Bret Stephens of the New York Times has written an interesting analysis of the conservative response to and positioning on U. S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. I won’t go into all the shades of conservatism and how he sees them aligned, except to note that this issue for me brought out the one significant area of my disagreement with Tucker Carlson and his brand of isolationism and populist nationalism, which I have expressed a number of times in previous posts. For the record, I hate to see him leave Fox, but I’m sure he and his numerous fellow travelers will land somewhere of significance and I’ll no doubt find other opportunities to respond. Just to reiterate my difference on the Ukraine point, I basically could find nowhere in Tucker’s thinking the fact that, to paraphrase conservative scholar George Weigel, “there is no such thing as a self-regulating international order. Someone–some power or powers–will define the ordering of world affairs, and when Putin says that his ultimate goal is the collapse of Western hegemony, he must be taken seriously–he means the destruction of the systems of international security and exchange that have prevented a global conflagration since 1945.” And for all of our disdain for the “new world order”, the “Davos elite”, and the green “wokism” culture exported by the West, no sane person should want to risk any aspect of the system that Putin would have replace it.
Jim,
Our choices are not binary. It is not supporting Ukraine at all costs or yielding to Putin. A serious discussion of the matter ought to have invited other ideas. Why was this not an urgent matter when Russia invaded Crimea or Georgia? What did Mr. Weigel have to say then?
Greg – My purpose here was not to rehash a debate on choices and I am certainly not suggesting that this is a “binary” choice, as I think I made clear in my summary of views on the war in my post of Feb. 24, “As Long As It Takes”, which sparked a pretty lively online discussion.
We are in this position because of a total failure of deterrence, dating from Obama’s “apology tour”, which sent the clear message to Putin that there would be no meaningful response to his aggression in Crimea and Georgia, and after Trump, Ukraine and Biden’s incompetence.
As for Weigel, his best piece of work on this is from his William E. Simon Lecture, summarized in a lengthy essay “What Ukraine Means” in the May 2023 issue of First Things. I recommend it.
The history of the world is endless ethnic and linguistic conflict. The Ukrainian speaking EU desiring part of the area which we empowered actually outlawed the Russian language. A look at election results before we forced a revolution shows a very distinct boundary between the areas desiring Russian Federation alliance and EU. Elon Musk proposed plebiscites allowing areas to choose which way they wanted to go. That would solve the problem. It should wind up being the solution.
Unfortunately the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned about has become the driver of our entire society. It is now in the process of destroying itself through Woke insanity, but this self-serving group is totally in control and not ruling wisely. The Swamp is real, and it has gone crazy.
I think Trump could have brought a level of peace with Russia that would have changed everything if not for this group, but that time may have passed. We have become the problem, things have gone too far, our own society is collapsing. The level of public and private debt has reached levels never dreamed of. Children who are not old enough to choose their bedtime are asked to choose irriversable gender surgery.
Some sort ot dramatic change is unavoidable.
The Polish opposition is calling for peace while we are building military bases in Poland and flying the LGBTQ??? flag. Wokesters at all levels in our military are taking control. I was an Army Sergeant years ago, my kind of people totally set the culture. They are now on the defense and hunkering down. It is a BAD situation.
Putin’s Russia is not Soviet Russia. It is only interested in Russian speaking areas. Let them have them.
Russia will not accept defeat. If Putin falls his successor will pursue an identical goal. Russia will use tactical nukes to take out all the bridges, power plants, etc. and Ukraine will be a wasteland for a generation unless a solution like Musk’s plebiscites are used to divide the two linguistic and cultural groups.
I’m certainly no expert in international affairs, however I do consider myself an adequate observer of human behavior. Behavior among nations is very much like behavior among individual people. There has always been a bully on the block and always will be until the second coming. Be it in our neighborhoods, schools, cities and among nations. So, the issue is how do we manage or control the bullies. It is certainly not by ignoring them, appeasing them or projecting weakness to them. Biden has failed miserably in this regard in the area of national bullies, neighborhood bullies and border bullies. He has no viable policy in regard to any of these areas, other than ignoring, appeasing and blaming. His only policies seem to be to create upheaval in our domestic affairs, destroy our capitalist base, weaken our military might and influence aboard and promote ridiculous ideologies of gender sameness and complete equity between everyone and everything. Biden can never project an image of knowledge, strength, excellence or even minimum capability. He is a compromised, sick, frail and intellectual lacking person that the democratic power brokers dangerously thrust upon our nation. My great fear is our ability to reverse, repair and stop this idiocy.