Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Brian LaPierre
Sat, February 26, 2022
Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a cynical, brutal and inhumane example of the discredited and obsolete principle that “might makes right.”
Singlehandedly, Putin has plunged Europe into the worst military crisis since WWII and sank American-Russian relations to the worst depths of the Cold War period. With this obscene and grotesque invasion, Putin is gambling with the future of the country he has misruled and dominated for over two decades. Putin will lose this bet because his war is more than an exercise in ethical and legal nihilism. It is self-defeating.
Through his aggression, Putin has brought about the very outcomes against which he claims to be fighting. Instead of restoring its power, he has isolated Russia diplomatically and smeared its international reputation. Apart from his autocratic allies in China and Mar-a-Lago, Putin has united the world against him and reinforced its commitment to contain Russian expansionism. In contrast to the disunity and ambiguities of the Trump era, Putin has revitalized and given new urgency to both NATO and the Euro-Atlantic alliance of liberal democracies. Rather than rolling back America’s military presence in the former Soviet space, Putin’s hostile policies have led to increased military deployments on Russia’s western frontier.
Putin’s war has also exposed the Russian nation to potentially crippling economic warfare. Sanctions and countersanctions will hurt everyone. They will hit Russia harder and damage it more deeply given his country’s lack of economic depth, diversification and dynamism. If the sanctions regime is robust, unified, and lengthy, Russia will not be able to escape this economic noose through cryptocurrency transactions, Chinese support and internal currency reserves. As the ruble tanks and Russians watch the accumulated purchasing power of their hard-earned savings, pensions, and scholarships disappear, many Russians will wonder whether Putin’s military adventure abroad is worth the price of their lowered living standards and livelihoods.
Militarily, Russia has the force to overwhelm Ukraine in this opening phase of conventional military operations. Russia does not have the force, however, to occupy and control Ukraine in the long term through violence alone. Nor can it do so in the face of widespread Ukrainian opposition, resistance, and prolonged insurgency. While it will be easy to invade Ukraine, Putin will find that it is difficult to pacify it, impossible to Russify it, and dangerous to withdraw from it.
Lastly, I do not (and cannot) believe that the Russian public supports this war. For all his false flag operations, disinformation, and posturing, Putin has not prepared Russia to support a war of aggression and territorial aggrandizement in Ukraine. If this conflict is bloody and protracted, it will be deeply distressing and increasingly unpopular with the average Russian. It will also be deeply destructive to Putin’s political image and domestic reputation as a competent and rational technocrat.
Tragically, it is the ordinary people who will suffer the most from Putin’s hubris and mistakes. Undoubtedly, however, this war will produce many more collateral casualties. One of them—unbeknownst to all the cronies and sycophants in the Kremlin—may be Vladimir Putin’s domestic popularity, legitimacy, and power.
By Dr. Brian LaPierre is an associate professor of history at The University of Southern Mississippi School of Humanities. You can reach him at brian.lapierre@usm.edu.
Our leaders’ contempt for the truth have led us into war | Opinion
Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Fri, February 25, 2022
Then as now, it began with lies.
On Sept. 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler’s forces crossed the border into Poland. The German chancellor did so on the pretext that ethnic Germans were being persecuted. German operatives, disguised as Poles, even staged an attack on a German radio station, yelling anti-German threats into the microphone.
With that lie, the most devastating war in the history of the world began.
It is far too early to know how devastating this latest European war will turn out to be, how many will die, how many will be left homeless and stateless, how the repercussions will play out across the globe. There is, however, an ominous resonance in the lies from which it arose.
First, Russian leader Vladimir Putin claimed he had no intention of invading Ukraine, even as he massed troops on that country’s border. Then he announced Russia would recognize two separatist regions. Finally, shortly before Russian ordnance began to pound the smaller country, he announced a “military operation” aimed at “peacekeeping” and “denazification.”
Now, as then, lies. And now, as then, what strikes you is not just the utter brazenness of them, but the threadbare flimsiness of them. Hitler, granted, put some work into his lie, but at the end of the day, was anyone really expected to believe that Poland, which had more horses than tanks, had suddenly decided to attack its heavily armed neighbor?
Putin’s lies are even shoddier. He would have us believe his forces were needed to keep the peace in a nation that was at peace and to evict Nazis from a nation whose democratically elected president is a Jew. These are the kinds of lies you tell when you don’t care what anyone thinks. Their very shabbiness is an expression of contempt.
And the fact that Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance, Steve Bannon and other denizens of the American right either lionize this liar — “Savvy,” Trump called him — or dismiss the suffering of his victims — “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine,” said Vance — is a clear, albeit superfluous indicator of just how broken our own country has become.
Like Putin, much of the right bears allegiance not to truth, much less to democracy, but rather, to the brutish power of the strongman to do as he pleases, unfettered by such niceties. That’s what they very nearly imposed in 2016. It is what they promise in 2024. And if you’re not frightened, you’re not paying attention.
This moment has been a long time coming. A little more than a quarter century ago, a House speaker named Newt Gingrich declared politics war and an upstart cable network called Fox declared facts optional. It was called a conservative resurgence, but it was actually the foundation stone for the kingdom of lies our country has become.
No wonder Trump likes Putin and claims the feeling is mutual. Each recognizes himself in the other.
What they recognize, what they have in common, is that transactional disdain for the truth and, more to the point, for anyone naive enough to expect it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented her Russian counterpart a red “reset” button, Russia accepted it, but kept right on being a thugocracy. TV pundits kept assuring us Trump was going to “become presidential” any second now, but to his last day, he remained a willful child. Now families seek refuge in Ukrainian subways, while Trump cheers their tormentor on.
Let no one be surprised.
What begins in lies tends to end in carnage.
Alexei Nikolsky/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Fri, February 25, 2022
Then as now, it began with lies.
On Sept. 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler’s forces crossed the border into Poland. The German chancellor did so on the pretext that ethnic Germans were being persecuted. German operatives, disguised as Poles, even staged an attack on a German radio station, yelling anti-German threats into the microphone.
With that lie, the most devastating war in the history of the world began.
It is far too early to know how devastating this latest European war will turn out to be, how many will die, how many will be left homeless and stateless, how the repercussions will play out across the globe. There is, however, an ominous resonance in the lies from which it arose.
First, Russian leader Vladimir Putin claimed he had no intention of invading Ukraine, even as he massed troops on that country’s border. Then he announced Russia would recognize two separatist regions. Finally, shortly before Russian ordnance began to pound the smaller country, he announced a “military operation” aimed at “peacekeeping” and “denazification.”
Now, as then, lies. And now, as then, what strikes you is not just the utter brazenness of them, but the threadbare flimsiness of them. Hitler, granted, put some work into his lie, but at the end of the day, was anyone really expected to believe that Poland, which had more horses than tanks, had suddenly decided to attack its heavily armed neighbor?
Putin’s lies are even shoddier. He would have us believe his forces were needed to keep the peace in a nation that was at peace and to evict Nazis from a nation whose democratically elected president is a Jew. These are the kinds of lies you tell when you don’t care what anyone thinks. Their very shabbiness is an expression of contempt.
And the fact that Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, J.D. Vance, Steve Bannon and other denizens of the American right either lionize this liar — “Savvy,” Trump called him — or dismiss the suffering of his victims — “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine,” said Vance — is a clear, albeit superfluous indicator of just how broken our own country has become.
Like Putin, much of the right bears allegiance not to truth, much less to democracy, but rather, to the brutish power of the strongman to do as he pleases, unfettered by such niceties. That’s what they very nearly imposed in 2016. It is what they promise in 2024. And if you’re not frightened, you’re not paying attention.
This moment has been a long time coming. A little more than a quarter century ago, a House speaker named Newt Gingrich declared politics war and an upstart cable network called Fox declared facts optional. It was called a conservative resurgence, but it was actually the foundation stone for the kingdom of lies our country has become.
No wonder Trump likes Putin and claims the feeling is mutual. Each recognizes himself in the other.
What they recognize, what they have in common, is that transactional disdain for the truth and, more to the point, for anyone naive enough to expect it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented her Russian counterpart a red “reset” button, Russia accepted it, but kept right on being a thugocracy. TV pundits kept assuring us Trump was going to “become presidential” any second now, but to his last day, he remained a willful child. Now families seek refuge in Ukrainian subways, while Trump cheers their tormentor on.
Let no one be surprised.
What begins in lies tends to end in carnage.
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