Putin, Ukraine and War

Is Putin evil or an amoral rational actor? Is the war in Ukraine theirs or also our own?

Poll taken August 2024

While we’re waiting for the latest round in the Trump v. Harris adventure, I’d like to look at Ukraine and lay down a marker post. There are two schools of belief about the Ukraine war, two ways of seeing that world, which I’d like to discuss, then I’d like to look at an adjunct belief that touches to them both.

The Mainstream View

The powerful and their media tell us that Putin is evil and must be stopped at all costs. He murders his enemies, and he’s fighting the Ukraine war, which he unilaterally started, for no other reason than Russian territorial growth and global ambition. They tell us it’s certain that NATO expansion had nothing to do with Putin’s decision to invade. In fact, it’s the other way round — NATO exists and expands to counter the already existing Russian threat.

Those beliefs are held, not just by people in power, but by voters as well. One might take the words of official Washington and Brussels as predictable propaganda, but quite a few ordinary people are of the same mind. The belief in the Putin threat, as stated above, is wide, deep and strong.

The Heterodox View

The heterodox view, the one held by dissenters, is almost the inverse of that. Heterodox people hold that:

1. Putin is no more evil than most other rulers. Compare him to allies like Mohammed bin Salman, for example, who decreed the murder, among others, of James Khashoggi, or the now-dead Idi Amin, who “kept heads of political enemies in his freezer—though he said human flesh was generally ‘too salty’ for his taste.”

Consider our own George W. Bush and the powerful Dick Cheney, who together established a worldwide torture regime and whose Iraq war-of-choice killed half a million people. Consider Benjamin Netanyahu. Mass murderers all.

2. Putin may be brutal, but he’s not crazy. He’s a rational actor; not a good person but not a loose cannon either. He plays the power politics game the way it’s always been played.

3. Which means that relentless NATO expansion, even to Ukraine, and plans like putting missiles in Poland indeed caused Putin to decide to invade Ukraine and put a stop to it now. The chief of NATO himself has said as much (full remarks here).

President Putin in the autumn of 2021 sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that. ... So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

Many political thinkers, from George Kennan (1997) to Henry Kissinger (2022), warned that NATO expansion would lead to war, for the same reason the U.S. would attack any neighboring country — Mexico, say, or Cuba — if it hosted enemy missiles that could reach Washington.

Reconciling These Views

Reconciling these views may be impossible. People who hold that Putin is uniquely evil will never see the Ukraine war as anything less than the start of Russia’s march through the rest of Europe (Baltics, you’re next), as less than an existential threat to life in the West. The view is too strongly held, too strongly supported, for minds to be changed.

Likewise, the heterodox view is strongly ingrained and (its adherents believe) more grounded in fact. All of which make it next to impossible for these people as well to modify their views on the war. Adherence to these beliefs is certainly strengthened by the constant, derisive “you’re Putin’s puppet” charge being leveled against them by those on the orthodox side.

Heels are dug in at this point and aren’t being moved.

Points to Consider

This leads us to several thoughts.

First, the drive to vilify Putin and Russia as the earth’s greatest evil, responsible for everything from Hillary Clinton’s loss to Bernie Sanders’ support, from the Nord Stream pipelines’ destruction to a concerted attack on the 2024 U.S. election, justified or not, has been with us since 2016 and shows no sign of letting up. This means that support for the Ukraine-Russian war will likely not stop. Most of our leaders want it to continue, and most of our voters as well. (See chart above.)

Which brings us, second, to the risk of nuclear war. Why worry about nuclear war? Because Russia has threatened it. They see in NATO a threat to Moscow itself. They see the war as a U.S. attempt at regime change in Russia. Whatever you think of those fears, to Russians they’re real.

Third — this is the adjunct thought mentioned above — while we don’t technically have “boots on the ground” in the sense of combat infantry, we’re clearly a partner prosecuting the war. Aid to Ukraine surpassed $50 billion last May, with more on the way.

It’s therefore impossible that, given the high tech weapons we supply, we don’t supply training and targeting help as well. These are also boots on the ground.

In fact, the U.S. and NATO have had troops in Ukraine since at least 2023. What happens when they get killed? The risk of troop death and thus a widening war could not be greater.

Conclusion

If Americans truly believe that joining this war is needed and right, they should join it with knowledge and pride, declare their belief in its justice, and accept the risk.

But blindly supporting this war while thinking it safe is naive at best, hubristic and deadly at worst. A lot could go wrong; thinking it won’t is not thought, but dreams and desire.

If our leadership class and the bulk of our citizens want one more regime to fall, this time in Russia, want to depose the monster that sits on that throne, want to use Ukraine to do it, to get the job done, our people should be told as much, that this is the goal, and with it, told what could go wrong if Russia fights back.

If we proceed after that, no problem; the people chose for themselves.

But if we continue to follow the Pentagon leader, thinking nothing could hurt us at home, good luck if that’s wrong. The government will probably take a hot war in stride. But the people? I wouldn’t be sure.