The Problem With Peace

 I'm reading an excellent book, The Ghost at the Feast, about American foreign policy from 1898-1941. This was a period when the United States emerged as the world's most powerful nation, yet could not bring itself to actually involve itself with the rest of the world except when forced to. When they did interact with the rest of the world, annexing the Philippines or joining World War I, they found the experience unsatisfactory and so retreated behind their oceans and scolded the rest of the world for asking that the be involved. If we are coming up with a short list of people responsible for the rise of Hitler and the coming of World War II, isolationist Senator William Borah would have to be near the top of the list.

In place of engaging meaningfully with entities like the League of Nation, America wrote a bunch of nonsense on paper and relied on that instead. They crafted naval arms control treaties with no real enforcement mechanisms; they crafted another treaty to outlaw war; most notably, they wrote restrictive Neutrality Acts that inhibited Franklin Roosevelt from aiding anti-fascist forces in Europe and Asia. Outright pacifism combined with isolationism to remove America from the world precisely as the fragile "liberal democratic" world order that had been fragilely put into place in 1919 fell apart.

The fundamental problem with this pacifist-isolationist movement was that it presumed that any nation can control the actions of another nation simply by wanting it to be so. 

All of this is context for Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speeched at the UN yesterday. Russia has engaged in war crimes from day one of the war until today. They strike civilian targets at will and at random. Hell, yesterday they blew up a warehouse of humanitarian aid from the Vatican. This war is entirely a war of Russia's making, despite some egregious spin from Kremlin apologists. Ukrainian existence as an independent state is quit literally the issue at play here. As Biden noted at the UN, the entire point of that organization is to prevent one state from erasing another - to prevent aggressive wars of conquest. (I realize that America's invasion of Iraq can very easily be included in that category, which is one of the many reasons it was wrong.)

Ukraine's counteroffensive is proceeding cautiously but steadily. As they are unable to draw on the same population numbers that Russia is, Ukraine must be very careful with casualties. This is true in general of democracies; authoritarian regimes tend to wage war in a way that is cavalier with the lives of its soldiery. They have made important gains despite the limitations that NATO has imposed on the weaponry we share with them. While we have been the arsenal of their defense, we have also denied them F-16s and ATACMs that might allow them to exploit the holes that they have punched in Russian defenses. 

Soon, Zelensky will speak before Congress, which includes a House Republican majority that is about to shut down the government, because they are incapable of actually governing. This combines with the outright pro-Russian faction within the GOP. 

Some of the rhetoric you hear online is "Why are we spending money in Ukraine when we have needs here at home?" First, the GOP House will not meet those needs here at home, so just stop it. Second, we have an immense defense budget for a reason. We learned the lesson of 1919-1941; America must lead the democratic world or World War III could erupt. In fact, American and European support of Ukraine is a proxy World War III.

Putin's attack on Ukraine in 2014 was not dissimilar to Hitler's re-annexation of the Rhineland. His attack in 2021 was reminiscent of Hitler's assault on Czechoslovakia. In 1938, a nervous Britain - abandoned by America - agreed to sacrifice Czechoslovakia, thinking that Hitler would stop there. Six years later, Europe lay in ruins.

America's defense begins in Ukraine, who are fighting and dying to preserve democracy not only in their country but in all of Eastern Europe.

Keep that in mind when sex pests like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert lead the charge to cut off aid to Ukraine.