Contrary Opinion about the War in Ukraine

By the laws of contrary sentiment, when everyone agrees that something is going to happen the chances are very high that it will not happen. Or better that the opposite will happen. When everyone believes that the stock market can do nothing but go up, it is heading for a fall. 

I’m not sure what this says about the wisdom of the masses or even about the viability of a pure democracy over the long run-- note that James Madison did not think that America was or should be a pure democracy-- at the least it makes us curious to look at the near unanimous opinion about the war in Ukraine. 

Just about everyone thinks that Russia is evil and that the wonderful Ukrainians are good. And, just about everyone thinks that we should get involved militarily on the side of the good guys. One can add that the war has given the Biden administration the chance to show how tough it is, by applying crippling economic and financial sanctions to the Russian economy and especially to the Russian people.

True enough, some people, people who are better informed than you and I, have questioned the eventual fallout from these sanctions, but for now they make us feel virtuous, and have convinced us that we are destroying the evil empire.

For that among other reasons I am intrigued by Peter Van Buren’s essay in the Spectator. (via Maggie’s Farm) At the least, his take on the situation in Ukraine and the ongoing war that we are waging against Russia counts as contrary opinion. For the record, Van Buren is a former foreign service officer who seems to have a decidedly contrary temperament. He has written for The Nation and for The American Conservative. He has been banned from Twitter for life.

He opens with the notion that we ought not to try to explain Vladimir Putin’s actions by declaring him to be insane. It is always-- underscore that-- dangerous to play amateur psychiatrist and to imagine that anyone who does not do what we want him to do must be insane. Didn’t the former Soviet Union throw dissidents in psychiatric hospitals?

So, perhaps there is method to Putin’s apparent madness. Van Buren opines:

Insanity is not the only explanation for Putin’s actions of the past few weeks. From a Russian standpoint, he is carrying out a rational political-military strategy in Ukraine, seizing Russian-speaking territory such as Donbas, demilitarizing eastern Ukraine by force, and most of all creating a physical buffer zone between his country’s southern border and NATO. That zone may end at the Dnieper River with a loop around Odessa, or it may end at the Polish border, depending on how smoothly things go on the ground and on what level of “back away” message Putin wishes to send NATO.

Of course, the great minds of the foreign policy establishment have told us that Ukraine is just the beginning for an expansionist Russian wanna-be emperor. After all, it happened like that before when Germany took the Sudetenland, so why would it not happen like that today.

To which I happily refer you to yesterday’s post, wherein I raised the possibility that history does not repeat itself and that being mired in the past will blind us to the future. When you are constantly looking backwards you will increase your chances of walking into a telephone pole.

Van Buren states:

It’s unlikely that Putin is making the first moves toward some greater conquest. All the bad takes saying “if we don’t stop Putin now, he’ll invade Moldova/Estonia/Poland/all Europe just like Hitler” ignores that the German military in World War Two had some 18 million men under arms. The Russian army today has 1.3 million, the best of which are going to be in Ukraine for a while.

Does Putin have an achievable objective? Perhaps, Van Buren states, he does:

For Putin, that means solving his border problem at the cost of maybe a few thousand men and another dollop of weak sanctions. He understood the needs of Europe meant sanctions would never harm sales of the fossil fuels which make up most Russian exports. But nyet to Paypal for you tovarishch! Putin could also look to history and see how decades of sanctions have not changed much in Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

One does not know whether crippling sanctions will really work? After all, they might cause the Russian people to coalesce, patriotically, in defiance of the West. We remember and we must emphasize that many large countries in the world are siding with Russia, or at least, are refusing to attack Russia. Many serious people believe that the sanctions regime is our last hurrah and that the winner in all of this is going to be China.

Anyway, Ukraine is working to engage other nations in its struggle. On that it has done, for now, a creditable job, though, to be fair, the longer it holds out the longer its country and its people are going to be severely damaged:

Ukraine knew on Day One it didn’t have enough men or weapons to defeat the Russians. Its only hope to remain a unified nation (it is easy to imagine a divided Ukraine, Western Zone and Russian Eastern Zone) is outside help. A no-fly zone, some airstrikes to blunt Russian advances. Maybe some of those Polish/NATO pilots planning to ferry F-16s to Ukraine stay to fly them in combat? Something, anything.

So, Ukraine is fighting a propaganda war, and it seems for now to be winning. As its cities are razed, it has garnered the sympathy of the Western world, though not too much support from outside of the Western world:

That’s why America is being blitzed with Ukrainian propaganda, and your brother-in-law is ready to head to Europe with his never-cleaned hunting rifle. The goal is to change public opinion such that a weak guy like Joe Biden starts to doubt himself. The goal is get Biden to take that Pentagon meeting laying out options for some limited bombing, or to listen to those analysts saying the US could set up a small no-fly zone on Ukraine’s western edge to facilitate humanitarian aid. Drop in some Special Forces. Something, anything.

Of course, the purpose of the propaganda is to rouse sleepy and demented Joe Biden from his lethargy and to get him to do something. For now, it has at least persuaded  a significant majority of Americans that going to war against Russia by setting up a no-fly zone is a good idea. 

 The bad news is Ukrainian propaganda is working. A non-partisan 74 percent of Americans say NATO should impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine. And that’s even as we are just getting started.

Van Buren outlines the development of the propaganda narrative:

A quick propaganda recap. We’ve had the hero phase with the non-existent Ghost of Kyiv and the supermodels with guns. We’ve had the Russians-are-going-to-kill-us-all phase, with the faux threat of invasion to the West and the faux scare the Russians were going to create a Chernobyl-like nuclear accident by shelling a power plant. We are currently moving through the “not verifiable atrocities” phase. Alongside this is beefcake talk about Zelensky, the likes of which we haven’t seen since before the cancellations of Andrew Cuomo and Michael Avenatti. The fact-checking mania of the Covid era is in the dustbin of history as American media removes all the filters on pro-Ukrainian content.

Uh, oh. Can you believe that the American media is giving the Andrew Cuomo/ Michael Avenatti makeover to a comedian from the Ukraine?

The quality of the propaganda is not important (any scrap metal on snowy ground is breaking news of another Russian helo down, even if the metal has “Acme Junk Pile” written on it). The quantity is important, the attempt to overwhelm American mind space to the point where logic is shoved into the back corner. There is a growing cottage industry of “experts” explaining how to can go to war without going to THAT kind of war. Dissenting voices are few, and are often labeled as “Putin lovers,” with late night hosts hurling homophobic slurs at them like high school kids.

Van Buren concludes:

There are two battles now playing out over Ukraine. The one on the ground — and the one on your social media seeking to drag America into the mud.

Only half a year after the sad ending in Afghanistan, it is stunning to watch America again contemplate going to war for some abstract purpose far removed from our own core interests. And this time it is the risk of a nuclear exchange to remind us of our mistake, not just an inglorious departure from Kabul.

Allow me to add a coda-- the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has recommended that Zelensky surrender, that he take the offer that Putin has put on the table. Zelensky has refused.

Whether this makes him a Churchillian statesman or a clown who is in over his head-- time will tell.