I have always thought that I was born 600 or 20 years after my time. An earlier birth would have placed me in the days of armored knights, gentle ladies, Gothic spires, and illuminated manuscripts. A later birth would have enabled me to grow up in the dance band era and go to the last good war, if any war can be called good. I think some can.
I compensated. I read Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur and listened to the big bands—Basie, Ellington, Goodman, Miller, and many others. I read histories of both periods. I have a special affinity for the Second World War, most of which I lived through and some of which I remember: barrage balloons flying over our house and heading for the Flats along the Cuyahoga to protect Cleveland from the imagined threat of German bombers; ration books; and Arthur Godfrey’s broadcast of Roosevelt’s funeral procession up Pennsylvania Avenue. I augmented my recollections with books and films about the war. I thrilled to the air battles in the Battle of Britain and admired the RAF, which made the protection of England the prelude to victory. A British ex-pat told me that, in his day, when an old man with an RAF lapel pin walked by, people stopped and applauded; he and his fellow fighter pilots were gods on earth. I was stirred by the critical Battle of Midway, which, in five minutes, changed US war strategy. In that astonishing moment, Navy pilots sank three Japanese aircraft carriers, ended the threat of an attack on the West Coast, and allowed Roosevelt to turn east to focus on defeating Germany.
And now there is the war in Ukraine—another “Battle of Britain,” another Churchill. There is almost a pre-war European fecklessness about it. Despite the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the 1938 Munich Agreement—“peace in our time”—, Germany re-occupied the Saar in 1936, invaded Austria in 1938, and occupied German areas of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Seeing the inaction of the League of Nations and the countries of Western Europe, Germany attacked Poland on 1 September 1939. By not heading off Germany in 1936 (probably to preserve the Olympic Games in Berlin), the West allowed Germany to arm for war and to initiate it. But for a heroic stand by England, Hitler might have won.
No lessons learned. Since 1991, Russia has initiated or involved itself in fourteen separate conflicts, most on its borders. It invaded and seized Crimea and other parts of Ukraine in 2014. Western European countries and the US did very little about it. Their inaction hardly justified further Russian aggression but clearly implied allied reluctance to resist aggression at the periphery. Following the example of President Obama’s “leadership from the rear,” US allies did little or nothing on their own. I do not apologize for Trump, but he believed what Putin believed: that NATO was spineless.
And then came 24 February 2022. Without provocation, Russia attacked Ukraine. To everyone’s surprise, Ukraine, rallied by a remarkable man rising to the threat to his country’s existence, repulsed the attack with weapons at hand. (How many ironies: a Jewish leader guiding one mainly antisemitic Christian people against another mainly antisemitic Christian people.) With NATO support, Ukrainians have gone on the offensive, reconquered some lost territory, and resolved to liberate the rest of it.
Meanwhile, under President Biden’s leadership, the US has committed political, economic, and military aid to Ukraine. Biden recognizes that this war is virtually an existential one for democratic countries. Yet, like Roosevelt before him, he confronts opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. On the Right, institutionalists support authoritarianism; on the Left, individualists support pacificism. Both support isolationism.
I expect the Right—conservatives, Republicans, and the radical right (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters)—to support autocrats. During the Cold War, the Right thought that this armed peace froze a conflict between two economic systems: American capitalism and Russian communism. But the real conflict was less between different economic systems than between different political systems, Western democracy and Russian autocracy. Russia’s Ukrainian incursion has clarified the nature of this conflict. It has both accentuated the autocratic nature of Russian government and triggered the impulses of Americans on the Right who believe that autocracy is necessary to ensure the rule of a white, Christian, patriarchal oligarchy. Thus, the American Right—the Steve Bannons, the Tucker Carlsons, the Steve Millers—has become enamored of autocrats in Russia, Hungary, even Israel, and elsewhere.
I expect the Left—liberals, Democrats, and Progressives—to insist that international conflicts can be resolved by diplomatic conversations leading to kumbaya moments of reconciliation and transformation. They so much want peace that they believe that everyone else wants peace and peaceful living. But no law of nature or politics says that the Left cannot be as naïve, ideological, and resistant to the lessons of history as the Right. Among them are the facts of Russian culture and history. Its culture is exalted for its ballet, music, literature, and architecture—the sum of its contribution to civilization. The rest, its history, is barbarism. Russia has never had a political philosophy; a concept of the individual, of society, of their political relationship; only a practical rule that might makes right, with “right” a misnomer for the wishes of the mighty. Instead of the rule of law upheld by a system of justice, its laws are merely the edicts of the mighty whose control of Russia is effected by violence, imprisonment, torture, execution, or exile. As power seeks more power and fears its loss, Russia has always been imperialistic, paranoic, untrustworthy. It honors promises, conventions, and treaties only as long as compliance serves its interests and as non-compliance would go unpunished.
So the Right, enamored of autocratic Russia, wants to help it by reducing or ending US support for Ukraine. It identifies Russian aggression against Ukrainian democracy as akin to its efforts to undermine or overthrow American democracy, in which whites, though not displaced, will become a minority among minorities. The Left, enamored of peace at any price, wants to negotiate an end to hostilities. Its appeal fails to distinguish its position from the Right’s. It would eventually give Russia what it wants and thereby establish a precedent justifying, if not encouraging, future Russian aggression. Both sides would leave Russia in possession of Ukrainian people and territory, excuse it for fighting a war of aggression, and abide its war crimes and crimes against humanity. Its violations include targeting civilian populations, residential areas, and infrastructure; separating children from their parents, deporting them to Russia, and arranging adoption in Russian families; and torturing or killing civilians and POWs alike.
Although I oppose the Right, I am appalled by the Left, so eager for peace that it has not bothered to offer a rationale for thinking that diplomatic negotiations can work and a durable peace can be achieved. Such a rationale would address many questions which it leaves unanswered. Perhaps the major question is whether any diplomatic resolutions would not merely defer whack-a-mole outbreaks of Russian incursions, again in Ukraine, eventually in the Baltic countries, eventually in the Balkan countries, and likely along its Asian boundaries. Other questions include:
Did Russia violate international treaties and norms by launching an unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine?
Is there any justification under international law for allowing Russia to retain control of pre-2014 Ukrainian territory?
Should Russia withdraw from all or only some of Ukrainian territory seized and occupied in and after 2014? If only some, why?
Can Russia be contained and prevented from aggressive attacks on its neighbors?
What provisions would satisfy concerns about Russian aggression against neighboring states?
What is the basis for trusting Russia to comply with agreed-upon terms ending hostilities and with any agreement including assurance of non-recurrence?
Should Russia compensate Ukraine for destroying civilian and military infrastructure during hostilities?
Should Russia be held accountable for its violations of treaties, conventions, and norms?
Should Russia be denied continued membership in international organizations or have its participation in these organizations restricted? In particular, should it retain its membership on the Security Council or in the United Nations?
Until the Left can—the Right cannot—give persuasive, not wishful or ideological, answers to these questions, the only responsible US policy is to give unwavering, generous political, economic, and military aid to Ukraine, and to support post-war arrangements which reduce Russia’s capabilities to undertake aggression.
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