Look at Ukraine from Russia's point of view.
Who cares what they think? Russia does.
The trouble with having empathy is that it makes moral clarity more difficult. It is more comfortable to have good guys and bad guys. And, of course, we are the good guys.
Let's look at maps. First, a map of the railway system in Europe.
There is no need to overthink this because my point is simple and obvious at first glance. I could have used a map of lights at night or GDP statistics. Russia, in the eastern quarter of this map, is adjacent to an extraordinary concentration of economic and potential military power, and they are relatively lacking in it. Russia is next door to a giant, especially when the various countries included in that concentration are all working together.
Map two is a topographical map of Europe. The Alps are visible and the "C-shaped" mountains to their east, the Carpathian Mountains, are as well. Both are a barrier to easy transport which is why they show as an edge to rail lines. Notice, too, the broad plain from France, across the Low Countries, Germany, Eastern Europe and into Russia. Someone could bicycle from the small Baltic countries or from Paris or Berlin straight into Russia without encountering any natural impediment.
Map three is the famous flow map created by French engineer Charles Joseph Minard, showing the route of Napoleon's failed and disastrous march across that flat plains to Moscow and back. The distance, the supply lines, the cold, and the Russian army stopped them. 
Americans take our national security for granted. We are surrounded by oceans on two and a half sides, by a friendly Canada on the third side, most of which is almost uninhabited, and by the deserts in the Southwest. The USSR--now Russia--has an entirely different situation and mindset. They are surrounded by potential enemies. Russians know it in their bones. Strategic depth is what saves them. We took it away.
In the collapse of the USSR a major nuclear power disintegrated, and yet we avoided world war. As part of mutual understanding, the USA and NATO made assurances to Russia that we understood its national imperatives for strategic space. We broke our word. The Baltic countries became part of NATO. We encouraged a revolution in Ukraine to install a Western-facing government and posited that Ukraine, too, become fully part of NATO.
Map five: NATO, showing the movement of troops into Poland and the Baltic countries in 2014, to reassure them of NATO's commitment. Russia responded by moving troops. It tightened its relationship with Belarus. It took back Crimea. It sent unmarked troops into eastern Ukraine, where the native language is Russian, not Ukrainian.
American exceptionalism.
Many Americans presume with unquestioned confidence that:
***World War Two was primarily fought and won by Americans defeating Germany from the west.
***God gave a special providential blessing to America and no one else, but most certainly not to Russia.
***American-style liberal democracy of our civics textbooks is what we have in America, and we have a moral obligation to share the "American Way" because it is, objectively, the best.
From that naïveté and hubris came the American thought that Russia would sit back and allow the USA and NATO to put them into what their history tells them is mortal danger. We felt entitled to do it.
Their national pride tells them not to accept that. Incredibly enough, they don't think the USA pretty much won WWII single-handedly, they don't think America is the exceptional and all-good country, and they think we are hypocrites regarding our supposed liberal democracy. They have their own point of view. They think the USA was the aggressor, intentionally putting them into danger. They don't think we are the good guys. They think they are.
It isn't surprising. Indeed, it is inevitable. We created a mess and are going to have to live with it.
8 comments:
I agree, the "Good Guys, Bad Guys" framing is inherently flawed. We need a more realistic understanding of the US role and influence internationally.
The problem with authoritarian regimes is we have no idea what the people think. When you have a gun pointed at you, one tends to say what one needs to say. The tendency to gain power by populist isolationism leading to international adventurism is how authoritarians operate and this duck is quacking.
I always find it interesting how here in the US we celebrate D-Day as the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany, when we broke through into fortress Europe and forced them into retreat with assistance from our British allies and French partisans. I don't mean to denigrate the sacrifices and efforts our troops made on D-Day and elsewhere, but compared to what was going on in Russia, it was basically nothing. In fact by June 1944 the Soviets had amazingly (and at an unthinkable human cost) turned the tide of the German invasion and were rolling West toward Germany.
I've read many analyses that intuit we intentionally waited much longer to launch a D-Day style invasion than was needed because we weren't necessarily sad to see the Nazis and Soviets duking it out/weakening each other, and that it wasn't until it became clear that the Soviets had an insurmountable upper hand in the conflict that we decided to actually invade. Again, none of this is meant to denigrate what our guys went through, I can't imagine how insane it would have been to be on a lander on Omaha Beach.
But to Peter's point, it DOES make total sense that from Russia's point of view the west can't be trusted, and viewed through that lens Putin's actions (detestable though they are on many levels) are certainly coming from the desire to maintain/increase Russian power against numerous countries who have been traditional enemies.
It brings to mind a few lines from a winner of the Nobel prize for literature:
I’ve learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side
So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war
American exceptionalism:
* When Cuba became a communist regime in our back yard, we made only one half-aassed attempt to invade with a small force hoping to encourage the overthrow of that regime. We never tried it again.
* When Nicaragua became a communist regime, we did not mass troops on their border, invade, and annex part of that country.
Contrast that with Russia‘s behavior towards Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea.
We, at least, have human rights and democracy as a value. True, we often screw it up or prioritize other things. Russia, on the other hand, does not have human rights or democracy as values to any degree.
All of that being said, Peter and others who think this way may be correct. Bringing countries bordering on Russia into NATO may well have been a strategic mistake.
Fortunately, Russia is so weak now that they are militarily limited to “gray war“ for the most part; subversion and “little green men,” not overt invasions. Hopefully Putin is smart enough to limit his ambitions to Ukraine and avoid doing something really stupid like trying to invade Poland. Gray war in the Baltics is possibile, though, and we will need to be smart about managing that possibility.
Yes, Trigoboff. What we really need to do is I;Cade and annex ANY country whose constitution isn’t a carbon copy of ours.
Do you believe we should invade and annex tho commie dogs our north? Imagine how well would increase our power, our natural resources, our standing in the world of autocrats.
How many countries has the USA invaded in the last couple of hundred years, do you know? How many have we annexed, for one reason or another.
Sure glad we annexed Hawaii. Too many commies on surfboards over there.
Mike: BRAVO!
The Nobel Prize winner didn’t even go to the ceremony! :-)
The times they were a-changing’, indeed. A generation later and Dylan was an evangelical Christian.
It could very well be that America is something between exceptionally good and exceptionally bad.
Closer to which pole is the mod political litmus test, along with whether we should give China a pass.
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