Ukraine to the Hilt

The war in Ukraine matters more than ever, but its Western critics are too far gone to see it.

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

This week’s post is by Contributor Johan Pregmo.

With the Russo-Ukrainian war entering its second year, becoming both old news and the terrible new normal even while the prospect of nuclear armageddon looms larger than any point since the Cold War, many of us may wonder: why support Ukraine? Why support a flawed, notoriously corrupt nation? Why is that our fight? Not my country, not my problem, right? Others have simply lost interest altogether and moved on. Such attitudes are understandable, but there is more at stake in Ukraine than lines on a map or the tyrannical ambitions of a two-bit dictator. It’s about protecting global stability and open societies. It’s about safeguarding geopolitical norms from backsliding to the bloodier, more brutal status quo that preceded the Long Peace — something Ukraine’s most obnoxious Western critics seem recklessly unconcerned about.

Like so many people across the West, if you had asked me in 2021 to place Ukraine on a map, I probably couldn’t have done it, despite living less than 600 miles from its border here in Sweden. Whether you live in the US, western Europe, or the Anglosphere abroad, the fact is that eastern Europe is rarely more than a blip on our radar. I recall briefly paying attention to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, and scoffing to myself at that dastardly old Putin, up to his dictatorial tricks again. Like so many others, I failed to understand the significance.

Fast forward to late 2021. Putin lines up his army at the Ukrainian border. The world watches in disbelief. Surely — surely — this is just a more extreme form of Russian saber-rattling, right? He can’t just outright invade another country, can he? That would be madness!

Had I known of Russia’s aggressions in countries like Georgia or Moldova; had I considered its long and sordid history of bullish expansionism, from Ivan IV the Terrible all the way up to the USSR, I might not have been in such disbelief. The West had gotten used to peace and stability after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The US emerged as the undisputed superpower and hegemon of the world, and NATO — the still-active military pact formed during the Cold War against Soviet expansionism — ensured defense against Russia. We continued an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity in the naïve illusion that we were living in Fukuyama’s “end of history.”

But Putin did the unthinkable. Ukraine was invaded; a full third of its territory was seized and its capital of Kyiv came under assault. Russia did exactly what it had threatened to do, starting an old-school land war in Europe, something that has rarely been seen since the Second World War. Sure, Putin spun the war as a “special military operation” aimed at “de-nazifying” Ukraine, a pretext so paper-thin that only the most gullible or ideologically zealous Russian supporters could believe it.

Then the unthinkable happened again. Ukraine, despite being outnumbered and outgunned, held their capital and stopped the Russian advance dead in its tracks. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to flee Kyiv and rallied Ukraine in a fierce defense. Russia’s military might, for all its pretenses of manliness and strength, have been shown to be, if not wholly toothless, then at least riddled with cavities.

It’s not for nothing that Putin decided to press on despite tanking Russia’s economy, burning through most of its arms supplies in a year, and suffering an astonishing casualty rate. It’s worth taking a step back and examining why this all happened. Russia has a long history of lagging behind its Western neighbors, both culturally and technologically, a sad reality that remains true even today. By the 1300s, serfdom was mostly gone in mainland Europe; Russia only abolished it in 1861. In the 1800’s, Europe industrialized; Russia only caught up under Stalin. Europe increasingly developed liberalized republics or constitutional monarchies; Russia persisted with the total autocratic rule of kings.

So why is Ukraine important to Russia? The short answer¹ is that Ukraine is a large, fertile, resource-rich land which not only borders Russia, but used to be part of the Soviet Union. Putin, an ex-KGB agent who is on record calling the dissolution of the USSR a tragedy and has likened himself to Peter the Great, remembers a time when Russia was feared and respected. Steeped in that kind of nostalgia and entering his twilight years, it’s not difficult to see how Putin might view Ukraine as an attractive prize — one he need only reach out and take to restore his country to its former glory. To the Western world, however, these actions were a horrifying window into a previous era we must never return to. The Russo-Ukrainian war is an anachronism, born out of an outmoded mindset from a dictator living in the past. With the advent of nuclear weaponry on the one side and a globalized economy on the other, a straight-up land-grabbing war of conquest seems like something out of the 18th century, not the 21st.

The response was swift. Europe stood united in a way not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union. NATO sent tens of billions of dollars in aid, both in funds and in military supplies. Countries and companies around the world imposed crushing sanctions. Finland officially joined NATO, with Sweden on track to do the same. The Russian economy is suffering, and their armed forces have sustained more casualties in a single year than the US did throughout 20 years of Afghan occupation. In the halls of power, the message was clear — if you want to play empire, there will be considerable costs.

Across society, however, the response was more mixed. In such polarized times, it was strange to see that Ukraine created a dividing line, not between left and right as we so often see, but between center and fringe. Public sentiment has been generally pro-Ukraine. It’s easy to sympathize with a defender, and hard to sympathize with an aggressor. Only on the far left and the far right have we seen significant support for Russia, albeit for wildly different reasons. Fascists and many on the far right admire Russia for being a bigoted, anti-LGBT, authoritarian police state, and watching Putin live out their imperialist LARP fantasies must be a dream come true. Communists and socialists, for their part, simply view anything the US supports as evil, blaming NATO for Russia’s choice to invade Ukraine. Many go even further by latching onto almost any available conspiracy theory to paint Ukraine as an illegitimate Nazi state that deserves to be wiped out. The thought leaders of these camps couldn’t be a more motley crew of misfits, charlatans, and fools.

UK Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn — the former leader of the party, until he was ousted over an anti-Semitism scandal — took the softer pro-Russia line of “no more war”, which effectively advocates for a pro-Russian outcome, as Russia still occupies large swaths of Ukraine. On the other end we have France’s Marine Le Pen — populist former leader of the far-right Rassemblement National (previously the Front National), with close ties to Russia — vocally criticizing European actions on behalf of Ukraine. These figures sit on opposite sides of the left-right political spectrum, but their populism and anti-globalist mindset horseshoes them to the same place. 

All of the usual suspects have, of course, eagerly joined in. Tucker Carlson, whose on-air lies about the 2020 election being stolen (which he privately never believed) cost Fox News three quarters of a billion dollars in legal settlements, is still hard at work siding with Russia and against Ukraine at nearly every turn. Carlson’s attitudes, which have become commonplace on the populist right, were most clearly articulated by Republican Senator J.D. Vance when he said, “I gotta be honest with you, I don't really care what happens to Ukraine.”²

The landscape of online commentary hasn’t been much better. Journalist Michael Tracey, who denied that Russia intended to force a regime change, and bizarrely alleged the US “invaded” Russia, was unable to do more than splutter and ribbit when pressed to substantiate his contentions. Whether it’s just contrarianism, a grift, or genuine stupidity is hard to say. He was joined in this by podcaster Tim Pool, famous for such Nostradamic predictions as: Donald Trump will take the 2020 election in a “49 state landslide.” Pool asserted that the war could be resolved by electing Trump in 2024, and has railed against US support for Ukraine, parroting the hackneyed “why are we supporting foreign countries when our own people are starving?” It should come as no surprise that Pool also opposes any effort to actually help the poor. Then we have comedian-turned-political-commentator Jimmy Dore, of former Young Turks fame, who took a break from being a sex pest to blame the military industrial complex and peddle conspiracies about NATO masterminding the war. Supposedly, the US provoked the fighting to benefit war profiteers. Ukraine and Russia, naturally, have no agency at all, and America alone is to blame for all the world’s woes.

Tulsi Gabbard, whose moral compass, once exemplary, has sunk to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, is now simply an isolationist who spends her days campaigning for anti-Ukraine Trumpists. In this same camp is the lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald, propelled to fame for breaking the Edward Snowden story in 2013, now reduced to cui bono-ing his way to pathetic arguments against aiding Ukraine.

Not to be outdone by this menagerie of buffoons, Noam Chomsky, who never found a genocide he couldn’t deny or downplay, likewise invokes every single “but what about the West?” talking point he can find. Is there anything more preposterous than self-described “anti-imperialists” who can find nothing constructive to say in the face of the most obvious act of imperialism on European soil in 80 years?

Such attitudes appeal to a certain type — populist, conspiratorial, contrarian cranks willing to believe anything the West’s enemies have to say and utterly unwilling to consider that their own governments could ever be right. The kind of person whose blind hatred of all authority ironically navigates them to the absurdity of engaging in apologia for authoritarian regimes. This becomes even more insane when we consider how Ukraine embodies the very struggle that both the far left and right should cheer on with gusto.

For those on the far right, here’s a country bravely defending its right to exist in a heroic war of self-defense against a foreign aggressor. To use an American conservative phrase, Ukraine is literally standing its ground. Zelenskyy, a popular leader holding firm against his enemy, should be a hero to anyone who takes nationalism seriously. With the hard right’s fetishization of war and machismo, what’s not for them to love?

And for those of the far-left persuasion, here’s a flawed but free, democratic country defending itself from imperialist aggression by a fascist dictatorship, protecting its independence and right to exist from a bigoted and brutal regime that murders journalists and suppresses LGBT people.

Yet somehow, both sides of the extreme have found reason to oppose Ukraine, primarily blaming the US; whether it’s the Jews or the CIA will depend on which fringe side you ask, but both agree that Russia is, if not wholly good, not the bad guy, either. Poor defenseless Russia just had no choice but to invade, what with all that NATO expansion. We backed them into a corner from which they had to launch a war of conquest. They’re the real victims here.

Much like Christian fundamentalists have so often spread hate toward others in stark contrast to the example set by Jesus himself, the far right and far left defy their own principles and completely and gaslight themselves into thinking that they are consistent. But principle is exactly why Ukraine matters. Why should I care about some backwater country I couldn’t put on a map two years ago, one might ask? What’s it matter to me, exactly? Ignoring the fact that I live in a country frequently threatened by Russia, the answer is simple: I value liberty, democracy, human rights, and global stability.

We take democracy for granted. It’s all we’ve ever known; it’s been the norm since the time of our great-grandparents. But democracy is not an unassailable bedrock of human existence. It’s a radical experiment in equality and the consent of the governed that has only been around, in its modern form, since the 1800s. Most democratic countries don’t do it perfectly, and many don’t even come close, but the vast majority of human history was dominated by some form of overtly autocratic rule, and the risk of backsliding is always present. Authoritarianism is on the rise across the world; populist winds are blowing and strongmen are offering simple solutions to complicated problems.

Democracy requires active work and constant maintenance or it may one day slip out of our grasp. On a practical level, this means loans, trade deals, and loads of military hardware sent to Ukraine. The billions of dollars in aid the US has sent, along with the generous contributions of a multitude of European countries, have proven invaluable. But will the support stay for the long haul, if Ukraine becomes a prolonged conflict? Enthusiasm can and will waver eventually. But we must resist the urge to look away or move on. This is not to advocate for US boots on the ground or out-and-out war between Russia and Western nations, but we should advocate for continued aid and be willing to accept that a small economic sacrifice is a worthwhile price for the freedom of tens of millions of people.

If we shrug our shoulders and turn our backs on Ukraine, what we are saying is that the freedoms we take for granted aren’t even worth a small cost to our personal convenience. Democracy has granted us rights beyond the wildest dreams of our forebears and given us peace and prosperity on a level unheard of in human history. It is worth preserving and protecting, and it certainly requires a bit of international solidarity.

So when a sovereign, free country is invaded, we must not let it die quietly. A world with an independent Ukraine is freer and stabler than one where it has been swallowed into Putin’s authoritarian abyss. Wars of conquest must come at a cost so steep that all who would wage them think twice. This is why Ukraine must win. Because if it doesn’t, what message does that send? Imagine an emboldened China, which, unlike Russia, has the economic and military bite to back up their bark, seizing territory at will because it witnessed the world give up and let Russia have its way. It may be counterintuitive, but sometimes it requires force to create peace. George Carlin once said that fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity. It’s the job of comedians to expose the absurdities of life. It’s the job of leaders to make the best of those absurdities.

Wars are often complex. Most armed conflicts in history have been morally dark gray affairs, from the Punic wars to Genghis Khan to Napoleon all the way up to Kaiser Wilhelm. Rare are the wars where one side can unambiguously take a moral high ground, or where one side is plainly in the wrong. World War II and the US Civil war come to mind. And so does the Russo-Ukrainian War.

There are serious and fair concerns, however. The most common, of course, is nuclear Armageddon. It’s easy to forget that the possibility of a nuclear holocaust is no less possible now than it was during the Cold War. The world may have wound down, but great adversaries all sit on stockpiles of weapons that could turn the planet into a smoldering, ashen hellscape. And if the choice ever came down to Ukraine being annexed or the world being destroyed, the desired outcome is obvious: One nation state is not worth all of human civilization.

But that choice is a false binary. The proponents of simply giving in to Russian demands out of fear of nuclear retaliation miss the fact that if Russia were to launch a nuclear attack, they would soon be annihilated in return. Delusional though he is, Vladimir Putin does at least have survival instincts. It has long been the way of the world that countries with nuclear weapons could bully or dominate weaker states with impunity. Ukraine is breaking that pattern, and a global landscape in which nuclear powers are accountable for their actions is a safer one.

Despite being an anachronism, the struggle for Ukraine is not merely about land and resources. It’s a test of Western solidarity; of the strength of liberalism and internationalism, and of freedom against tyranny. Ukraine is bravely standing against their invader, but they cannot do it alone.

Support so far has been encouraging. The US, Europe, and their allies have shown admirable leadership, restraint, and resolve sending aid without getting directly involved. But for how long? How long before the cynics, contrarians, radicals, and indifferent among us turn off the valve of economic support?

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Russia is rapidly draining its resources; it has lost half of its tank fleet and is now reduced to bringing back WWII surplus, and its ammunition supplies are depleting. The Ukrainian spring offensive will determine much — but until the dust settles, we can only wait. Much hangs in the balance these coming months — and should we fail to support Ukraine, we will be letting down not just ourselves, but all those who came before us, who fought with blood, sweat, and tears to build the world we now take for granted.

See also: “Can Putin Be Overthrown?”

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1. The earliest state established in the place now called Ukraine was Kievan Rus, where Viking colonists settled in modern day Kyiv in the late 9th century. Ukraine has spent much of its history changing hands, as European lands often did, switching from being under the control Poland-Lithuania to the Cossacks to eventually becoming part of the Russian empire during the 18th century. It had a short-lived independence during the Russian Revolution, only to be absorbed into the USSR and forced to endure the same tyrannical domination as many of its Eastern Bloc neighbors. It achieved independence after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

2. On a lighter note, enjoy this satirical J.D. Vance speech I co-wrote.