Given the mass neurosis that now passes for Western political conscience I suppose this was inevitable. But it is still shocking to hear apparently rational commentators claim that somehow all of this horror – the bombing of civilian neighbourhoods, the missile attacks on maternity hospitals, the threat to remove a democratic government – is our fault.
It was not Russia’s maniacal fixation on an ancient mission to unite with its Ukrainian brethren that drove this onslaught. Or even the more cynical fear of its leaders that their nation was being eclipsed in the global game. No, the real cause of this unspeakable mayhem is “Nato expansionism” – which is to say, the desire of Ukraine to seek the protection of the West and the West’s inclination to offer it.
Absurdly, this desire on the one side and willingness to consider such a request on the other, have been given overwhelming credence by the very Russian assault which was supposedly provoked by the existence of them.
In other words, Russia is waging an armed attack on the population of a country which had the presumption to claim that it needed protection from a Russian attack. Have I got that right?
And just to add to the logical nonsense, what would the result be if Putin succeeded in taking Ukraine back into the Russian motherland? (Which is clearly the ultimate aim, contrary to his interim insistence that all he wants are the eastern bits of it, to act as a neutral buffer zone.)
Then Russia would have states like Poland and Hungary which are full members of Nato on its Western border, would it not? What then? Would they be next in line for assault because their proximity would be seen as an imminent threat? The Kremlin might be able to sell this bizarre account to its captive audience at home but how in the name of God can anyone in the West fail to see that it is laughable?
Some of this “we are to blame” rhetoric comes from the Left and is clearly part of the orgy of self-loathing and assumed guilt that dominates western consciousness. We must take responsibility for every modern evil – social inequality because we profited from the slave trade, climate change because we created the industrial revolution – and now the homicidal mania of the Kremlin because we had the effrontery to offer protection to former Soviet satellites who pleaded with us to provide it.
The inevitable conclusion to which this leads is that the West must withdraw from any contest with even the most dangerous or malevolent adversary: a kind of unilateral moral disarmament. Useful idiots have been talking like this for generations but during the Cold War there was a comprehensible objective: they wanted Communism to win and were prepared to overlook Stalin’s genocidal tactics (in Ukraine, most notably) and the suppression of human freedom, in its name.
What motivates the Russia apologists now that the country is a corrupt kleptocracy with no alternative social ideal to offer? Who knows? None of the exponents have provided anything that would count as an answer.
But there is another strand to this peculiar position which comes mainly from the Right, most notably in the United States. It is, to an extent, simply the most recent incarnation of American isolationism which had a memorable record in the twentieth century for keeping the country out of both world wars for an unconscionable length of time. So maybe there is nothing very new here.
The idea that America should steer clear of Europe’s inherited hatreds, and concentrate instead on the safety and prosperity of its own people has been a fairly reliable vote winner in US elections. That sort of dirty vengeance between the old world’s dying imperial powers is, after all, just what most migrants to America had fled.
Why get mixed up in those endless battles when you could just enjoy the new life and the opportunities it offers? It is worth noting that support for foreign military interventions generally becomes palatable in America only when the country itself comes under direct attack – the invasion of Iraq after 9/11, for example.
The principle here is that America is seen as a refuge from persecution and poverty (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…”) and that promise must entail staying out of the old national hatreds and rivalries which drove so many people to its shores.
There is however a very strong opposing interpretation of American destiny. Written into the sacred documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution, is not just a guarantee of freedom and self-determination for the nation’s own inhabitants. There is a much greater premise that underpins the entire project. Those texts are the most eloquent expressions ever composed of the Enlightenment belief in universal human rights.
Their commitment to protect “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is made on the understanding that these rights are “unalienable” and are not the sole property of citizens of the United States.
This has always been the basis of American exceptionalism: it was to be a beacon to the world, a model and protector of democratic nationhood wherever it was under threat. However imperfectly that role may have been carried out, it must be considered essential to the American idea. If the United States does not stand for this, what is it? A bolthole where the poor people of the world go in the hope of getting rich? Or just an escape from whatever hell prevails in those foreign lands for which it has little concern?
In recent years it has tried to disengage itself from this responsibility: to renounce its obligations and deny any attempt at a Pax Americana. The end of the Cold War gave a huge impetus to this withdrawal. But that retreat was an ignominious betrayal of what the Founding Fathers – whose authority is endlessly invoked by Americans on the Right – saw as the nation’s identity.
Nobody who calls himself a patriot should be espousing it.
