The world’s need for a Churchill-like figure. I had thought about sitting on this until we actually saw Russian tanks rolling into Donbas, but the way the press conference with the National Security Advisor and Press Secretary went, I think at least making my peace before the end is important for me, and maybe for anyone who is worried about this playing out. These words are my own, and do not represent any organization or employer.
It has been quite awhile since I wrote last. I understand that it is my privilege to serve those who serve. I find myself these days wondering if the rise of villains is but a cycle. There’s a lot of attempts at analogy in this hour and I fear too many people are letting Godwin’s law loose, to discredit and to rationalize. Putin is not Hitler, but our lack of a Churchill in this hour makes men like Putin eager for land and treasure. If I were to say it is as directly as I could, Dictator of the Chinese State, Xi Jinping, is the Hitler analogue. It’s rather obvious in the comparisons, including genocide of a culture and people, slavery in concentration camps, and the propping up of state industries for the sake of a war machine.
But this hour is not about Xi, that little man that he is. It is about his Mussolini analogue, Vladimir Putin. Historically, Mussolini was not the coward or fool we have spun him to be in post-war propaganda. He was a brilliant manipulator and nationalist, but most of all, a believer in cautious and slow growth. He was the one who told Hitler the Allies would crumble in Munich. He was the one who convinced Hitler that nationalism was core to fascism, that service to the state was the highest value. We often portray, righteously, that the Nazi is the superior villain of the Second World War. But we have forgotten that manipulators and occupiers, conquerors and destroyers had a variety of forms besides THAT Evil Incarnate. He articulated a need for strong leadership from the top, for people’s ‘roles’ in society to be established, and for a recapturing of former glory that once made Italy great. For Mussolini, that was Rome. For Putin, that is Tsarist Russia AND the Soviet Union (both occupying a similar amount of ground in their times).
I think in principle, many people hoped in the US and abroad that President Biden would deliver on his previous behaviors of being staunchly old, grumpy, and belligerent to Putin. However in practice, that hasn’t happened to the way I think anyone is enjoying. When we ended the Keystone XL Pipeline, however you feel about it, we lost our leverage to keeping the European allies out of Russian influence. Most of Europe is painfully dependent on Russia for petrol chemicals, specifically natural gas. Imagine having an economy that was so green that it is unable to properly fuel itself, so you pay other countries for their FOSSIL FUELS. That is Germany. Why haven’t they gone nuclear? You can ask their Green Movement, who seem to believe Russian carbon production is more righteous than nationally regulated nuclear power. They’ve been the biggest force for anti-nuclear energy.
After that blunder came the Nord Stream 2, the attempt by the Russians to fully occupy the market on Fossil Fuel delivery to Western Europe. Oh don’t worry, it will be completed. As much as Biden promised in his press conference last week, the German chancellor’s unwillingness to SAY ANYTHING made it painfully clear that the German government today is ready to abandon the Ukrainian cause of National Sovereignty and a people’s right to manifest its own destiny…for their energy needs. That’s right, the allies have crippled themselves with Climate Change measures that did nothing to the world but made them submissive to its whims, and because they are pressured by their energy needs, they are caught in an impossible choice. The lesson here is that Climate Change requires dragging the world with you, not weakening yourself to the world.
If they don’t get Russian natural gas, the German economy will be under threat. If they agree to defend Ukraine’s national sovereignty NOW, then the Ukrainian claim that the Crimea was seized unlawfully must be pursued. Putin is right that if NATO guarantees Ukraine at this hour, it will lead to war. Ukraine has every lawful reason to demand NATO alleviate its occupied territories since those were stolen by Russian aggression, IF it were to join NATO but it will not now. The quiet part no one is saying, not even the Ukrainians, is the time for Ukraine to join NATO is past. Orban in Hungary is Putin’s friend, and he will not see Putin thwarted.
But rather than do what is right in some fashion and assist Ukraine, the West is facing the choice of war or dishonoring previous agreements (when we denuclearized Ukraine, we promised to defend them but never signed such an agreement), like they once before did. If we don’t intervene, Putin will attack Ukraine in the end, by force of arms or coercive threat to submission. If we were to intervene, the NATO alliance would be tested bitterly as we’ve weakened our allies’ ability to resist Russian pressure. As Churchill said “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.”
Why? Pragmatically if you are Vladimir Putin the existence of an even adjacent-NATO Ukraine is a threat to your national security. They will continue to fight, resist, and guerrilla war for their rightful lands. The wars in Donbas that started in 2014 remain, and its not the Russians gaining ground, but the Ukrainians holding the line. Pressed with a people willing to fight and die, like the Polish did in 1939, the only solution to Putin’s security dilemma is enough occupation to end the lawful government of Ukraine, establish a proxy regime, and pretend that is the lawful government. We have evidence he understands this calculus, as that is how he has done soft annexations in Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, the Donetsk People’s Republic, and the Luhansk People’s Republic. If you want to see how he removes swiftly a puppet and replaces it, look to Kazakhstan where he gently removed and hid the former old man Post-Communist Dictator of Nursultan Nazarbayev and has replaced him with “President Tokayev.”
Smart Authoritarians understand they do not need to hold every piece of ground under their flag, just that every piece of ground they hold is subservient to their flag. And much like how Hitler learned from Mussolini’s successes and blunders, we need to be mindful that Xi (who is technically younger than Putin by a year) is looking to his senior in authoritarianism for wisdom, and how to successfully defeat the American Empire. And even if you loathe the American Empire, you know that the ambition of Chinese Imperialism under Xi or Russian Imperialism under Putin will not be better. People will die, Putin and Xi are both waging ‘cultural’ wars against homosexuality, ‘effeminate men’, and trans persons in their country. WARS OF GENOCIDE couched as rescuing the ‘cultures’ of their nation from WESTERN INFILTRATION and SUBVERSION.
The American Empire is not free from its sins, I won’t pretend as an American Imperialist that we are ‘righteous’ here. But at least the world we lead is not one filled with wanton destruction of every person, and even those who hate the Empire’s shadow are able to speak out underneath it. That is not a liberty guaranteed with Russia or China. We are not the saviors in this hour, but the idea of “Western Betrayal” is hurling back into dialogue. If we will not aid Ukraine in its RIGHTEOUS cause of letting the Ukrainian people decide what is best for them, then we have no argument to say the Uyghur people have a right to decide. It is unfortunately a do-or-die moment in our rhetoric. Our leaders have sought to place themselves in the impossible choice, and when they fail to act to rightfully defend the INDEPENDENT Ukrainian state, the last ideal of a people to choose what is best for them, without influence from another state (the US or another) will be lost.
That is why we need a Churchill. Some leader needs to stand up and at least argue for doing the right thing. I’ve been disgusted by Tucker Carlson’s peddling of Sudetenland rhetoric THAT SOMEHOW the Ukrainians are the occupiers. (How Hitler claimed Czechoslovakia occupied German land)
I hate the rhetoric of Jimmy Dore and other Russian apologists who think Russia is the one whose rightful sovereignty has been violated. (That it is the West’s fault Russia feels it must strike first against independent and free states)
I understand I may be alone in thinking this. Perhaps I am wrong, but history appears to be coming around a corner that is too familiar and I loathe it. When Macron flew to Kyiv from Moscow, carrying Putin’s terms, I felt my spirit be tested. I truly hope I am wrong and that Ukraine has some semblance of liberty remaining after this. I TRULY HOPE I’M WRONG.
I do not believe we are obligated to be the world’s police, but in good conscious if we believe our country has a right to its sovereignty, if we believe a free people have a right to decide the government they want, and if we believe no country has the right to force another to bend its knees in total submission as we are seeing Putin articulate, we cannot sit idly by. If we do, I fear the state of our hearts as we watch the world continue its decline to authoritarianism and tyranny.
New Tagania 