Jeane Kirkpatrick spoke of left-wing Democrats guilty of “blaming America first” — blaming the United States, not its enemies, for conflicts in the world. Today, this seems more a specialty of right-wing Republicans — as exemplified by Senator Tommy Tuberville, of Alabama.
“Now, we’re the one that forced this war,” he said. He meant, we, the United States, or the West, caused Putin to invade Ukraine, for the purpose of destroying and re-subjugating it. He said this at CPAC, too. Which is something for historians to rub their eyes at.
As I have said before, the likes of Tuberville sound more like Bella Abzug or Ron Dellums than they do their Republican predecessors. And to think that Ronald Reagan was once a hero of CPAC.
The shift has been jarring. Stunning.
• One talking point of the populist Right is that Putin is going to win the war no matter what — so the United States might as well not bother helping the Ukrainians.
Senator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) went on the network that calls itself “Real America’s Voice.” (If the network is the voice of “real America,” our nation is done for.) Said Johnson, “Putin won’t lose. Putin will not lose. He’s not going to lose.”
In the spirit of history rhyming, if not repeating itself, here is a blast from the past:
The America First movement of today is truly a descendant of the America First movement of yore.
• A Finnish parliamentarian, Oras Tynkkynen, made an interesting statement. He is a member of his country’s Green Party.
In Finland the right supports Ukraine. The left supports Ukraine. The centre and we the Greens support Ukraine. Standing up for Ukraine and freedom is NOT a partisan or polarizing issue in Finland — nor should it be anywhere else.
There must be something about living next to Putin that disallows illusions.
• A report begins, “The United States says increasing military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow is a ‘concern,’ amid reports that Iran has delivered multiple shipments of ballistic missiles to Russia.” Yes. Russia is using North Korean and Iranian weapons with abandon.
Putin has many allies. They are of a type: China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and so on. Dictatorships are pretty good about banding together. The democracies should be half as good.
• Of interest is an article by Dasha Litvinova of the Associated Press: “How the Kremlin weaponized Russian history — and used it to justify war in Ukraine.” It begins,
Earlier this month, when Tucker Carlson asked Vladimir Putin about his reasons for invading Ukraine two years ago, Putin gave him a lecture on Russian history. The 71-year-old Russian leader spent more than 20 minutes showering a baffled Carlson with dates and names going back to the ninth century. . . .
Carlson said he was “shocked” at being on the receiving end of the history lesson. But for those familiar with Putin’s government, it was not surprising in the least: In Russia, history has long been a propaganda tool used to advance the Kremlin’s political goals. And the last two years have been entirely in keeping with that ethos.
Litvinova quotes Oleg Orlov, a co-founder of the Memorial society, who says, “In the hands of the authorities, history has become a hammer — or even an axe.”
(Memorial was the largest human-rights organization, and the largest civil-society organization, in Russia. It has, of course, been banned by the Kremlin, which abolished civil society at large. In 2022, Memorial was a co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize.)
• Let me recommend a report by Bennett Murray, for the Dispatch: here. It is from the front lines in Ukraine. “Amid suspended American aid and an emboldened enemy, Ukrainians see two options: victory or death.”
• I would also like to recommend a report by Hanna Arhirova, of the AP: “For many Ukrainians, life is split in two: Before and after the war. This is one family’s story.” A moving and emblematic story it is, too.
• Finally, I am grateful, once more, for George Weigel — who has published a piece in First Things titled “Two Years On, Still Unbroken.” Weigel begins,
Two years ago, Russian forces attempted a Hitlerian blitzkrieg in Ukraine. According to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, its goal was to eradicate Ukraine: both the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian nation, with its distinctive language and culture. The blitzkrieg failed, thanks to an epic Ukrainian resistance, defined by Homeric acts of valor and sustained by remarkable social solidarity. Thus one irony of Putin’s war: The Ukrainian nation is more united than ever, its steely resilience and will to prevail forged in a Russian blast furnace.
Weigel continues,
The price paid by Ukraine is incalculable. No one knows exactly how many Ukrainian soldiers, reservists, volunteers, and civilians have died; the numbers are certainly in the hundreds of thousands. The Russian way of war — including wanton destruction of economic infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and cultural centers — has caused what is likely a trillion dollars’ worth of damage, even as Russian forces have made Ukraine the world’s largest minefield, which will take decades to clear. As many as fourteen million Ukrainians have become international refugees or internally displaced persons; yet there are no refugee camps, in Ukraine or its European neighbors, as those with homes have opened them to their fellow citizens or allies.
Further on, Weigel writes that there are Americans “who continue to swallow Russian propaganda hook, line, and sinker: becoming, in effect, Putin’s political enablers in the United States.”
Weigel ends as follows:
The contemporary Russian propaganda barrage has had its effects in a dysfunctional U.S. Congress. Ukraine’s determination to survive, underwritten in blood, has degraded Russia’s military, strengthened NATO, called Europe to its senses, and thereby made a significant contribution to the security of the United States: an immensely wealthy country in which $92 billion was spent betting on football, basketball, and baseball in 2022–23. Politicians arguing that we cannot afford to support Ukraine militarily, or who insist on linking military assistance to Ukraine to the resolution of their domestic policy grievances, are either delusional or unwilling to explain the geopolitical facts of life to their constituents.
In either case, they might take a lesson from Arthur Vandenberg.
Sen. Vandenberg, a budget-balancing Republican fiscal conservative, opposed many New Deal and Fair Deal programs during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. But when President Truman sought his support for the Marshall Plan and NATO, Vandenberg didn’t demand in return the repeal of one of his bugbears, the National Labor Relations Act. Arthur Vandenberg was an adult. Would that there were more of them in Congress today, standing in solidarity with our unbroken Ukrainian friends and allies.