Light On Dark Water

Russia, Ukraine, and Us

I hardly ever post about this sort of thing, and in most cases don't even have an informed opinion (which doesn't necessarily stop me from having an opinion, but I try to keep it to myself). That's true in this case, too. But I think this article by Michael Brendan Dougherty in National Review is an opinion worth a hearing. He argues that we have made a big mistake in expanding NATO after the end of the Cold War:

Not just predictable, but predicted. Twenty-five years ago, not long before his death, the man who pioneered the policy of containing the USSR throughout the Cold War emerged from his retirement as a cragged old man with a warning:

Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.

Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.

He would predict to Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, “Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong."

The old man referred to is George F. Kennan. Here's a link to the whole thing, but it may not work because the article is subscriber-only. Dougherty goes on to say that those who agreed with Kennan lost the post-Cold-War argument, and that those who won it have produced the current situation.

Two assertions that I think are justified even in absence of foreign policy expertise:

1) After Vietnam and all our disastrous war-making in the Middle East, the argument from Neville Chamberlain does not automatically win.

2) If there is any question of actually sending in our military, no one who is unwilling to go, or to send a child of his own, is worth listening to.

Maclin Horton

15 responses to “Russia, Ukraine, and Us”

  1. Stu

    I just had my hair cut and me and the barber decided that Vladimir Putin is smarter than the current and most recent former US president put together!

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  2. Mac

    Probably true. Alas.

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  3. Christine

    I mostly agree with you, though I have a hard time with National Review Trump Haters Club and all that comes out of there. One of my many failings. I’m sure something good comes along here and there! My simplistic opinion is that we should leave Ukraine alone, and stop poking the bear. We better think 3times before bringing Ukraine into NATO- which is the big threat Putin doesn’t like. We didn’t like Russia coming to Cuba either.
    From a US point of view: why are we defending Ukraine’s border when we don’t defend our own? Insane. There was reference made to Ukraine’s sovereign borders being sacrosanct. Second, sarcastically, are we going to send men in skirts? Our military is a joke. Third, Trump bought NATO down a peg or two. Not a bad thing. He also had us energy independent. That meant not dependent on Russia like we are now, and ready to go to Iran of all countries to beg after Russia cuts us off! But we are greener after all. And no mean tweets.

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  4. Anne-Marie

    To your 2), Maclin, it would be worth listening to such a person explain his reasons for not going or not sending his child. At least, it might.

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  5. Mac

    Well, yes, there could be some valid reason. But I’m thinking of the people like David Frum who were loudly banging the drums for war in the years after 9/11 and denouncing those who opposed it, but had absolutely no intention of making any kind of personal sacrifice. They’re saying “This is so extremely important that I want you or your child to give his life for it, but not me or mine.” That means that either it’s not really as important as they say, or that you and your children are expendable, and they aren’t.
    Christine, NR has not been uniformly anti-Trump. I don’t think there were many, or maybe any, Trump enthusiasts there, but there were/are several in the lesser-evil crowd. I understand why you’re saying “our military is a joke” but I would sure hate to be in its sights. Anyway, I think this current situation is much bigger than either Trump or Biden. I don’t know if you were able to read that thing I linked to or not, but that’s what it’s mainly saying.

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  6. Mac

    Also, a very vigorous debate between Dougherty and Williamson followed that piece. Maybe still going on, I don’t know.

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  7. Marianne

    Worth a read: “Calamity Again: No nation is forced to repeat its past. But something familiar is taking place in Ukraine.”:
    “Ukraine is now under brutal attack, with tens of thousands of Russian troops moving through its eastern provinces, along its northern border and its southern coast. For like the Russian czars before him—like Stalin, like Lenin—Putin also perceives Ukrainianness as a threat. Not a military threat, but an ideological threat. Ukraine’s determination to become a democracy is a genuine challenge to Putin’s nostalgic, imperial political project: the creation of an autocratic kleptocracy, in which he is all-powerful, within something approximating the old Soviet empire. Ukraine undermines this project just by existing as an independent state. By striving for something better, for freedom and prosperity, Ukraine becomes a dangerous rival. For if Ukraine were to succeed in its decades-long push for democracy, the rule of law, and European integration, then Russians might ask: Why not us?”

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  8. Mac

    So extremely sad. I was struck by two things, not particularly the things that Applebaum intended:
    ‘“I am Ukrainian” meant you were deliberately defining yourself against the nobility, against the ruling class, against the merchant class, against the urbanites.’
    Something very similar has happened with “I am American.”
    And similarly with that last line: “In the centuries-long struggle between autocracy and democracy, between dictatorship and freedom, Ukraine is now the front line—and our front line too.”
    I disagree. Horrible as the situation in Ukraine is, and wicked as Putin is, our crucial struggle is internal. The ruling class in America is globalist and technocratic and has no use for the constitutional republic that we ostensibly are. Their use of the word “democracy” is duplicitous, perhaps unintentionally.
    I’m not saying that’s true of Applebaum, but it is true of the hive in general–the Democratic party leadership, the permanent government, mainstream journalism, academia.

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  9. Mac

    https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-warns-russia-that-if-they-dont-stop-he-will-deploy-deadly-trans-admiral
    “Sources say Ukrainian citizens will certainly sleep better tonight knowing the power of diversity is on their side.”

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  10. Rob G

    Putin is definitely the bad guy here, but you can sort of see his point if you imagined that Cuba, Mexico, and much of Central America were under China’s sway. We would feel skittish too.
    The “Putin feels threatened by democracy” line holds no sway for me. It’s a version of the same thing the neo-cons have been saying about every conflict we’ve gotten into since they took the reins of the foreign policy machine back in the 80’s, the bottom line of which amounts to “Nothing is ever our fault.”
    Combining American exceptionalism with liberalism’s inability to do self-critique makes for some bad foreign policy juju.

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  11. Anne-Marie’s Husband

    Perhaps Nato expansion was the cause of this, or one of the major causes.
    But perhaps not. Perhaps Putin is a former KGB agent turned aggressive kleptocratic tyrant, angry at Russia’s loss of power in the 80s and eager get it back, partly for its own sake and partly because doing so might help him hold on to his own position in Russia. Perhaps, then, our mistake was not letting Ukraine into NATO while there was still a chance. Obviously it’s too late now.
    But both of these ideas appear to be rooted in the belief that the West in general, and the US in particular, could have changed the outcome. That might not be the case. Not everything in the world is traceable back to what we do.

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  12. Mac

    I’m certainly willing to believe the worst about Putin. I think your description of him is accurate. And I don’t feel qualified to have a very definite opinion about the roots of this situation. But just from the common sense point of view it seems reasonable to think that at minimum the possibility of Ukraine entering NATO would appear to the Russian establishment, not just Putin himself, as a sort of threat.
    “Not everything in the world is traceable back to what we do.” Quite true, and likewise not everything in the world is something we can or should try to fix –not that you said that, but it tends to be a reflex for some people. I think I detect it in Anne Applebaum’s closing–an implication that if we don’t Do Something darkness will fall all over the world. One major problem with that view is that darkness is in fact falling inside this country. The breakdown of our culture and our political system is far more significant for our future than whatever happens in Ukraine.
    “American exceptionalism” has become an irritating near-dogmatic idea among some on the right. As a sort of casual description of the ways in which we really are significantly different, it’s fine. But I’ve often heard it treated on the right as a sort of secular counterpart to the tendency of some conservative Christians to think God has made more or less the same covenant with the U.S. as he did with ancient Israel. This is a really dangerous way of thinking.

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  13. Stu

    Russia perhaps thinks that the US has no moral ground to stand on after Iraq and Afghanistan. Our leaving the latter country (finally) is probably a good thing although it left a mess behind. Unless we were going to stay there forever it always would have. Big difference though, as Russia likely does not intend to leave Ukraine again once they take it over. Geopolitical maneuverings are always scary. What is to keep China from taking Taiwan? Now would be a good time for them to do that. There is nothing we can do to these countries, certainly cannot go to war.

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  14. Robert Gotcher

    Not everyone in Russia is happy about the invasion.

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  15. Mac

    Yes, that’s encouraging. I saw some photos earlier of big anti-war demonstrations in Petersburg. M B Dougherty, the guy I linked to in this post, was speculating earlier today that Putin might be willing to stop at “Finlandization” of Ukraine. That was 12 hours or so ago and I haven’t seen any further news today so that hope may already have been dashed.
    I think just about everybody agreed with getting out of Afghanistan. Well, ok, not everybody, but probably a majority on both sides of the red-blue divide. The big objection from some was the disastrous way it was done.
    “What is to keep China from taking Taiwan? Now would be a good time for them to do that.” So a lot of people are saying.

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