In a way he was like the country he lived in: everything came too easily to him.
The opening of Hubble’s college short story, from The Way We Were
Everything has, indeed, come to America too easily, and they’ve grown too used to it, believing it all to have been inevitable, even part of God’s plan for humanity, and therefore permanent, no matter what happens in the world around them (and who cares about the rest of the world anyway?). They have some vague, fading understanding of how blessed they’ve been, but to the extent they think about it, they figure it’s the natural order of things. They’re great, is all. Always have been. Always will be. Thus despite all their failings, and the many grave sins of their past and present, they keep telling themselves they’re still the greatest nation in the world, which in many ways they are, and in many other ways ought to be, if only they could get out of their own way. Yet, for all the patriotic chest thumping, all the rah-rah USA!! USA!! crap, they neither fully comprehend what they have, nor sense, any longer, the extraordinary responsibility conferred upon them by all the power they’ve been able to amass. They also seem unable to comprehend the sheer magnitude of everything they have to lose. They take everything for granted. They’re entitled. They’ve stopped being grateful. They’ve stopped thinking about it. They don’t seem to remember how much had to be sacrificed to maintain government by the people, for the people. They don’t even seem to appreciate what all those who gave their lives have gifted them, or that their fragile democracy, and all that it’s achieved, is now endangered by enemies both foreign and domestic. At the same time, they’ve forgotten the painful lessons of history, and have turned inward. America first, right? Just like they used to say back when the pro-Nazi types, Lindbergh and that miserable crew, were lobbying to let Germany have its way with Europe, which, after all, was none of our business anyway.
Now the Republicans, the erstwhile “party of national security”, are acting like saboteurs, pushing the moral and intellectual rot to its logical conclusion, and taking apparent glee in undermining what they don’t even seem to understand.
Republicans. God save us. I swear, dear readers, the world has never before seen a purportedly mainstream faction in any country so determined to diminish its own nation’s extraordinary power, destroy the confidence of its most staunch and important allies, tear its country apart in tribal warfare, and squander every one of the myriad advantages bestowed upon its society by a series of incredibly lucky accidents of history. Lately, a large swath of them seem further to have lost their MAGAfied little minds. They’re attacking democracy itself. They’re working feverishly on an authoritarian scheme that relies upon the sowing of division, hatred, and existential panic. They lie about everything, thwart every sound public policy initiative, gridlock government, and do everything they can to persuade the masses that America simply doesn’t work anymore (and oh, how they’ve seen to that), and the only way to fix it is to smash it first. At the same time, they cozy up to foreign tyrants, especially those, like Hungary’s Orban, who seem bent on reshaping their countries into Christo-fascist ethno-states. They wish America could do the same, having adopted a perverse world-view that colours everything they do, including when it comes to the field about which their voters are most profoundly and blissfully ignorant: foreign policy.
Enter newly-minted Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, and the rest of Putin’s GOP stooges.
Let’s back up for a second, and remind ourselves of the context within which Mike Johnson was pontificating about aid to Ukraine yesterday, looking smug and sounding smarmy. Let’s look at the big picture, the better to understand the damage this intolerant, bigoted, evangelical extremist now threatens to inflict upon the whole western world.
Remember when Biden first entered office? Sure you do. It was right after the January 6 insurrection. Like so many Democrats before him, the incoming President inherited an unholy shit storm from the departing Republican, what with the bitter aftermath of an attempted coup, a raging Covid epidemic, an economy on the verge of collapse, and all that other domestic noise. It all tended to crowd out any appreciation of a brewing geopolitical catastrophe that Trump and his collaborators had set in motion.
In the wider world, about which average Americans, I feel compelled to re-emphasize, know nothing and care even less, the situation was growing dire. Trump had alienated allies, and all but set the stage for the dismantling of NATO, a pet project that aimed to destroy what is possibly history’s most powerful and important alliance. Relations with the international community had been turned upside-down; America’s democratic allies were shunned and had lost faith in American dependability and resolve, while its totalitarian enemies were getting used to basking in the President’s fulsomely glowing praise. Trump had upended seven decades of consensus American foreign policy, and squandered almost all of America’s soft power, which is the power that matters most. The relative strength of America was dissipating on the international stage. The perceptions of both friends and foes were changing. The global balance of power was starting to shift.
It was a dangerous state of affairs, and indeed it wasn’t long before the perceived weakness in the western alliance structure, among other factors, convinced Vladimir Putin that conditions now favoured his longstanding plan to gobble up the rest of Ukraine, a democratic, western-leaning country with aspirations to join both NATO and the European Union. All of a sudden, with all the domestic problems Biden had to stick-handle, we were faced with an illegal war of aggression and conquest right on NATO’s doorstep, just when NATO was at its weakest point since its formation. The general view was that Russia would prevail, and quickly. Putin, we’re told, planned on a three-day campaign. After that, who knew? What else would Vlad find ripe for the picking? Georgia maybe? Moldova? Would the conquest of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia seem tempting too? Did it matter anymore, given what Trump had done over the prior four years, that the Baltic States were NATO countries? Were we witnessing a cascade failure of deterrence in the European theatre? We were already confronted with a conflict the like of which hadn’t been seen in Europe since the Second World War. Was it going to spin out of control? The developing situation, one might say with calculated understatement, wasn’t particularly cheering.
But then the Biden administration, unnoticed and unappreciated by the folks at home, pulled off a set of geopolitical masterstrokes. Truly, the international diplomacy was a thing of beauty.
Reluctant, doubtful allies were brought back together and persuaded that things were now different, that America was back, and its commitment to the western alliance system was again rock-solid. NATO membership grew (the addition of Finland making real one of Putin’s worst nightmares), and European nations were persuaded to join America in pouring billions worth of arms and aid into Ukraine. Eventually, the burden of supplying the tanks, missile systems, and now aircraft, was shared throughout the NATO alliance. Everybody that mattered was fully on-board. While some, including me, have complained about the speed and scope of the effort to arm the Ukrainians, the fact remains that timely western assistance empowered this small, apparently overmatched country to stalemate mighty Russia. Putin’s risky gambit has thus far proved far more expensive, in both lives and treasure, than could ever be justified by the minor gains he’s achieved, a failure that might in due course spell the end of his fetid regime. This is all down to Biden. Every bit of it.
It’s been a huge success, yet the job is still only half finished. Having lost much of the territory they seized at the outset, the Russians, at times looking desperate, are now beating themselves to death trying to win, suffering, thus far, over 300,000 casualties, and losing literally thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles. It seems not to matter. Putin won’t quit, even while the entire Russian war machine, once feared as the second most powerful on earth, is being slowly ground down to a powder.
Putin isn’t giving up because such wouldn’t make sense so long as he still has a chance to win, which, sadly, he does. Unfortunately, the Ukrainians’ much anticipated Spring counteroffensive wasn’t very successful, and now they’re back on the defensive, straining to hold fast against repeated Russian assaults all along a 600 mile front, and suffering greatly. Something’s got to give eventually, and Vlad’s hoping it’s going to be our political will. He’s hoping to outlast us. He’s hoping America will lose interest. He’s counting on a suspiciously pro-Russian GOP to help him out. He’s praying for a Trump victory in 2024. Meanwhile, despite the horrific losses, and manifest incompetence, Putin remains firmly in control of his people and his military, and continues to hurl masses of increasingly ill-trained and poorly equipped conscripts into the meat grinder, gaining little in the short term but maintaining the almost unbearable pressure. He figures the defenders can’t take it forever. He also knows that before the Ukrainians can regroup, re-arm, and attempt another counteroffensive, they have to make it through another long, cold winter, while his air and missile forces do everything they can to destroy vital infrastructure and leave them all freezing in the dark without electricity. The beleaguered Ukrainians are going to require the upkeep, replenishment, and augmentation of God knows how many sophisticated air defence systems and associated missiles, hugely expensive weapons like Patriot and Iris-T, to have any chance of keeping the lights on. It follows that Ukraine’s only hope of holding out lies in an ongoing stream of large-scale American support – the Europeans can’t do it all on their own, even if they remain stalwart should America abandon them – and we all know that even at the best of times, the Americans lack staying power. Now, with key Republicans in the House and Senate acting as if they’re taking their marching orders from Moscow, and with Trump perhaps waiting in the wings, Vlad sees bright light at the end of the lengthy tunnel he’s dug for himself.
It’s at this crucial juncture, with the future of Europe and much more besides balanced on a knife’s edge, that the Republicans have decided to play their favourite game: extortion. Always, with these guys, it’s the extortion. A new infusion of money and weapons is needed, right now, for Ukraine to keep on fighting. So of course, sensing an opportunity to score some cheap points with the Base, and eager, as ever, to thrust a broom handle into Biden’s spokes just for the hell of it, the GOP is threatening to cut off aid unless they get what they want on the entirely unrelated issue of immigration and border security. It’s obscenely cynical. There they all are, chanting America First like the isolationists who wanted to let Hitler do as he pleased, while along comes Mike Johnson, acting in extreme bad faith, to recite all the usual Republican bullshit about illegal immigrants, terrorists, and fentanyl flowing in over the supposedly open border with Mexico, as if any of that, even if true, has anything to do with the matter at hand. Even worse is what he says right off the top about another good reason to suspend American support:
They haven’t shown him their plan to win.
Holy crap, they haven’t shown you a sure-fired victory plan, Mike? Really? Well, dumbass, maybe that’s because the way forward at this point is intuitively obvious, and has to be based on the acceptance that nothing right now augurs in favour of a quick Ukrainian victory. Jesus H. Christ on horseback, what plan can there now possibly be, except to hang on, survive, wear down the enemy, and hope another opportunity for successful counterattack eventually arises? What plan do they need to unveil to get you to support the most unambiguously righteous cause I’ve seen in my lifetime? We’ve been here before, not so long ago, if history might help you in figuring this out; ask yourself, Mike, what plan did Great Britain have in 1940, as Hitler seized the continent and the Battle of Britain loomed? What had Roosevelt and Churchill gamed out as the sure path to victory back when it seemed likely that if the Luftwaffe didn’t polish Britain off, the U-boats would? Tell you what, I’ll let Churchill himself lay it out for you. This is what he said in Parliament, after promising, famously, that his country would fight the Germans tooth and nail every step of the way, in the air, on the sea, and, if it came to that, on the beaches, in the hills, in the hedgerows, everywhere. They would never surrender. If, even so, disaster and defeat still followed, there was still one shining hope:
…and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.
Do you sense any parallels, Mike? Because that’s the plan, you pompous asshole. Ukraine is now hanging on by its fingernails, waiting, hoping, and praying that American power will, in due course, rescue it from tyrannical, totalitarian aggression. In the near term, they need simply to muster the determination to preserve their existence. They ask only for the tools. They’ll supply the blood. You want a plan? The plan for now is to keep them in the fight. How about giving them all the weapons and training they need to bounce back and break Putin’s army? That would be a plan, right? How about you give them something that can take down the Kerch bridge? How about you pull a couple of hundred more Bradleys out of storage? Let’s throw in a few hundred M-1s too, while we’re at it, you’ve got thousands of those in mothballs too. Yeah, I know, it’ll take time to bring them all back to serviceable status, so here’s another plan – get going on it now.
With what America can easily give them, the Ukrainians could add legions to the 320,000 casualties they’ve already inflicted upon the Russians, and with any luck persevere until the enemy finally gives up, or is weakened enough that it’s possible, finally, to go back on the offensive. With American support, they might then go beyond holding the line, and drive the Russians all the way back to where they came from. Along the way, they might also effectively remove one of America’s most dangerous geopolitical rivals from the global struggle, just when it’s becoming increasingly vital to devote every possible resource to the confrontation with China in the Pacific. Imagine! Hobbling Russia for generations to come! All for about 5% of the annual defence budget, almost all of which, by the way, is being spent at home, I’ll wager a lot of it in your district, Mike – I seem to recall that Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon all have operations in Louisiana. In fact, it says here that the Defence Department has slathered about 42 billion into your dirt-poor home State over the last 20 years or so:
https://www.governmentcontractswon.com/department/defense/louisiana_counties.asp
Think of the money that’ll slosh around now! But look, never mind the bonanza back home. Forget that these expenditures are doing a lot of good, revitalizing dormant defense industries at just the right time, spooling up the production lines for shells, Stinger and Javelin missiles, and all of that other stuff we’ve come to realize we’d never stockpiled in adequate quantities. Heck, forget about the rights and wrongs of the situation too, and don’t even worry that the vengeful, intolerant God you believe in will probably send you straight to Hell if you let the Ukrainians twist in the wind. Instead, think about this: what we have here is an incredible geopolitical opportunity. At only modest cost to America, while spilling no American blood, an arch-foe on the international scene can be beaten so badly that all further thoughts of expansion and invasion will be driven forever from its dictator’s scheming little mind, supposing his authority survives the abject humiliation. It’s literally a once-in-a-lifetime shot that Ukraine is offering us. It would be unforgivable strategic malpractice to miss this chance.
Moreover, while a missed opportunity of this magnitude is bad enough, that’s not the half of it. There could be awful consequences if Russia wins this fight. The hawks in China will be emboldened, and might begin thinking that an invasion of Taiwan, and subsequent outright seizure of the entire South China Sea, can be pulled off absent American interference. Putin may cast covetous eyes toward other former Soviet vassal states, now that America has demonstrated an unwillingness to draw any sort of line in Europe. Allies all over the world, having finally lost all faith, may drift away, while NATO, just recently ascendant, may fall apart – what good would it be any longer? Other nations, going forward, will quite rightly have no confidence in American pledges of support. And America, to the extreme detriment of the liberal, rules-based international order that still stands as its greatest achievement, will be weakened, maybe severely.
It’s all so frigging obvious.
Given the stakes, I’m hoping, just this once, that the Democrats cave to GOP blackmail, and give the Republicans what they want on immigration. It will set a horrible precedent, but the costs of cutting off support to Ukraine would be far too great to contemplate. Failing that, is it really too much to hope for that the Republicans will come to their senses on this?
This is one of those rare, stark moments. So much is on the line, geopolitically, and morally too. America can stand up now for the world order it built almost 80 years ago following the costly defeat of the Axis powers, or back away from Ukraine, thus to be seriously and perhaps irretrievably diminished as a world power, no longer sufficiently able to wield influence and curb the adventurism of hostile dictatorial regimes. It’s time for your mighty nation to assert itself, Mike, while there’s still a chance of keeping it that way. You want to Make America Great Again? Well here’s your chance. So what are you and your nihilistic buddies going to do? Play dirty little domestic political games, sniggering like mischievous schoolboys? Or will you and your fellow arsonists rise, as impossible as it now seems, to meet the moment?
The Old World once again waits for the New to weigh in. The whole world’s watching. For the love of God, Mr. Speaker, do your duty.
the needlefish 