Some Republican lowlife actually said the unindicted co-conspirator who leads their cult was, unlike Biden, “tough on Russia”. (Shamelessness is their superpower). Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine reminds us of what happened on planet Earth:
On February 25, the day after Russian tanks rolled intoĀ Ukraine, Lee Smith published anĀ essayĀ inĀ TabletĀ arguing that Ukraine had brought on its problems. Smith, a house stenographer for RepresentativeĀ Devin NunesĀ and the author of two pro-T____ books, unburdened himself of a long list of Ukrainian provocations. In 2014, Ukraineās people rejectedĀ Vladimir Putinās generous offer to remain a Russian dependency and voted out his handpicked presidential candidate. A few years later, Ukrainian Americans accused Russia of hacking Democratic emails and extortingĀ Volodymyr ZelenskyyĀ ā the guilt for which, in Smith and Putinās view, was shared by the country their parents had fled. These defiant actions āreinforced Putinās view that, especially in partnership with the Democrats, Ukraine did not understand its true place in the world as a buffer state.ā The invasion was a terrible shame, conceded Smith, but this is what happens when a country has the temerity to offend Putin and T____ and assert its independence.
PutināsĀ war with UkraineĀ is being fought to settle a single question: Does his neighboring state have the right to make its own democratic decisions or must it subsist as a Russian vassal?
President Bidenās marshaling of aĀ strong and unitedĀ EuropeanĀ responseĀ has thrown into sharp relief the contrast with his predecessorās āAmerica Firstā bluster. But there is an even more fundamental contrast between Bidenās multilateralism and T____ās nationalism, one that goes beyond diplomatic skill to core ideology: Many corners of the American right, includingĀ D____ T____, agree with Putinās position.
Putin views a democratic Ukraine as an existential threat to his regime for two very good reasons. First, Ukraineās majority prefers economic integration with Europe rather than Russia. Second, all strongmen are mainly preoccupied with maintaining power, and the existence of prosperous democracy in a neighboring country is a dangerous counterexample.
Twenty years ago, there was no significant reservoir of opposition to Ukrainian independence and democracy. The burgeoning alliance between Russian nationalists and America Firsters was set in motion whenĀ Paul ManafortĀ went to work for the pro-Russian Party of Regions in Ukraine in 2004. Manafort, once one of the most powerful Republican lobbyists in Washington, had begun a globetrotting career selling his services to dictators. His Ukrainian client, Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, was Putinās main organ for maintaining control of his neighboring country.
Putin nurtured a cadre of pliant Ukrainian oligarchs and functionaries who served a devious double purpose. They would faithfully weaken Ukrainian democracy on his behalf, and then he could turn around to the outside world and hold up Ukraineās corruption as a justification for why it should not be treated like a real country.
He paired this with a slowly escalating campaign of violence. Putin and his allies would violently intimidate their political opposition to prevent them from gaining control of Ukraine. In 2004, Putinās agents poisoned Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-western presidential candidate. (This occurred four years before the United States invited Ukraine to join NATO, a sequence that shows Russiaās threats against Ukraine drove its interest in joining the alliance, rather than the reverse, as Putin and his defenders have suggested.) Ten years later, Manafortās client unleashed snipers and thugs to drive away peaceful protesters before a democratic revolution forced him to flee the country. After Russophiles lost control of Ukraineās government, Putin started using militias to seize chunks of territory.
At the tail end of the Obama administration, both Democrats and Republicans supported democratization, westernization, and reform in Ukraine. When the Obama administration pressured Ukraine to fire ineffective prosecutor Viktor Shokin ā a key step forward for advancing the rule of law in Ukraine ā a bipartisan letter commended its efforts and did not draw any significant domestic opposition.
T____ās rise introduced to the Republican Party a figure who shared Putinās perspective toward Ukraine and often echoed his propaganda. When Putin ginned up demonstrations in eastern Ukraine as a pretext to hive off chunks of land in 2014, T____Ā gushed, āSo smart, when you see the riots in a country because theyāre hurting the Russians,Ā Okay, weāll go and take it overĀ ā¦ You have to give him a lot of credit.ā After winning the nomination, T____ promised to consider recognizing Putinās land seizure because āthe people of Crimea, from what Iāve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.ā
T____ brought on Manafort to run his campaign, which further linked Ukraineās conflict with Russia to the American domestic struggle. Ukrainians released a āblack bookā of evidence of secret payments by the previous, pro-Russian regime, which implicated Manafort in an embezzling scandal for which he was eventually convicted. After it hacked Democratic emails and released them to aid T____ās candidacy, Russia claimed it had been framed by Ukraine. T____ subsequently endorsed this theory. (āThey brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based,ā heĀ toldĀ the Associated Press a few months after taking office. āI heard itās owned by a very rich Ukrainian; thatās what I heard.ā)
T____, of course, was impeached the first time for pressuring Zelenskyy to smear Biden, and his motive was primarily to gain an advantage over his opponent. But he also had clearly absorbed Putinās idea that Ukraine was corrupt and undeserving of sovereignty. T____ regularly flummoxed his staff by insisting Ukraine was āhorrible, corrupt peopleā and āwasnāt a āreal country,ā that it had always been a part of Russia, and that it was ātotally corrupt,āā the WashingtonĀ PostĀ reported. (The element of Russian propaganda here is not the claim that corruption exists in Ukraine, which is true, but the premise that this somehow destroys its claim to sovereignty or justifies subjugation to its far more corrupt neighbor.)
By the end of T____ās presidency, the distinction between his agenda in Ukraine and the Russian agenda in Ukraine was difficult to discern. In the aftermath of T____ās first impeachment, Rudy Giuliani inherited Manafortās role as a liaison to the pro-Russian elements in Ukraineās polity. In his travels through the country, Giuliani linked up with Party of Regions apparatchiks as well as known Russian intelligence agents, ginning up business proposals and allegations to fling against Biden. T____ās agents, Russian agents, and pro-Russian Ukrainian apparatchiks were speaking in almost indistinguishable terms.
That view of the world is expressed cogently, if chillingly, in Smithās essay depicting Ukraine as a tool of the joint enemies of Putin and T____. And it has bled widely into the conservative mind. In the run-up to the 2020 election, numerous right-wing pundits warned darkly that American liberals were fomenting a ācolor revolutionā akin to the pro-democratic uprisings that had broken out against several of Putinās vassal states. Both their narrative and their diction depicted pro-democracy activists as a sinister cabal and Putin their innocent victim.
By the outset of Russiaās invasion, pro-Putinist rhetoric was common. āUkraine, to be technical, is not a democracy,ā asserted Tucker Carlson. āAnd by the way, Ukraine is a pure client state of the United States State Department.ā To be sure, this view remained a minority on the right ā and just as many of T____ās most fervent supporters recoiled at the January 6 insurrection, even many Putin defenders conceded a full-scale invasion went too far. Still, Putinās claims against Ukraine have received endorsements from both the rightās most popular politician and its most popular media personality. That is not nothing.
It remains to be seen whether the Biden administrationās combination of sanctions, diplomacy, and military aid will be enough to save Ukraine from the predations of its neighboring dictator. The military odds remain favorable to Russia. But as Putinās militarized irredentism grows larger on the world stage, an increasingly relevant consideration in American politics is the fact that only one American party truly disagrees with it.
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