Maybe Putin isn't Hitler and Ukraine isn't Poland and this isn't 1940 all over again.
Maybe Putin and Russia are Lincoln and the Union, trying to sew back together a continental republic that had existed for 70 years.
In this election Americans will be confronting issues of war and peace in Ukraine, in Latin America, in China, and maybe elsewhere. Leaders will frame the discussion around simple moral tales. I want to be cautious and skeptical.
I complicated yesterday's lighthearted "Easy Sunday" post by getting serious at the end. We now understand WWII as a simple moral story: Fascist Germany was an aggressive, expansionist power that invaded its neighbors, and it is shameful and counterproductive to appease aggressors.
Ho Chi Minh led a Vietnamese nationalist independence movement to throw off French colonialism. America's leaders applied the WWII template. We fought to defend Vietnam from a foreign enemy until enough American leaders admitted that we were the foreign enemy.
I have been oriented to think of Athens as the "good guy" in the fight with Sparta. After all, Athens was the place of democracy and civilized arts, the home of Euripides, Sophocles, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Sparta was a military camp keeping a Helot majority in subjugation. Sparta argued they were the defenders of freedom against the aggressor, Athens.
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War described Athens' imperial policy. Submit to Athenian rule or be killed. They told the neutral city-state Melos that the powerful do as they will and the weak submit as they must. Melos protested, saying it was cruel and unjust. Athens said justice was a matter between equals, not between the strong and the weak. Athens' lack of hypocrisy remains remarkable, but its behavior is not. Large powers dominate weaker ones. Consider America's Monroe Doctrine, our Manifest Destiny settlement of the American West, our removal of indigenous people, the Mexican War, our history with Hawaii, our invasions and interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America. This month GOP candidates for president suggest we invade Mexico, for a "good purpose."
Eventually the fighting in Ukraine will stop. Ukraine has its own national history and language. Yale's Timothy Snider has a course of 23 lectures outlining the history of Ukraine. Ukraine is a real country, he argues, with Ukrainian history, language, ethnicity. Russia is not re-uniting its own place, not exactly, he argues. Putin isn't a modern version of Lincoln preserving the Union.
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| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_ |
The history of Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union is complicated. The geography is complicated. Ethnicities are complicated. Russia considers Ukraine to be conjoined, a breakaway part of greater Russia. The status of Crimea is a mess. It is populated by Russian speakers. It remained the site of the Russian southern navy fleet, even when it was part of Ukraine. Russia is not wholly wrong in thinking Ukraine is really Russia. Russia isn't right, either.
Russia has its own self-interest. Russia wants greater strategic depth across an indefensible plain. Discussion of making Ukraine part of NATO and western-aligned is a mortal threat to Russia. I laughed at yesterday's joke about using the Euro to pay a bar bill in Russia. For me, it is funny. For Putin, it is a horror story. Remember that the U.S. thought Russian missiles 90 miles away in Cuba was intolerable. Chinese nationals are buying American farm land in the open market, paying market prices. It is free enterprise capitalism. Lawmakers consider it a threat. I try to have some perspective and empathy on Russia and China, and remember our own history. It is unpopular to have any empathy for the perspective of Russia or China.
Democracies go to war easily. Our history in the Middle East should give us caution. The people who should be on our side are not. Wars drag on, they become increasingly expensive, and we eventually leave having learned that we did not understand the situation.
The international order has not changed. The powerful do what they will. History is complicated. Democrats would be wise to worry that Biden will become the next LBJ. Ukraine may not be ready for peace, but it might be in the best interests of the rest of the world that Ukraine be at peace, even if the U.S. needs to use its self-interest to make it so.
23 comments:
I support Ukraine. I support NATO. I support President Biden. Russia is not a democracy in any way, shape or form.
God help us.
The USSR started to breakup in the mid to late 80's. The dissolution completed by 1991.
A host of new countries added to the map.
The big question: Why does Russia want Ukraine? Surely the Crimea and it's Black Sea ports were needed. Then again, the Bosporus Straits are still a narrow exit to the Mediterranean, and onward to the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. A more strategic and accessible routes to the rest of the world. Only the artic ports allow some autonomy.
NATO countries surround that southern access; tenuous treaties keep the fragile peace.
Ukraine is the breadbasket for much of the world, but little more than that.
If Russia did not have nuclear weapons in reserve, this would have been over a long time ago. Alas, the West cannot resolve this conflict easily.
The real threat? How do we avoid a WW III which no one wants? How can Putin and his allies be forced to stand down?
See Wikipedia for a brief account of what happened to breakup the USSR.
Have you been a curmudgeon your entire life? As we age, I think we become more of who and what we have always been.
I don't intend to use the word in an ageist fashion, so please don't interpret it that way.
Dear Anonymous. Curmudgeon. Call me cautgious.
Nothing is more common for the intellectual class in America to jump aboard the war train. I wrote my honors these in college on Randolph Bourne, whose essays on war and the intellectuals warned that joining the war in Europe in 1917 was wrong. War is the health of the state, he wrote.
Ukraine preserved itself from immediate defeat by Russia because of national pride. That pride may be its undoing. Americans do not want to be poor -- or dead -- to save Crimea on behalf of Ukraine pride. Nor the Donbas. We don't. We want to do this with proxies and with a little money, not a commitment of American soldiers. We are sliding into this. We hear Ukraine's story. We don't hear Russia's. We don't acknowledge how aggressive and provocative was our effort to tilt Ukraine to the West. We see things from OUR point of view. Not Russia's.
There remains an antiwar movement in America. It would be better for Democrats to be in touch with it than for Democrats to join the military industrial steamroller for war. The history is more complicated than Americans have the time or energy to understand.
That is my point. Sure. Call me a curmudgeon.
Peter Sage
After the break-up of the USSR, Ukraine possessed the 3rd largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
After the US, Russia and the UK signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances for Former Soviet Republics, "which pledged respect for sovereignty and existing borders of countries including Ukraine," Ukraine surrendered about 5,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. The weapons were transferred to Russia. (Fortune on-line, 4-5-23)
Bill Clinton has stated that he feels terrible about persuading Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons (same article).
Putin is a tyrant. Russia is not a democracy. Ukrainians were left defenseless (without massive amounts of military assistance) sharing a border with Russia under a power hungry dictatorship.
Sadly, Ukrainians have learned that they need nuclear weapons because they live in a very tough neighborhood. (Reminds me of the gun debate in the US.)
It is very easy to research this topic on-line.
I think it’s a mistake to look at this conflict in the historical context of WWII, or any previous war. It’s something new. The first aggression by a nuclear state against a neighbor. Perhaps the Cuban missile crises is a better example, but even that was with a Russia that had relatively rational leadership.
Not the case now.
All the various academic historic rationales to justify the reasons Russia has invaded Ukraine are irrelevant to the modern reality of an independent democratic Ukraine and a Russia that can’t tolerate it as a threat to its autocracy. Putin doesn’t rule completely by himself, he is at the head of a oligarchy that is maintained by force and fear. It depends on maintaining a fiction of international victimhood and an inflated narrative of national superiority.
Sound familiar? If Republicans have reservations about supporting Ukraine it’s because they are sympathetic to Russian thuggery.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that the current leadership in Russia aims to expand its control and loot the rest of Europe. It may be suicidal, and we can only hope it doesn’t take the rest of the World with it.
So put away the history books. A new one is being written.
Everything but the kitchen sink. This may be your craziest blog yet. But nothing is humorous about this tragic situation. Vietnam? LBJ? Truly unreal.
The closest we’ve come to “good guys” vs. “bad guys” is in WWII, but even there the so-called good guys were guilty of the wanton slaughter of innocent civilians – Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to name the most infamous. Since then, we’ve instituted an all-volunteer military and instead of paying for the wars, we’re billing our offspring. So now it doesn’t even matter whether the war is justified or not, because we no longer have a dog in the fight.
I think one of the best commentaries on war remains “Masters of War” by America’s Nobel prize-winning poet, Bob Dylan. Before jumping on the war bandwagon, as too many did with Iraq, it would do us well to re-acquaint ourselves with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEmI_FT4YHU
If you want to understand the reason most wars are fought, follow the money.
Did you mention Israel somewhere in there? Maybe I missed it.
What about the existence and status of Israel? What about American support for Israel? Where would Israel stand without the US? Should we withdraw our support from Israel?
Putin did us a huge favor. He woke many in this country and Europe out of the post Cold War “end of history“ dream of peace.
If Putin had been successful in Ukraine, the Baltics would have been next in line. After them, Finland would have been un the crosshairs.
Finland maintained neutrality during the entire Cold War. All of a sudden, they want to be part of NATO, and our feckless NATO allies are starting to come closer to defense spending commitments they have not previously met. Why do you think that is?
Putin and Russia are a small threat, but large enough to have awakened us. It’s good that we are awake now, as a bigger and more serious threat rises up to the East.
As Leon Trotsky once said, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
Oh boy! Here we go again with another 'domino theory.' Look out! The commies are coming!! It's amazing so many remain so bamboozled by the same, lame excuse for war from the good ol' military-industrial complex.
What about the other NATO countries that share a border with Russia? Should they be kicked out? The NATO-Russian border doubled this year when Finland joined NATO.
Hopefully Sweden will be allowed to join soon. Love the Swedes.
The Domino Theory is the same lame excuse they gave for embroiling us to no purpose in Vietnam. Let’s not go there again.
If we want to fight dictators, let’s focus on our own. We have a Putin wannabe that Putin helped make president in 2016, who tried to overthrow the government in 2021 and who is running for president again in 2024. Being a belligerent blowhard, he’s the Republican frontrunner. If we want to keep our Republic, we really need to disempower Trump and his party.
Correction: we have a major political party that wants to destroy America. That includes at the local level.
What interests Russia weLl? What interests Russia?
Sunflower oil/grain exports
Mining
Easement for their pipe line the Western Europe
Landbridge to The Crimea
Educated workfirce
Regain weapons manufacturing in Ukrine
Those who cavalierly dismiss “the domino theory“ as “lame“, need to answer this question:
How come, all of a sudden, Finland and Sweden are so anxious to get into NATO?
Hint: it’s nothing to do with Trump.
Those who credulously swallow such discredited nonsense as "the domino theory" need to answer this question:
Why did it never come to pass?
Hint: It was self-serving bullshit from the Masters of War, who were making money hand over fist.
Re: John F comment.
Spelling and grammar aside, thank you.
I didn’t see an answer to my question about Sweden and Finland, perhaps because the answer does not fit neatly into a presupposition that America is always wrong and everything is always America’s fault.
There are complex reasons why there wasn’t an entire sequence of “dominoes“ falling in Southeast Asia after we withdrew and allowed the communists to take over and impose a tyranny so brutal that it led to an enormous wave of Vietnamese “boat people” refugees.
Sweden and Finland seem to see themselves as potential dominos. Their perception of their own situation carries a lot more weight for me than the rigid ideology of the far left.
There was no answer to the Finland, Sweden Domino Theory because there isn't one. And nobody said "America is always wrong and everything is always America's fault." Very strange.
M. Steely,Mc, SPOT ON. Thanks for that.
If Ukrainian falls to Russia, Putin gains power and resources, after which he goes after other countries, one at a time. He gets to suck up all these countries'' resources, adding to his war machine's power, Sort of like nazi Germany did.
Hopefully the Trump machine won’t convince his lackeys to join Putin (and trump himself) to take over god knows how many other areas.
Meanwhile, the Uber rich are drooling at the chance to DOUBLE their embarrassing wealth, by selling arms to most anybody.
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