By Thomas Neuburger
While we’re waiting for the latest round in the Trump v. Harris adventure, I’d like to look at Ukraine for today and lay down a marker post.
There are two schools of belief about the Ukraine war, two ways of seeing that world, plus an adjunct belief that’s orthogonal to both.
The Mainstream View
The powerful and their media tell us that Putin is evil and must be stopped at all costs. He murders his enemies, and he’s fighting the Ukraine war, which he unilaterally began, for no other reason than Russian expansionism and global ambition. They tell us it’s certain that NATO expansion had nothing to do with Putin’s decision to invade. In fact it’s the other way round — NATO exists and expands to counter the already existing Russian threat.
Those beliefs are held, not just by people in power, but by voters as well. One might take the words of official Washington, or official Brussels, as predictable propaganda, but quite a few ordinary people are of the same mind. The belief in the Putin threat, as stated above, is widespread and deep.
The Heterodox View
The heterodox view, the one held by dissenters, is almost the inverse of that. Heterodox people hold that:
1. Putin is no more evil than most other rulers. Compare him to allies like Mohammed bin Salman, for example, who decreed the murder, among others, of James Khashoggi. Or consider the now-dead Idi Amin, who “kept heads of political enemies in his freezer—though he said human flesh was generally ‘too salty’ for his taste.” There’s our own George W. Bush and his Vice president Dick Cheney, who established a worldwide torture regime, and whose Iraq-war-of-choice caused half a million deaths; there’s Benjamin Netanyahu; mass murderers all.
2. Putin may be brutal, but he’s not crazy. He’s a rational actor; not a good person but not a loose cannon either. He plays the power politics game the way it’s always been played.
3. Which means that NATO expansion and plans like putting missiles in Poland indeed caused Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The chief of NATO himself has said as much (full remarks here).
Many political thinkers, from George Kennan (1997) to Henry Kissinger (2022), warned that NATO expansion would lead to war, in the same way the U.S. would attack neighboring country — Mexico, say, or Cuba — if it hosted enemy missiles.
Combining These Views
I think combining these views may be impossible. People who hold that Putin is uniquely evil will never see the Ukraine war as anything less than the start of Russia’s march through the rest of Europe (Baltics, you’re next), an existential threat to life in the West. This view is too strongly held, and too strongly supported, for minds to be changed.
Likewise, the heterodox view is strongly ingrained and strongly (its adherents believe) grounded in fact. All of which make it next to impossible for these people as well to modify their views. Their adherence is no doubt strengthened by the constant, derisive “Putin’s puppet” charge being leveled against opponents of the orthodox case. Heels are dug in at this point.
Points to Consider
First, the drive to vilify Russia as the earth’s greatest evil, responsible for everything from Hillary Clinton’s loss to Bernie Sanders’ support, from the Nord Stream pipelines’ destruction to a concerted attack on the 2024 U.S. election, justified or not, has been going on in this country since 2016 and shows no sign of letting up. This means that support for the Ukraine-Russian war will likely not stop. Most of our leaders want it to continue, and most of the voters as well.
Which brings us, second, to the risk of nuclear war. Why worry about nuclear war? Because Russia has threatened it. There’s no better reason than that.
Third — and this is the adjunct thought I mentioned above — while we don’t technically have “boots on the ground” in the sense of combat infantry, we’re clearly a combatant prosecuting the war. The U.S. and NATO have had troops in Ukraine since at least 2023. When happens when they get killed?
Which means, of course, there’s the risk of a wider conventional war as well. Aid to Ukraine surpassed $50 billion last May, with more on the way. It’s impossible that, given the high tech state of our weapons, we don’t supply training and targeting help as well. Boots on the ground.
The risk of troop death, therefore, the risk of widening war, could not be greater. If one believes that joining the war is just or necessary — a parallel, for example, to the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s — one should join in with pride, declare one’s belief in its justice, and accept the price.
After all, if the U.S. and the bulk of its citizens want regime change in Russia, want to depose the monster that sits in the Kremlin, and use the Ukraine war as a proxy or starter course, the people should be told as much, that this is the goal, with the risk explained and accepted. Otherwise, good luck to us all as we blindly push on.
Comments