Ukraine

This is my first and probably last foray into geopolitical comment. A little background: in 1974, as a senior in college, I took a history class from Glenn Eaves, a right-winger as smug as you can find. When we discussed the Yalta Conference near the end of World War II, which was to settle questions of post-war geopolitics, Eaves, a native Mississippian, said of FDR, “Silleh, silleh boyah.” He thought, as a lot of conservatives have claimed, that FDR was too ill and naïve about Stalin and just gave him Eastern Europe. For Eaves, obvious emphasis on the naïve.

One problem: Stalin had his troops all over it. It was an unfortunate fact of the war, which the West has never liked accepting, that the Red Army won World War II by beating the Nazis, forcing them out of Eastern Europe at great cost to the Soviet Union and everyone else on the way to Berlin.

So what did Eaves want FDR to do? Beat Germany, then take a deep breath, and fight Stalin out of Poland, the Baltics, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria? One thing you can count on with right-wing hawks: they love to fight wars with other people’s kids.

FDR and Churchill were very concerned about Poland. There were pro-democratic Polish leaders in exile in London, and Stalin had a slate of thugs he wanted in charge. Stalin agreed to a conference in Poland to form a government at which every constituency would be represented.

Stalin broke that agreement before the proverbial ink was dry; his thugs set up the government to the exclusion of other parties. Yet FDR’s only other choice was to fight a new war that absolutely no one would have wanted.

Dr. Eaves died in 2016. He was a hateful man. He did us the symbolic favor of going blind before he died. I’m sorry both for my tone and for speaking ill of the dead, but Eaves himself lived with only a thin veneer of civility toward people like me. I made it impossible for him to give me less than an A in that course, by the way.

In a sense, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is proof of progress. At Yalta, there was no talk of the Ukraine, the definite article defining the region as a part of Russia. Ukraine became its own country indisputably, despite Putin’s claim, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Putin has said that he considers that collapse the greatest geopolitical disaster in the century, and this is his attempt to begin to undo it.

This invasion is truly unbelievable from one point of view: in Europe, in 2022, we don’t invade each other, do we?

So why did this suddenly feel so inevitable? A land war in Europe has actually commenced now that Putin has invaded Ukraine from three directions. Does he have ambitions further into Europe? Secretary of State Antony Blinken thinks so; see below. Putin is so inscrutable that before the invasion every expert had a different prediction.

For someone who grew up through the Cold War, it feels like it shouldn’t be inevitable. NATO has ensured security for decades. The whole point of the European Union was to create such an economic and political embrace that it would be unthinkable and probably insane for any members to go to war with each other.

The problem with this, of course, is that Russia has never been considered for membership in the EU. Not even Turkey can join the club, and some member states of the former Yugoslavia, e.g. Serbia, have yet to join, and, given what a dumpster fire Serbia is, don’t hold your breath. Ukraine is not a member, either, though they have constitutionally enshrined prospective membership.

Hasn’t peace been pleasant? There have of course been unexpected rock outcroppings along the way to trip everyone up: No reasonable person would have thought that Brexit should pass. And then there were the Balkans.

By and large, Europe has managed itself pretty well, economically. From 2008, the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) suffered mightily under debt and austerity enforced by Germany—spending by the European Central Bank being anathema to Germany, still yet flinching obsessively from Weimar-era inflation—but even Greece, where tax evasion is a national pastime, may be surviving.

The real crux of the problem is that when the Soviet Union failed, it lost its western buffer of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltics, and “the” Ukraine declared itself a sovereign state. It has taken 30 years of recovery, but Russia now seems anxious to re-establish at least part of that western buffer.

We have all read that frankly NATO fucked this up by resolving to enlarge itself to the east, by 1997 absorbing all of Russia’s western flank.

In law school, we took a class in courtroom advocacy. One student, Rob Someone, kept asking questions to which objections were constantly sustained. Finally, exasperated, he asked yet another: “How would you feel if you lost all that money?”

The class laughed out loud, and Nancy and I have enjoyed remembering that over the years. But the question could be asked of Mr. Putin. And now we know the answer. He’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore. I have to admire Putin for being able to hold a grudge even longer than I can.

I can see how NATO expansion, as well as openness to Ukraine’s joining, feels like a threat to Russia. From the European side, of course, no one in the last two hundred years except Hitler and Napoleon have invaded Russia, and it was a colossal mistake for both. No one in the European bloc wants war at all, much less with Russia.

But Putin, now perhaps a war criminal, sees it differently. George Kennan, the originator of the Cold War containment theory, was asked about NATO expansion years ago, before his death in 2005. He thought it an enormous mistake. The author of the famous “long telegram”, he wrote in 1946 the essential truth about Russia: it has always been fearful of invasion, always wanted a buffer. Why, then, did NATO threaten Russia so obviously by absorbing its western flank? Because, as Bill Clinton revealed regarding his actions with an intern, it could.

Putin’s public ravings contain an internal inconsistency. He has said that what is happening in eastern Ukraine is genocide of the Russians there. But he also says that the Russians and Ukrainians are linguistically, ethnically, and culturally one people. So it’s not the genocide that he claims it is, like Nazis killing Jews or Turks shooting Armenians.

It’s more like a civil war, such as between the American North and South. If he had noted that, it would have added a nice touch of irony and a goodly jab at Americans. But extremists tend to be extremely literal as well, with no sense of irony whatsoever, like college freshmen and my dogs, so the analogue no doubt hasn’t occurred to him.

Another irony is that these sanctions probably won’t affect him at all; he may be the richest man in the world. Instead it will all come down on his poor, wiped out, ever-masochistic citizens, about whom he cares not a whit unless they object, at which point he’ll just take a lesson from Stalin and shoot them.

Russians are like my birth-state West Virginians; they own and revel in their pain as some kind of martyrdom. Only when enough Russian boys come home in body bags will anyone object, and it’s too much to hope that the Russian people do anything more with their shoulders than shrug them. We’re stuck with this for the long haul, for our sins.

Antony Blinken apparently posited that Putin won’t be satisfied with only Ukraine. I don’t know what history Putin knows, and he makes it up anyway, but Hitler over-extended himself and lost. Ukraine all by itself could be a second Afghanistan, given its size, population, the claimed patriotic intractability of the Ukrainians and, as of this writing, the stiff fight against a far superior force.

To take his fight beyond Ukraine imbues Putin with Hitler’s arrogance. I wonder if Blinken’s intelligence on this point is as good as previous revelations on Russian intentions, like false flag operations and political kidnapping or assassination.

Given the bleak outlook for Russia at least economically in both the short and long terms—sanctions will either ruin them or not matter a whit, depending on whom you read—I wonder if the future for Russia is as anything other than a failed petro state. Some journalist noted a couple of years ago that one never sees “Made in Russia” on anything. Its economy is smaller than Texas'.

Meanwhile, innocent Ukrainians, who only wanted to be left alone, are dying fiery and horrifying deaths. As if Putin cares. What a terrifying moment for all of us, occasioned by the evil and obsessions of one man. We’ve seen this show before, and it won’t end well, however long the story will run. We will all suffer, one way or another.

Finally, Republicans: a number of you have been proclaiming that President Biden is broadcasting weakness. Are you just parroting Trump, or do you have something substantive to say? Please tell me precisely, not vaguely, what you think he’s doing that’s weak. You got nothin’, right? Now tell me exactly and precisely what you would do instead. What you would say, what actions you would take? Once again you got nothin’. Otherwise you would have voiced something more specific than, uh, “weak”.

I’m only surprised that you didn’t say “lower taxes.” Your general mean-spiritedness reminds me of no one so much as Dr. Eaves.

Why don’t you act like a real American and support your president at a time of your country’s crisis? If you can’t do that, and now that we have established your lack of seriousness of mind and general fecklessness, I suggest you just go home, sit down, and shut the fuck up. Let the grownups handle this.

Otherwise, I would assert that you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and even you know what that means.

We have to hope that the West, NATO, the EU and America, can find some way to stop this unnecessary destruction and slaughter. It wasn’t inevitable, we’ve seen it all before, yet here it is.

A man who needs no introduction.