to out do one another in their avant-garde progressivism, that we now look downright rebellious and new by trying to re-orient the political conversation back even 10-15 years ago.
Keep in mind that what passes for right wing in Rhode Island may pass for a communist west of the Mississippi. Your mileage may vary.
Certainly by the standards of most of Freddie Deboer's readership, I would be indistinguishable from Augusto Pinochet, but that's the nature of political discourse online.
You don't seem like Augusto Pinochet at all to me and we disagree on lots of things. You seem like a principled moderate to me.
Aw, you guys -- I'm all over the goddamn map politically, and I agree, too. DeBoer commentariat unity on clear and unambiguous congressional declarations of war! (Hopefully not too frequent.)
Absolutely *not* a RWer, and I totally agree with you. It's a brute cost and benefit analysis on this one. Russia simply does not seem a threat remotely commensurate with the Dem-led sabre-rattling. I don't think there's any need to try to put oneself in the shoes of a regime like Putin's to see that.
There are, however, other powers American policymakers and ordinary people should be much more wary of, re: the point in the post about "would we tolerate the Chinese expanding their footprint to this degree." The answer to that is, the U.S. basically already does, and has since 1989. COVID's fallout is exemplary of how dramatic the implications of that "footprint" have become in an age where it's not necessarily nuclear arms that are the weapons most capable of explosive, nearly instant damage across entire continents, with years if not decades of painfully lingering effects.