Why Ukraine?

One has hesitated to weigh in on the current  showdown over Ukraine. You remember Ukraine. Joe Biden entered into a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government, in order to shield his grifter son from prosecution, and the American Congress decided to impeach Donald Trump for entering into a quid pro quo with Ukraine.

Somehow, somewhere America can no longer think straight.

But, then again, when it comes to Ukraine, or, more specifically, to Russia, Western Europe is reaping what it sowed. After all, the green leftists in Europe have been shutting down coal generating plants in favor of natural gas. And the sainted former German Chancellor Merkel shut down Germany’s nuclear facilities, in order to be greener than thou.

So, Europe now depends on Russia for its energy requirements. This means that however much the Biden administration is thumping its chest in order to pretend to be tough and resolute, it is doomed to be a leader without very many followers. 

Given that the Biden presidency has been circling the drain, and given the appalling show of weakness that Biden showed in surrendering Afghanistan, one understands that the Ukraine crisis appears to be a wag the dog moment, a distraction and a chance for our enfeebled president to show that he still has some backbone left.

And yet, Republicans are all-in for war over Ukraine. One will not offer any more explanation than their wish to show how tough and resolute they are, but still, is Ukraine worth a military confrontation with Russia? To that we must add that those on the right, like Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard, who oppose military conflict with Russia are  now being branded Russian stooges, or some such. 

One has a right to be somewhat confused. One also has a right to think that the American mind, whatever portion remains, has seen better days. The stupidification of America proceeds apace. Public debate about consequential political issues has been reduced to chest thumping and macho posturing. It is not a good thing. If you were Vladimir Putin would  you be quaking in your shoes?

Speaking of the American mind, one of our leading intellectuals, one Francis Fukuyama, he of the end of history fame, has weighed in on the issue. You recall that the reconstructed Hegelian once imagined that history would end when the world entire decided that liberal democracy was the best form of government.

When Fukuyama pronounced this dopey idea in 1989, the world took notice. It seemed prescient, a perfect summation of German idealism. Of course, Hegel himself did not see history ending with a spasm of liberal democracy, but that is for another day. One still finds it passing strange that a supposed conservative thinker would be promoting something called liberal democracy in the name of the godfather of Marxism.

As I said, the American mind has seen better days.

And yet, failed prophets do not give up easily. And, however much the world has been moving away from liberal democracy, Fukuyama believes that it is ascendant, and that we need to fight for it, in Ukraine. 

This shows that he is a true idealist. True idealists only credit facts that make them appear to be right. The rest they dismiss as static.

Anyway, here is Fukuyama’s reasoning about Ukraine. Read it and weep:

There is one fundamental reason why the United States and the rest of the democratic world should support Ukraine in its current fight with Putin’s Russia: Ukraine is a real, but struggling, liberal democracy. People are free in Ukraine in a way they are not in Russia: they can protest, criticize, mobilize, and vote. In 2017 they voted for a complete outsider to be president, and turned over a majority of their parliament. On two occasions, during the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, Ukrainian civil society came into the streets in massive numbers to protest corrupt and unrepresentative governments.

Stirring, don’t you think? Now, Putin might be playing his Ukraine card because he is happy to make the United States look feeble and decadent.

Fukuyama is more sophisticated:

This is the real reason that Vladimir Putin is preparing to further invade Ukraine. He sees Ukraine as an integral part of a greater Russia, as he indicated in a long article last summer. But the deeper problem for him is Ukrainian democracy. He is heavily invested in the idea that Slavic peoples are culturally attuned to authoritarian government, and the idea that another Slavic state could successfully transition to democracy undermines his own claims for ruling Russia. Ukraine presents zero military threat to Moscow; it does, however, pose an alternative ideological model that erodes Putin’s own legitimacy.

What evidence does he present?

My view has been shaped by the young Ukrainians I have met and worked with over the past few years. There is a younger generation coming up that does not want to be part of the old corrupt system, that believes in European values, and that wants nothing more than for Ukraine to become part of Europe. These Ukrainians are extremely well educated and highly motivated. They are the ones who have led the Maidan Revolution and who are at the forefront of the effort to make Ukraine part of Europe. Their generation will gradually come to power, and will hopefully exercise power more democratically than their predecessors.

Anyway, Fukuyama is a big picture thinker. He sees Ukraine as a frontline state in the conflict between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. Thus, we should prepare to go to war over it:

Ukraine today is the frontline state in the global geopolitical struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. Europeans who value liberal democracy for themselves need to understand that they cannot be bystanders in this conflict. Putin has ambitions well beyond Ukraine; he has made clear in recent weeks that he would like to reverse the gains to European democracy since 1991 and create a Russian sphere of influence throughout the territory of the former Warsaw Pact. Beyond Europe, the Chinese are watching how the West responds in this crisis very closely, as they calculate their prospects for reincorporating Taiwan. This is why the defense of Ukraine should be of urgent importance to anyone who cares about global democracy.

So, do you care about democracy? It's a big idea and we must care about big ideas. We might note that the best way to sell the world on democracy is to make it work in America. That point seems less salient than the chance to fight a war with Russia. What the fuck?

A more important issue would be whether you care about the stature and the  influence of the United States-- which is not the same thing. 

Anyway, one is happy to juxtapose Fukuyama’s deliria about liberal democracy with a few facts. One David Goldman has offered them for your delectation.

You will note that the Ukraine Goldman describes has nothing to do with Fukuyama’s airy fantasy world. Goldman sees Ukraine in a decline-- it’s almost as though it is willing itself out of existence:

Ukraine is disappearing, for two reasons. It has one of the world’s lowest birth rates at just 1.23 children per female, and one of the world’s highest rates of out-migration. No other country has willed itself out of existence so decisively.

Ukraine’s demographic decline is so pronounced that it should be high on the list of strategic considerations. For what, and for whom, might NATO and Russia go to war?

In any event, Germany will never support a war with Ukraine, so this puts something of a kibosh on the notion that NATO is ready for war. As it happens, Goldman continues, Ukrainians have been leaving the country in droves:

Ukrainians vote with their feet. Nine million have work abroad, according to the National Security and Defense Council of the Ukraine, and 3.2 million have full-time jobs in other countries. There are only 21 million Ukrainians between the ages of 20 and 55, which suggests that more than two-fifths of prime working-age Ukrainians earn their living elsewhere.

I do not know whether this estimate includes half a million Ukrainian prostitutes working abroad since independence, according to one scholarly estimate.

How does Goldman see Ukraine’s future? Not very brightly, I fear:

Ukraine in a few decades won’t be a sovereign nation, let alone a democracy; it will be a geriatric ward supported by a dwindling flow of remittances.

Remittances from overseas workers already comprise 11% of Ukraine’s GDP, according to the World Bank, by far the highest proportion in Eastern Europe with the exception of tiny Moldova.

And then, in another analysis of the geopolitical chess game, Goldman offers this (via Maggie's Farm):

NATO is weak, China is ascendant, and the U.S. is confused; Russia is well-armed and prepared. That’s why Putin is making his move now.

As though to answer Fukuyama, Goldman writes:

Why do we do this? To defend the brave little democracy in Ukraine against totalitarian oppression? Puh-leeze. The Kiev kleptocracy is an embarrassment to itself as well as everyone else. Since the Soviet Union fell, the White Whale of the liberal internationalists (like Antony Blinken) and neocons (like Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland) has been to export democracy to Russia. The regime-change fantasy has dominated U.S. policy since we sponsored the 2004 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, through the 2014 Maidan Square coup.

Is it all about turning Russia into a liberal democracy? That would belong to the theatre of the absurd, but then again, where else did we find our current cohort of political leaders:

China meanwhile is watching this unfold with a bucket of popcorn. From guancha.cn (hawkish website close to the State Council): “Everyone is studying the experience of history. The United States is studying how to avoid the decline of empires, China is studying how to avoid Thucydides’ trap. Russia is studying how to plug leaks. And Europe is studying how to eat melons. What is Ukraine studying? The most important thing to study is the historical experience of neighboring Poland.” Of course, guancha.cn is referring to the repeated partition of Poland.

I make no excuses for Putin. But it’s worth asking when Russia has ever been governed by the sort of enlightened liberal that our Wilsonians and neo-cons prefer. No-one in Russia talks about Ivan the Reasonable. Russia’s tragedy is not ours to fix.

The comparison between Fukuyama’s vision and Goldman’s reality could not be more stark.

Have a nice day!