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.
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.
Democrats have settled into becoming the cheerleader party for Ukraine. Republicans are trying to figure out where they stand. This may become a major issue. I hope Democrats are careful here. I remain sympathetic to Ukraine, but I resist thinking of the war in Ukraine as a revised and updated version of Europe in 1940. I am trying to re-capture the skepticism I had toward war in 1968, and again during our wars in Iraq. When I see Russian bombing of civilian targets in Ukraine I need to remind myself that the Union army burned Atlanta in the effort to force the Confederacy to rejoin the Union.
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.
Hi Peter - Pardon my rude intrusion here, but I must say that I prefer your old picture of yourself. This one make you look like you were startled by something.
At one point last year the US was involved in over 70 skirmishes, war-like situations throughout the world. Why are we all over the world while our country rots from within? These times are frightening & familiar to those of us who have read & studied history. Cannot believe that my daughters & their children have to deal with so much hatred, destruction of our environment & our minds as a society. I am in constant awe at how they go to work, take care of their children & completely devote themselves to their family & their quality of life. Neither owns a tv, both families play music & sports, getting outside. I keep my worries to myself, work out like crazy, garden & read to keep myself from dissolving in despair. Thank you for talking of these things.