Zelensky Comes to Washington

I have a bad feeling about all this.

Look, it’s very hard not to admire the hell out of Volodymyr Zelensky. The Russians, one of the three Great Powers of the world, should have been able to overrun Ukraine quickly. They most certainly have not, and that is mostly due to the leadership of Zelensky. You can say that it’s mostly due to the weapons sent by the US and other Western nations, and you would be right. But without the heroic figure of Zelensky as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, would America have sent so much? Or would Ukraine have been able to sustain its fight for so long? I doubt it. Credit where credit is due. The man is a national hero to his people.

And yet.

Zelensky said in his speech that “it’s just a matter of time” before Russia strikes other American allies if we don’t stop them now. He also said earlier that nobody in the world is safe from Russian aggression. This is just wrong, and manipulative. It sounds like the whole “if we don’t fight them there, we will have to fight them here” line that the Bush Administration used to justify the unjust and foolish Iraq war. I don’t blame him for using this language — he is a man fighting for his country’s survival against unjust Russian aggression — but it’s still manipulative. The interests of President Zelensky and his country are not the same as America’s interests.

Zelensky calls for “absolute victory,” which for Ukrainians means (he has said) total recapture of the Russian-occupied lands of eastern Ukraine, and the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed earlier. This is impossible. Do you understand that? It is not possible. If that is the standard for “absolute victory,” then the war will grind on.

If you watched the Zelensky speech — and I hope you did — you should also watch this important Freddy Sayers interview with Prof. John Mearsheimer, the foreign-policy realist. I’m going to embed it here. It will sound positively grinchy after Zelensky’s speech, but it’s absolutely vital to understanding how this conflict started, and how it’s likely to continue:

Mearsheimer explains patiently the role that Washington played in setting the stage for this war. He also explains, at around the 19:40 point, how we are now locked in a hopeless situation (“We’re screwed,” he says), because at this point, neither Russia nor the United States can sustain a loss. And, emphasizes Mearsheimer, we had better grasp that we are perilously close to nuclear weapons being used on the battlefield. He doesn’t think it likely, not at this point, but he does believe there is a non-trivial chance that Russia will deploy battlefield nukes if it’s situation there becomes grave enough. Mearsheimer tells Gray that even if the chance is something like five percent, that’s still too great a risk when dealing with weapons as apocalyptic as nuclear bombs. He’s right.

What we ought to be doing is working towards some sort of peace. Neither Russia nor Ukraine will be satisfied with any conceivable settlement. As I see it, if Ukraine would give up its claims to its eastern territories and to Crimea (where the Russian Black Sea fleet is docked), in exchange for solid security guarantees, short of joining NATO, and if the US would give up its insistence that Ukraine join NATO, then we might conceivably have peace. Mearsheimer says it’s ridiculous to think that Russia poses an invasion threat to western Europe; it can’t even conquer Ukraine! He also says it is absurd for the United States, whose “Monroe Doctrine” requires it to oppose any Great Powers establishing themselves in the Americas, to also believe that Russia has no legitimate interest in preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. He’s right about that. This does not mean that Ukraine should become a puppet state of Moscow, but it does mean that it is folly to think that Russia can stand by while Ukraine allies with its enemy.

Yesterday I had coffee with a Hungarian friend. He was reflecting on the suffering that the war has caused in his country. Of course it’s nothing compared to what the Ukrainian people are going through … but it’s not nothing. People here in Hungary are enduring very difficult economic circumstances, and are facing a cold winter, unable to afford sky-high utility bills. I was talking yesterday with my TAC podcast partner Kale Zelden, who told me that as he sees it, the American people have little to no idea how hard this war has been on European peoples. If Americans were having to live through what Hungarians (and others) are living through right now, would they be so willing to keep the money pipeline open to Kyiv, with no diplomatic efforts to end the war underway? I doubt it very much. It’s easy to put the Ukrainian flag on your front porch, to say, “Slava Ukraini,” and the rest, when you don’t feel the cost of continuing this war.

Look at this:

The most important challenge facing the United States, according to the leader of Senate Republicans, is shoveling more money to Ukraine?!? Not the massive crisis on America’s southern border, which Washington has demonstrated no interest in solving. Not the drug abuse crisis (fentanyl) that is killing so many Americans. Not growing wealth inequality and related structural economic issues, which means that young people today are going to live materially worse lives than their parents. Not China, America’s real geopolitical rival. Not rising crime. Not the dividing of Americans (by elites) according to race and racial privilege, and the systematic discrimination against Americans on the basis of race. Not the ongoing campaign — driven in large part by woke capitalism and its allies in the professions, and in academia — to queer America’s children.

(On that front, just this morning, a European friend texted with the information that his close friend from high school moved to California some years ago, and let my friend know this morning that his (the immigrant to California) daughter now wants to be a boy. My Euro pal shared with me a couple more examples of American friends of his who have been caught by the woke gender virus. One has had surgery and is on hormones, and will be dependent on pharmaceuticals for the rest of her life. Another is now on the same path. Said my friend, “If that were me, I would leave the US and move to a place where this madness is labeled what it is: madness.”)

All these things are happening in America, to Americans, but none of that matters to the Republican leadership as much as Ukraine. Let history show that while their own country fell apart, Republican leadership was more interested in this proxy war with Russia — which, surprise!, ends up enriching defense contractors.

This is a good thread. Excerpts:

We the People will keep allowing our leaders to behave like this. We have pot, we have porn, most of our kids don’t have to pay the price for the Empire’s wars.

What happens when the money runs out, though? And: what do you call an Empire that is governed by a class of people who think like Mitch McConnell, who prioritized Empire more than Nation? Our national leaders won’t even secure our own southern border, because they care more about restoring and securing Ukraine’s borders against Russian invaders. Washington’s interests are not the interests of the American people, in my view. This cannot last forever, but as Adam Smith memorably observed, “There’s a lot of ruin in a nation” — meaning that a nation can sustain a great deal of destruction before collapsing. We’re well on our way. None of this diminishes the courage and canny of President Zelensky, but it does challenge what faith one has in the ruling class of the United States.

Mearsheimer has it right: “We’re screwed.”

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