Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian who writes about current events from a deeply informed historical perspective. In today’s post, she reflects on how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed the world. I remembered, as I read it, that Trump asked for only one change in the 2016 Republican platform: the omission of a boilerplate pledge to send military aid to Ukraine if it was threatened. Those who noticed wondered if the change reflected Paul Manafort’s decade as a well-paid lobbyist for the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort’s multimillion-dollar gig ended when a months-long popular protest persuaded Yanukovych to resign and flee to Moscow.
Richardson writes:
Southern novelist William Faulkner’s famous line saying “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” is usually interpreted as a reflection on how the evils of our history continue to shape the present. But Faulkner also argued, equally accurately, that the past is “not even past” because what happens in the present changes the way we remember the past.
Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the defiant and heroic response of the people of Ukraine to that new invasion are changing the way we remember the past.
Less than a week ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched an assault on Ukraine, and with his large military force, rebuilt after the military’s poor showing in its 2008 invasion of Georgia, it seemed to most observers that such an attack would be quick and deadly. He seemed unstoppable. For all that his position at home has been weakening for a while now as a slow economy and the political opposition of people like Alexei Navalny have turned people against him, his global influence seemed to be growing. That he believed an attack on Ukraine would be quick and successful was clear today when a number of Russian state media outlets published an essay, obviously written before the invasion, announcing Russia’s victory in Ukraine, saying ominously that “Putin solved the Ukrainian question forever…. Ukraine has returned to Russia.”
But Ukrainians changed the story line. While the war is still underway and deadly, and while Russia continues to escalate its attacks, no matter what happens the world will never go back to where it was a week ago. Suddenly, autocracy, rather than democracy, appears to be on the ropes.
In that new story, countries are organizing against Putin’s aggression and the authoritarianism behind it. Leaders of the world’s major economies, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore, though not China, are working together to deny Putin’s access to the world’s financial markets.
As countries work together, international sanctions appear to be having an effect: a Russian bank this morning offered to exchange rubles for dollars at a rate of 171:1. Before the announcement that Europe and the U.S. would target Russia’s central bank, the rate was 83:1. Monday morning, Moscow time, the ruble plunged 30%. As Russia’s economy descends into chaos, investors are jumping out: today BP, Russia’s largest foreign investor, announced it is abandoning its investment in the Russian oil company Rosneft and pulling out of the country, at a loss of what is estimated to be about $25 billion.
The European Union has suddenly taken on a large military role in the world, announcing it would supply fighter jets to Ukraine. Sweden, which is a member of the E.U., will also send military aid to Ukraine. And German chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany, which has tended to underfund its military, would commit 100 billion euros, which is about $112.7 billion, to support its armed forces. The E.U. has also prohibited all Russian planes from its airspace, including Russian-chartered private jets.
Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, tweeted: “Russian elites fear Putin. But they no longer respect him. He has ruined their lives—damaged their fortunes, damaged the future of their kids, and may now have turned society away from them. They were living just fine until a week ago. Now, their lives will never be the same.”
Global power is different this week than last. Anti-authoritarian nations are pushing back on Russia and the techniques Putin has used to gain outsized influence. Today the E.U. banned media outlets operated by the Russian state. The White House and our allies also announced a new “transatlantic task force that will identify and freeze the assets of sanctioned individuals and companies—Russian officials and elites close to the Russian government, as well as their families, and their enablers.”
That word “enablers” seems an important one, for since 2016 there have been plenty of apologists for Putin here in the U.S. And yet now, with the weight of popular opinion shifting toward a defense of democracy, Republicans who previously cozied up to Putin are suddenly stating their support for Ukraine and trying to suggest that Putin has gotten out of line only because he sees Biden as weak. Under Trump, they say, Putin never would have invaded Ukraine, and they are praising Trump for providing aid to Ukraine in 2019.
They are hoping that their present support for Ukraine and democracy makes us forget their past support for Putin, even as former president Trump continues to call him “smart.” And yet, Republicans changed their party’s 2016 platform to favor Russia over Ukraine; accepted Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syria in October 2019, giving Russia a strategic foothold in the Middle East; and looked the other way when Trump withheld $391 million to help Ukraine resist Russian invasion until newly elected Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to help rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election. (Trump did release the money after the story of the “perfect phone call” came out, but the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which investigated the withholding of funds, concluded that holding back the money at all was illegal.)
But rather than making us forget Republicans’ enabling of Putin’s expansion, the new story in which democracy has the upper hand might have the opposite effect. Now that people can clearly see exactly the man Republicans have supported, they will want to know why our leaders, who have taken an oath to our democratic Constitution, were willing to throw in their lot with a foreign autocrat. The answer to that question might well force us to rethink a lot of what we thought we knew about the last several years.
In today’s America, the past certainly is not past.
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I read an interesting piece yesterday (don’t remember the source but it was a major news media outlet) that brought up the fact that democracies started losing ground to authoritarians after Putin became Russia’s new Tzar/dictator.
It made a convincing case that the rise of authoritarianism was all linked to Putin, his hackers, his invasion of the Crimea, Georgia (the nation, not the state), having reporters and high profile leaders that criticize him assassinated, creating alliances with other dictators, et al.
After reading that it was clear to me that what’s happening today is another step taht is linked to Putin’s long game.
I think that the only way to stop him is to fill an urn with his ashes. As long as he holds power, he will keep right on pushing his long game.
Putin got the legislature to agree to extend his term until 2034!
I expect Putin to succumb to “lead poisoning” rather soon.
The Russian military will not want to see their families, friends, and country die for the whims of a mad dictator. If he orders nukes used, he will die.
Putin is threatening nuclear war, the man doesn’t give a damn how many people die because of his inner neuroses and feelings of inadequacy. War is a bloody chaotic situation in which fatal mistakes are the norm. Will Putin accidentally lob some bombs on Poland or other allied countries?
CNN reporters in Ukraine have reported seeing a Russian thermobaric, or vacuum, mobile missile on a road there. This horrific weapon is illegal under international law.
cx: mobile missile launcher
There are reports of its use,
Cox Richardson’s antepenultimate sentence: “Now that people can clearly see exactly the man Republicans have supported, they will want to know why our leaders, who have taken an oath to our democratic Constitution, were willing to throw in their lot with a foreign autocrat.”
Did she intend the penultimate word to be ?
That is: Did she intend the penultimate word to be “domestic”?
lol
Lloyd, I read that article, and also cannot remember the source.
On another subtopic, I have not seen any comments or analysis in the press about the forced migration of Ukranian refugees –one current estimation is 500,000– as a weapon of war, and the havoc and expense that will create in former Soviet states like Poland, as well as NATO countries.
This is likely a part of putins’s calculation, or at least a welcome byproduct. In WW2 Battle of Britain, the Nazis deliberately used unexploded bombs –UXBs– rigged to explode not on impact, but when the bomb disposal crews tried to disarm and remove them.
Even when a UXB was successfully disarmed, it took the efforts of many soldiers and civilians, caused the evacuation of entire neighborhoods for hours or days, and unleashed additional terror. The Nazis even used small toy-like UXBs that children might find in the bushes. British ITV made a powerful, award-winning series about this in 1979 called Danger UXB. It was shown in this country on Masterpiece Theatre, and is still available online.
Maybe we could exchange our putin-loving fake patriots for Ukrainian refugees.
Maybe we could exchange our putin-loving fake patriots for Ukrainian refugees.
An excellent idea
I always appreciate Heather Cox Richardson’s well-supported, well-reasoned take on current events.
And I agree that the Republicans changing that Ukraine plank in the 2016 platform at Trump’s behest was important. It signaled to Trump and Putin that the Republicans were his lapdogs. That’s why the co-opted NYT has studiously avoided writing lots of news stories about the Republican response to Ukraine. It’s not a story if the Republicans don’t want it to be a story when NYT reporters value their Republican sources liking them far more than they value reporting reality.
Putin and Trump understood that the so-called liberal media was also its lapdogs when it came to presenting issues. The so-called liberal media presented the impeachment story of Trump withholding aid to Ukraine as a “both sides” “partisan” story. An unprecedented action and phone call that was so unquestionably wrong that the Trump White House had the conversation improperly called “top secret” to keep it hidden was presented as a “both sides have a good point” issue. If a Democrat had done that, the NYT would have run endless critical headlines where the criminality was a non-issue — it was simply accepted fact — and the only issue was whether the Democrats in Congress would condone criminality.
Even now, I expect the Republicans’ attempt to make this “Biden’s fault” to be presented by the NYT as “could be true, who knows”. Look at how the NYT turned the Afghanistan crisis after the withdrawal into something that was entirely Biden’s fault. The NYT journalists believe they are being “fair and balanced” when they offer up the Republican narrative as having the weight of truth. Trump’s deal with the Taliban that the Republicans cheered on and demanded Biden follow turned into Biden being responsible for the chaos that followed. And completely erased from the narrative is the Biden Administration’s unprecedented success in safely evacuating over 100,000 people, which the Trump plan that the Republicans were touting would have left to die.
So I have no doubt that Putin assumed that the NYT and the so-called “liberal media” would do their usual bang up job of amplifying and legitimizing all the things that the Republicans said about how Putin “needed” to invade Ukraine and the US should stay out. We heard our resident Putin-defender spewing that propaganda here.
But the people of Ukraine did not let that false Republican narrative that the NYT journalists who love their Republican sources always amplify take hold. Zelensky stood strong and so did the people of Ukraine.
That’s why Putin is surprised. He knew from the past that the so-called liberal media – especially the NYT – always eagerly amplifies the Republican framing so of course Putin expected that his lapdog Republicans’ pro-Putin framing would result in the NYT writing endless stories legitimizing the invasion, by presenting the Republican “Putin was justified” view as coming from the folks who are always models of truthfulness and integrity.
But I give the NYT about another day or two before they decide that as journalists, their job is not to report the truth if the truth favors the Democrats. I give the NYT another day or two before they decide that if reality and truth is “biased” toward the democrats, then their job as reporters is to amplify and legitimize whatever false narrative the Republicans say to make sure their readers and all Americans understand that “even the liberal media” knows that this is a disaster of Biden’s making. The deaths of people in Ukraine are Biden’s fault – that will be what the NYT soon starts reporting on.
History doesn’t matter anymore to the overpaid NYT “journalists” who value cultivating their own Republican sources more than reporting the truth. They don’t want the Republicans to call them “biased” and that guides all their truly terrible reporting.
Putin thought the NYT reporters would have already pivoted to reporting only the Republican narrative a lot sooner because that is what the NYT reporters have been doing for the last 6 years. The fact that it has taken longer than he thought for the NYT to do their bang up job of pushing the Putin-Republican false narrative and amplifying it as truth has surprised Putin.
But I give the NYT just a few more days before they return to reporting the Republican narrative as fact. The NYT journalists are probably already promising their coveted Republican sources that they will give their stories that present their false reality as truth even more play than they gave their false Afghanistan stories. And remember that the NYT reporters were writing a dozen stories a day for many weeks that all began by presenting the same false Republican talking points as the reality!
So I have no doubt that coming soon are endless NYT stories that Biden is all to blame. Every day, 3 front page stories, for a month. That’s what Putin is waiting for.
Because Putin knows the NYT would never write a story about why the Republicans approved that plank or force the Republicans to go on record condemning Trump’s actions. The NYT is biding its time giving the Republicans total credibility so when the NYT starts publishing endless stories with the Republican false narrative blaming Biden, the journalists can give those lies extra legitimacy by presenting the Republicans spewing them as if they are honest, trustworthy and credible.
I would be delighted to be proven wrong.
That is part of the story. We can deplore Russia’s aggression–and Trump’s friendship with Putin and other autocrats. But let’s don’t forget our (America–the West) own contribution to the serious and dangerous problems Ukraine symbolizes. As a history teacher (retired) I know–as so many sadly don’t–about the US “intervention” in the Russian civil war of 1918. Russian kids all study it. Most of ours never do. (See “The Ignorant Armies” or Polar Bear expedition on google, etc.) We also have the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis to look at–where we (unbeknownst to most Americans) placed nuclear warheads in Turkey, to be challenged by nuclear warheads in Cuba. We have our own Monroe Doctrine, saying to the world, “stay out of the Western Hemisphere, it’s our sphere of influence”–and our many, many incursions, overthrow’s, etc. in various Latin American countries. Not to mention our overthrows of Russian allies in Libya, Iraq, and elsewhere. We have the alleged promises made by Reagan-Bush to Gorbachev, that if Russia allowed German re-unification, we’d not move NATO “one inch” to the east. Finally, we have our interference in Ukraine in 1914, where American officials, including Sen. McCain and others involved themselves in stimulating a revolution that ended with the pro-Russian president fleeing to Moscow for safety or support. People are being killed in Ukraine, as we speak. And the world is closer to unthinkable nuclear war. Let’s not use this dangerous time for finger-pointing, or chest beating. There’s enough blame to go around. Let’s all work for peace–which includes a good education–with complete history lessons–for all kids.
“We also have the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis to look at–where we (unbeknownst to most Americans) placed nuclear warheads in Turkey, to be challenged by nuclear warheads in Cuba.” If JFK could lie straight face to the American public, if I consider that Biden or Fauci may be sometimes less than truthful, am I a conspiracy theorist or a realist?
If JFK could lie straight face to the American public, if I consider that JFK may be sometimes less than truthful, am I a conspiracy theorist or a realist?
Fixed it for ya!
Or did you mean this?
I have read a few people posting lies on this blog.
If I consider that Ted may be sometimes less than truthful, am I conspiracy theorist or a realist?
By all means, the only evidence you need to consider a person less than truthful is to know that other people have been less than truthful, then I don’t know how you trust anyone.
There have been times in the past in which the United States has installed and supported brutal dictators–Pinochet, the Shah of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. And yes, this criminal (because in violation of international law) meddling in the internal affairs of foreign sovereign nations needs to stop if the world is ever to know peace. A Security Council veto should not be sufficient, going forward, to enable the overthrow of regimes with impunity, in violation of international law.
But do you not think that 2014 Maidan Revolution, we got it right, that we lent support to a popular democratic uprising? And do the people of Ukraine not have a right to decide their leadership for themselves rather than to have Putin make this decision for them? Curious as to your answer to this.
And what are your suggestions for preventing nuclear war? Surely it’s not proceeding with the further development and deployment of hypersonic nuclear missiles that can thwart nuclear defenses and subvert mutually assured destruction. Nor is it withdrawing from the INF and Open Skies agreements. All gleefully undertaken by Putin and Trump.
cx: The Shah of Iran, ofc
I highly recommend watching this: https://youtu.be/IexFtDCJNsM It’s an interview with Scott Ritter, the UN weapons inspector who tried to tell the world that Iraq didn’t have WMD (and was right). It’s a nuanced view – some of it supports your view, some of it mine, some of it neither. You won’t agree with all of it (I don’t either), but it’s an impartial presentation outside of mainstream U.S. media and Russian media from someone who knows a lot more about the region than any of us. In any case, the overall point is how dangerous this nuclear brinkmanship is on both sides. I hope you’ll give it a chance.
Dienne,
I watched some, not the whole hour. Is there any doubt which nation invaded Ukraine? Do you think Putin has a right to take control of Ukraine despite the overwhelming opposition of Ukrainians? You seem to believe we should let Putin take whatever he wants. You seem to think that the US or NATO forced Putin to invade because he felt encircled. Or do you think he is ”liberating” Ukraine? Why aretheremassdemonstrations against the war in Russia? I don’t think it’s possible to have a rational discussion with you because you are reflexively hostile to Biden, the U.S., and NATO. I never heard a word of criticism from you about Trump. You save your hostility for Hillary Clinton and Biden, whom you loathe. Why do you make excuses for Putin? Why do you rationalize the actions of Putin, who is a murderer and a tyrant? Why do you reserve your sympathy for a brute who sits on $200 billion?
Since you and I see the world so differently, I see no purpose in continuing any further discussion. I see men, women, and children being slaughtered by Russian military and I feel deep sorrow. You don’t care. Please go away.
“Why do you reserve your sympathy for a brute who sits on $200 billion?”
I think you answered your own question!
It takes a lot of money to hire troll farms. Maybe Bezos or Elon Musk have that kind of wealth, but folks like Biden or the Clintons are worth pocket change to folks like Putin.
Putin could spend the totality of the combined net worth of the Clintons and Biden in a single day and not even miss the money he has spent. It’s pocket change.The Clintons are extremely, extremely wealthy by any measure. And yet their entire net worth is pocket change to Putin. That buys a lot of trolling by folks who pretended to care about “warmongering Democrats” but it turned out they just didn’t like the Democrats, since the warmongering was fine, as long as Putin was doing it.
When Putin goes to war on another nation, it’s “peacekeeping.”
An interesting if often bizarrely distorted conversation, but the bottom line is implied by Diane’s key questions:
Is there any doubt which nation invaded Ukraine? 2. Do you think Putin has a right to take control of Ukraine despite the overwhelming opposition of Ukrainians?
Answers: 1. No; Russia is the criminal aggressor here 2. No; Only Ukrainians have this right.
Dienne77
If you think the US is solely responsible for goading Putin into an illegal, all-out war, you are entitled to that opinion. I’m pretty sure that there are many critics who address a serious concern over the role of US in controlling/dictating diplomatic communications that reflect unfavorably on Russia– regarding NATO expansion to the eastern Europe. It’s a serious security risk for Russia, and US diplomats knew that when George W. Bush was a president in 2008.
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that mad man’s paranoiac ambition for an old glorious Soviet empire (NOTE: Putin is an ex-KGB agent who had his vision ruined as witnessing the unification of Germany and the fall of Soviet Union in front of his eyes) trumped any sense of western hubris/calculation on foreign policy. He was planning an invasion for months.
I don’t agree with national intelligence type figure like Ned Price or Victoria Nuland, but none of those in Biden administration are responsible for mad man’s choice.
Don’t try to spread a fallacy that criticism of US foreign policy denies the criticism of Russia (or vice versa). It doesn’t fly.
One day, should humanity survive this infancy, such crude, vile, backward men as Putin will be remembered with horror and disbelief, the little man who always insisted on placing others at the end of an enormous table with himself at the head. In this, he and Trump are brothers from another mother, their insecurities requiring constant fawning and subservience from others, ludicrous ostentation, and cruel exercise of power and control. A sick little man, a malignant, pathological narcissist whom the world has allowed to have his bloody finger on the button that could destroy us all.
Humanity seems to periodically come back to the watering trough of authoritarianism. Like so many asses, they raise their silly heads, braying at the very people who would give them their respect as individuals. Slaying leaders and messengers that hold the rights of these very asses to be sacrosanct, they provide the ocean that floats the dictator and his machinations. There will always be the Putin, the Milosevic, the Hitler.
There will always be the Putin, the Milosevic, the Hitler.
It seems to me that we are seeing historic resistance to this sort of strongman rule. I hope that that is our future.
Joe Biden nailed it tonight. Way to go, Joe!
Roy: Maybe, as Adlai Stevenson said, “Tyranny is the natural condition of man.” He went on that only by the greatest effort can we avoid tyranny. But my point is that all wars–even WWII–end with a treaty of some kind. In our current situation, the sooner the better. We may argue about whether or not the West–with it’s moves to the East, and its overthrows of various governments–has threatened Russian leadership (and it probably isn’t just Putin who supports the attack on Ukraine) and thus contributed to this crisis–or not. (I think it definitely has). We may also vent our anger at Putin–as many of us did with Bush II when he lied us into the massive carnage in Iraq–and the endless “War on Terror.” We may point out that Putin was a KGB agent (true). But Bush I was the head of the CIA, wasn’t he? So what? We’re in a very deadly, dangerous war, and we need a way out. A massive attack on Russia and its 6000 nuclear warheads is out of the question. Biden is trying economic pressure. I hope that works. But, whatever, if Russia could agree to leave Ukraine alone, and Ukraine could agree to stay out of NATO, would that not be better than WWIII with nukes? Or are we suicidal?