With all due respect, you really need to do a bit more research on Ukraine before commenting on the situation any further. When you are talking about the "cultural genocide against his fellow Russians", you are parroting Putin's propaganda that's being swallowed whole by all the Trump supporters (including Trump himself), hence the invitation to comment on this conflict on Fox News. I am a Russian speaking Ukrainian-American and I am a Republican. My whole family lives in Ukraine. There has always been plenty of intermarriage between Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and both languages are often spoken at home interchangeably (at least in my home). Since 2014, Putin has been weaponizing the Russian language via his propaganda machine resulting in the strengthening of the Ukrainian nationalism with the Russian language suffering as a result. This was Putin's plan in the fist place: financing ultra-right nationalistic parties in Ukraine stoking fear into Russian speakers via pro-Russian TV channels showing Ukrainian speaking skinheads beating up Russian speaking babushkas etc... As a result, pro-Russian parties ratings have been going up consistently until recent developments (their popularity plummeted recently). I don't support the Ukrainian government's limiting the use of the Russian language in the media, but not because it somehow hurts my feelings of a Russian speaker. I speak both Russian and Ukrainian, so does the rest of my family (and most Ukrainians can speak and understand both languages for that matter). Most of us didn't really give a damn about which language is spoken on TV (at least not until the language issue was weaponized by Putin). I don't support the limits on the Russian language because this plays right into Putin's propaganda and allows him to justify yet another invasion under the pretext of saving people like myself from, as you put it, "cultural genocide". Young Russian-speaking Ukrainians are, for the most part, pro-western. Most Russian speakers over the age of 50 are quite fond of Putin with his grandiose goals of resurrecting the Soviet Union in all of its (albeit Frankensteinian monster's) glory. This propaganda works quite well on this part of the population as, unfortunately, they were getting their news mostly from Russian language TV channels that have been pouring Russian propaganda down their throats since at least 2014. This is the reason why those channels were banned in the first place recently (interestingly, Putin started to gather his forces around Ukraine VERY shortly after these propaganda channels were shut down). Now, Putin's propaganda machine is spinning the ban as "cultural genocide", exactly like you put it. I am not a fan of foreign interventionism. I am certainly biased being a Ukrainian and with my family living there. That being said, if you have not watched Putin's 1hr address to the nation two days ago, please do. The biggest chunk of it is a history lesson with his own spin on it. After that, I would encourage you to give it some thought and to speculate on how far he could go if he were not stopped in Ukraine. How well did appeasement work on Hitler after his taking Sudetenland? I will quote the cliché saying here: history does not repeat itself but it often rhymes....
I am a big fan of yours, but your reporting on Ukraine is quite a disappointment...
> I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War, everyone who opposed the invasion had to premise their argument with the disclaimer, “Yes, Saddam is a bad guy, but…” Of course, beginning every conversation by asserting that the US is good and everyone it might invade or bomb is evil puts the opponents of intervention in an untenable situation.
The problem with the invasion of Iraq were primarily two things:
1. Saddam did not in fact have a WMD program that was a threat and our intelligence community botched the analysis and let the Bush administration walk all over it with bad assumptions and motivated reasoning in the absence of any actually good intelligence (see also: any connection to 9/11)
2. More unforgivably, the planning for the invasion was fine and the planning for the occupation was almost nonexistent. The invasion went great and the aftermath was a bloodbath, mostly as Iraqis massacred other Iraqis.
The true sin in both cases was incompetence, not being good or bad
>Ukraine is either going to be run from Washington or Moscow
I feel like this is not actually the choice Ukraine, or its neighbors, has had and that Washington isn't interested in running Ukraine the way Moscow is...
>If the US had less power in the world, a lot of stupid and destructive things – like comprehensive sanctions on defenseless countries, invading and occupying Iraq, or trying to bring affirmative action to France – would simply not be done, because such policies represent unique pathologies of American politics. And this would be a good thing.
People who oppose sanctions often accuse them of being both damaging and ineffective. Let's pick one shall we?
The US trying to export its unique pathologies is mostly just pointless because it doesn't land in places where it's way beyond the existing norms. Of all our sins, that's the most harmless because it's mostly just ineffective signaling.
>Nonetheless, as a more general matter, it is worth considering whether we would rather have a world order that is American-led, Chinese-led, or – in what I think is the most likely scenario and one we are already starting to see emerge – multipolar. If that is the question, I would argue that the US is a uniquely destructive force, and multipolarity is a much more desirable state of affairs than what we currently have. Coming to this conclusion requires some comparison of the moral status and decision-making ability of the people who run American foreign policy relative to those who would replace them. It does not imply a comparison, for example, between how the US and China treat their people at home; throughout history, we have seen states that give their own citizens a high degree of freedom while being vicious towards foreign adversaries, and others that are brutal at home but largely passive abroad. To think in terms of countries as “good” or “evil” in a way that can explain both domestic and foreign policy is a mistake.
I really wonder how you would have felt about the Cold War say 50 years ago. Generally speaking, I think there is in fact a correlation between how a nation treats its own citizens and how well it treats other humans. It's not always a strong correlation necessarily (the Soviets were brutal at home and abroad, the Nazis were pretty nice to Germans, so long as they weren't Jewish...), but the US actually does pretty well here compared to every adversary we've fought with in at least the last century. The US is a uniquely powerful force and has been uniquely restrained in the use of its power relative to basically every other empire throughout history (so much so that the US is not really an empire).
>Regarding the question of whether the US is morally superior to its enemies abroad, we can think about it by way of analogy. Imagine you are trying to judge the moral worth of two men. A has a dispute with his neighbor, so he goes and burns down his house. That seems like a pretty bad thing to do, and we should judge him for that.
B, in contrast, faces no threat from those closest to him, but decides for no conceivable reason to go two blocks over, arm the weaker party in an ongoing dispute, and watch the two sides start killing each other in large numbers. All the while he brings women’s studies majors into the neighborhood to lecture the children about “toxic masculinity.” If the people of the neighborhood reject B, he places them under an economic blockade and destroys their livelihoods, starving some of the children to death. B does this while patting himself on the back for being the defender of the “rules-based neighborhood order.”
This whole analogy falls pretty flat as soon as you gain any awareness of the foreign policy of China or Russia re: their near abroad, where they can project power currently. Note again that sanctions are effective in this scenario.
I feel like an unconsidered issue here is ignoring how much the US has done to push the "Washington consensus" and increase global wealth for the last 70+ years. The "decides for conceivable reason" is a fun example of being maximally uncharitable to US foreign policy while being highly if not maximally charitable to Russian/Chinese foreign policy--and without correcting for power differentials.
>This is why, when I oppose American intervention in Ukraine, I’m not going to preface it by saying how bad Putin is, at least until those in favor of being involved have to answer for Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the other disasters that have characterized American foreign policy over the last several decades. I can at least understand why Putin does not like missiles, troop deployments, and bases on his borders, or why he would not want a neighbor to engage in cultural genocide against his fellow Russians.
Good god. American foreign policy misadventures in the MENA region in fact do nothing to justify thinking Putin invading Ukraine under false pretenses is defensible--not to mention "intervention" in the ways listed from those cases is not on the agenda. We invaded Iraq because we were stupid, supported Syrian rebels because Assad's regime opposes our interests in the Middle East, and supported rebels in Libya because our European allies really wanted to. I can think all three were very bad ideas and still be nowhere near thinking "the US-dominated global order is way worse than one potentially dominated by Russia/China, given their history, ideologies, and demonstrated behavior with lower levels of power."
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence and hypercriticism of US foreign policy for the last few decades without accurately projecting the counterfactuals of how a more powerful Russia/China will act has historically led leftists to poor stances and now apparently the right wants to get in on the horseshoe theory.
"Just because the people who make American foreign policy are dumb and their motivations banal does not mean they’re not evil. The less power they have in the future, the better the world will be."
You actually, honestly, believe that Chinese and Russian foreign policy elites will, on average, make less evil decisions as their power relative to the US grows?
Historically, superpowers have had a tendency to impose their ideologies on other countries. Before the US was a superpower, it was much more 'realist' and was guided mainly by the desire to keep European powers out of its backyard. I don't buy this view that the US is uniquely pathological. Powerful nations tend to want to spread 'civilization' as they define it around the world; the Soviets, the European colonial powers, the caliphate, the Romans, Greeks, etc. all did this. If Russia and China confine themselves to mere narrowly defined self-interest if they become more powerful, it would be exceptional rather than normal.
The last time we had a multipolar world - pre-WW2 - was not a peaceful time. I don't think there's anything that can be done that's worth the cost to stop it from happening, but I don't share your optimism. I have to add: the idea of 'cultural genocide' seems ridiculous. It echos the 'woke' notion that assimilation of ethnic minorities is somehow genocide, which I'm guessing you'd find ridiculous. I'd also speculate you wouldn't agree with characterizing Chinese treatment of Uighurs as genocide (I don't think it is, at least); maybe I'm wrong, but in that context, throwing the g-word at the Ukrainian government seems like pretty frivolous usage of it.
Thank you -- FYI -- that is why Biden was so bellicose on Ukraine:
ukrainegate.info nice summary of Bidens' corrupt rule in Ukraine -- found the link in Comments – never seen it before – looks well-researched and an outstanding analysis of US corruption in Ukraine
My friends overseas constantly resort to piracy and bootlegs because of US sanctions. There's no nation on earth that should be allowed to easily abuse that power.
Great post, Richard. The most obvious example of the multipolar world being more humane is Central Asia: it is between Russia, China, and Iran, yet, none of these countries have any conflicts over them at all. It is only the US when it sticks its nose in that causes trouble.
Richard, you are spot on. The US/NATO begged for this. Now they have it and they'll whine for a while, deluding themselves that Putin has made a mistake and that the Russians will lose or somehow be hurt by this. Russia will make money on the energy facet alone. And, frankly, they need to idiot proof their financial system insofar as it is possible even if it jeopardizes the dollar as reserve currency. The Ukrainian pipelines will be secure and Russia will control Ukrainian grain exports as well. Europe is and will become more dependent on Russia economically. This is a big win for Putin and Russia, regardless of what the West does.
Can you name someone who disagrees with you about the proper uses of American power, but who you think is interesting, well-informed and worth listening to?
These issues hinge on a lot of complicated questions of fact, and yet the vibe you project is that your views are unequivocally decided and your mind is closed.
It is important to remember that despite our reliable record of picking terrible allies in the Middle East, this is not a foregone conclusion. In Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and many other battlefields, there **are** 'good guys' ready and willing to work with us, no matter how many times we betray them (which we have, over and over). This doesn't apply to Afghanistan, and probably not to Yemen either, but in many places the Kurds are a relevant, well-trained force, and one which is consistently ideologically aligned. And they have never been seen to abuse their power in regions where they grew preeminent - and they _have_ had the opportunity. Arming the Kurds has _never_ gone badly - they aren't Western liberal democrats, but they're close enough for government work.
Unfortunately, we care too much about oil moving through the Sea of Marmara to anger Turkey. And so we're committed to backing Erdogan's travesty and denying Kurdistan's right to self-determination. And therefore to betraying them repeatedly, to the point that they expect it of us now, and say so to our faces. Some day when we no longer rely on Turkey economically, I hope we will start treating them as well as they have treated us.
With all due respect, you really need to do a bit more research on Ukraine before commenting on the situation any further. When you are talking about the "cultural genocide against his fellow Russians", you are parroting Putin's propaganda that's being swallowed whole by all the Trump supporters (including Trump himself), hence the invitation to comment on this conflict on Fox News. I am a Russian speaking Ukrainian-American and I am a Republican. My whole family lives in Ukraine. There has always been plenty of intermarriage between Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and both languages are often spoken at home interchangeably (at least in my home). Since 2014, Putin has been weaponizing the Russian language via his propaganda machine resulting in the strengthening of the Ukrainian nationalism with the Russian language suffering as a result. This was Putin's plan in the fist place: financing ultra-right nationalistic parties in Ukraine stoking fear into Russian speakers via pro-Russian TV channels showing Ukrainian speaking skinheads beating up Russian speaking babushkas etc... As a result, pro-Russian parties ratings have been going up consistently until recent developments (their popularity plummeted recently). I don't support the Ukrainian government's limiting the use of the Russian language in the media, but not because it somehow hurts my feelings of a Russian speaker. I speak both Russian and Ukrainian, so does the rest of my family (and most Ukrainians can speak and understand both languages for that matter). Most of us didn't really give a damn about which language is spoken on TV (at least not until the language issue was weaponized by Putin). I don't support the limits on the Russian language because this plays right into Putin's propaganda and allows him to justify yet another invasion under the pretext of saving people like myself from, as you put it, "cultural genocide". Young Russian-speaking Ukrainians are, for the most part, pro-western. Most Russian speakers over the age of 50 are quite fond of Putin with his grandiose goals of resurrecting the Soviet Union in all of its (albeit Frankensteinian monster's) glory. This propaganda works quite well on this part of the population as, unfortunately, they were getting their news mostly from Russian language TV channels that have been pouring Russian propaganda down their throats since at least 2014. This is the reason why those channels were banned in the first place recently (interestingly, Putin started to gather his forces around Ukraine VERY shortly after these propaganda channels were shut down). Now, Putin's propaganda machine is spinning the ban as "cultural genocide", exactly like you put it. I am not a fan of foreign interventionism. I am certainly biased being a Ukrainian and with my family living there. That being said, if you have not watched Putin's 1hr address to the nation two days ago, please do. The biggest chunk of it is a history lesson with his own spin on it. After that, I would encourage you to give it some thought and to speculate on how far he could go if he were not stopped in Ukraine. How well did appeasement work on Hitler after his taking Sudetenland? I will quote the cliché saying here: history does not repeat itself but it often rhymes....
I am a big fan of yours, but your reporting on Ukraine is quite a disappointment...
> I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War, everyone who opposed the invasion had to premise their argument with the disclaimer, “Yes, Saddam is a bad guy, but…” Of course, beginning every conversation by asserting that the US is good and everyone it might invade or bomb is evil puts the opponents of intervention in an untenable situation.
The problem with the invasion of Iraq were primarily two things:
1. Saddam did not in fact have a WMD program that was a threat and our intelligence community botched the analysis and let the Bush administration walk all over it with bad assumptions and motivated reasoning in the absence of any actually good intelligence (see also: any connection to 9/11)
2. More unforgivably, the planning for the invasion was fine and the planning for the occupation was almost nonexistent. The invasion went great and the aftermath was a bloodbath, mostly as Iraqis massacred other Iraqis.
The true sin in both cases was incompetence, not being good or bad
>Ukraine is either going to be run from Washington or Moscow
I feel like this is not actually the choice Ukraine, or its neighbors, has had and that Washington isn't interested in running Ukraine the way Moscow is...
>If the US had less power in the world, a lot of stupid and destructive things – like comprehensive sanctions on defenseless countries, invading and occupying Iraq, or trying to bring affirmative action to France – would simply not be done, because such policies represent unique pathologies of American politics. And this would be a good thing.
People who oppose sanctions often accuse them of being both damaging and ineffective. Let's pick one shall we?
The US trying to export its unique pathologies is mostly just pointless because it doesn't land in places where it's way beyond the existing norms. Of all our sins, that's the most harmless because it's mostly just ineffective signaling.
>Nonetheless, as a more general matter, it is worth considering whether we would rather have a world order that is American-led, Chinese-led, or – in what I think is the most likely scenario and one we are already starting to see emerge – multipolar. If that is the question, I would argue that the US is a uniquely destructive force, and multipolarity is a much more desirable state of affairs than what we currently have. Coming to this conclusion requires some comparison of the moral status and decision-making ability of the people who run American foreign policy relative to those who would replace them. It does not imply a comparison, for example, between how the US and China treat their people at home; throughout history, we have seen states that give their own citizens a high degree of freedom while being vicious towards foreign adversaries, and others that are brutal at home but largely passive abroad. To think in terms of countries as “good” or “evil” in a way that can explain both domestic and foreign policy is a mistake.
I really wonder how you would have felt about the Cold War say 50 years ago. Generally speaking, I think there is in fact a correlation between how a nation treats its own citizens and how well it treats other humans. It's not always a strong correlation necessarily (the Soviets were brutal at home and abroad, the Nazis were pretty nice to Germans, so long as they weren't Jewish...), but the US actually does pretty well here compared to every adversary we've fought with in at least the last century. The US is a uniquely powerful force and has been uniquely restrained in the use of its power relative to basically every other empire throughout history (so much so that the US is not really an empire).
>Regarding the question of whether the US is morally superior to its enemies abroad, we can think about it by way of analogy. Imagine you are trying to judge the moral worth of two men. A has a dispute with his neighbor, so he goes and burns down his house. That seems like a pretty bad thing to do, and we should judge him for that.
B, in contrast, faces no threat from those closest to him, but decides for no conceivable reason to go two blocks over, arm the weaker party in an ongoing dispute, and watch the two sides start killing each other in large numbers. All the while he brings women’s studies majors into the neighborhood to lecture the children about “toxic masculinity.” If the people of the neighborhood reject B, he places them under an economic blockade and destroys their livelihoods, starving some of the children to death. B does this while patting himself on the back for being the defender of the “rules-based neighborhood order.”
This whole analogy falls pretty flat as soon as you gain any awareness of the foreign policy of China or Russia re: their near abroad, where they can project power currently. Note again that sanctions are effective in this scenario.
I feel like an unconsidered issue here is ignoring how much the US has done to push the "Washington consensus" and increase global wealth for the last 70+ years. The "decides for conceivable reason" is a fun example of being maximally uncharitable to US foreign policy while being highly if not maximally charitable to Russian/Chinese foreign policy--and without correcting for power differentials.
>This is why, when I oppose American intervention in Ukraine, I’m not going to preface it by saying how bad Putin is, at least until those in favor of being involved have to answer for Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the other disasters that have characterized American foreign policy over the last several decades. I can at least understand why Putin does not like missiles, troop deployments, and bases on his borders, or why he would not want a neighbor to engage in cultural genocide against his fellow Russians.
Good god. American foreign policy misadventures in the MENA region in fact do nothing to justify thinking Putin invading Ukraine under false pretenses is defensible--not to mention "intervention" in the ways listed from those cases is not on the agenda. We invaded Iraq because we were stupid, supported Syrian rebels because Assad's regime opposes our interests in the Middle East, and supported rebels in Libya because our European allies really wanted to. I can think all three were very bad ideas and still be nowhere near thinking "the US-dominated global order is way worse than one potentially dominated by Russia/China, given their history, ideologies, and demonstrated behavior with lower levels of power."
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence and hypercriticism of US foreign policy for the last few decades without accurately projecting the counterfactuals of how a more powerful Russia/China will act has historically led leftists to poor stances and now apparently the right wants to get in on the horseshoe theory.
"Just because the people who make American foreign policy are dumb and their motivations banal does not mean they’re not evil. The less power they have in the future, the better the world will be."
You actually, honestly, believe that Chinese and Russian foreign policy elites will, on average, make less evil decisions as their power relative to the US grows?
Historically, superpowers have had a tendency to impose their ideologies on other countries. Before the US was a superpower, it was much more 'realist' and was guided mainly by the desire to keep European powers out of its backyard. I don't buy this view that the US is uniquely pathological. Powerful nations tend to want to spread 'civilization' as they define it around the world; the Soviets, the European colonial powers, the caliphate, the Romans, Greeks, etc. all did this. If Russia and China confine themselves to mere narrowly defined self-interest if they become more powerful, it would be exceptional rather than normal.
The last time we had a multipolar world - pre-WW2 - was not a peaceful time. I don't think there's anything that can be done that's worth the cost to stop it from happening, but I don't share your optimism. I have to add: the idea of 'cultural genocide' seems ridiculous. It echos the 'woke' notion that assimilation of ethnic minorities is somehow genocide, which I'm guessing you'd find ridiculous. I'd also speculate you wouldn't agree with characterizing Chinese treatment of Uighurs as genocide (I don't think it is, at least); maybe I'm wrong, but in that context, throwing the g-word at the Ukrainian government seems like pretty frivolous usage of it.
Outstanding essay. I would be interested in reading anyone willing to write a rebuttal to see how it stacks up.
Thank you -- FYI -- that is why Biden was so bellicose on Ukraine:
ukrainegate.info nice summary of Bidens' corrupt rule in Ukraine -- found the link in Comments – never seen it before – looks well-researched and an outstanding analysis of US corruption in Ukraine
https://ukrainegate.info/short-part-1-a-not-so-solid-prosecutor/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-2-not-so-dormant-investigations/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-3-a-not-so-noble-president/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-4-shokin-strikes-back/
Another "courageous" intellectual using his American freedom to trash his country while praising people like Putin.
My friends overseas constantly resort to piracy and bootlegs because of US sanctions. There's no nation on earth that should be allowed to easily abuse that power.
Great post, Richard. The most obvious example of the multipolar world being more humane is Central Asia: it is between Russia, China, and Iran, yet, none of these countries have any conflicts over them at all. It is only the US when it sticks its nose in that causes trouble.
Richard, you are spot on. The US/NATO begged for this. Now they have it and they'll whine for a while, deluding themselves that Putin has made a mistake and that the Russians will lose or somehow be hurt by this. Russia will make money on the energy facet alone. And, frankly, they need to idiot proof their financial system insofar as it is possible even if it jeopardizes the dollar as reserve currency. The Ukrainian pipelines will be secure and Russia will control Ukrainian grain exports as well. Europe is and will become more dependent on Russia economically. This is a big win for Putin and Russia, regardless of what the West does.
Can you name someone who disagrees with you about the proper uses of American power, but who you think is interesting, well-informed and worth listening to?
These issues hinge on a lot of complicated questions of fact, and yet the vibe you project is that your views are unequivocally decided and your mind is closed.
I wish I could figure out how any of this isn’t exactly correct.
What is "gender mainstreaming in IR"? Do you have those powerpoints? I'd love to flip through that deck.
Good article.
It is important to remember that despite our reliable record of picking terrible allies in the Middle East, this is not a foregone conclusion. In Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and many other battlefields, there **are** 'good guys' ready and willing to work with us, no matter how many times we betray them (which we have, over and over). This doesn't apply to Afghanistan, and probably not to Yemen either, but in many places the Kurds are a relevant, well-trained force, and one which is consistently ideologically aligned. And they have never been seen to abuse their power in regions where they grew preeminent - and they _have_ had the opportunity. Arming the Kurds has _never_ gone badly - they aren't Western liberal democrats, but they're close enough for government work.
Unfortunately, we care too much about oil moving through the Sea of Marmara to anger Turkey. And so we're committed to backing Erdogan's travesty and denying Kurdistan's right to self-determination. And therefore to betraying them repeatedly, to the point that they expect it of us now, and say so to our faces. Some day when we no longer rely on Turkey economically, I hope we will start treating them as well as they have treated us.
Clearheaded writing, very good as usual.
I wrote something on the same topic; I think its the sort of argument that interests you:
https://nonpolitical.substack.com/p/nato-expansion-into-eastern-europe?r=a7pht&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web