Russia can't "help" being what it is--but we can

 

In the war in Ukraine, competing “intelligence reports” are all over the map about who is “winning” it, although a cursory look at the current map would suggest that Russia is having the best of it. Rocket and missile attacks have resumed in the Kyiv region, and some have reportedly been fired from Belarus, which no longer pretends to be a “neutral” party. There are reports that Ukraine is attempting a counteroffensive of its own in the south, but we are still talking about a country with only a fraction of the manpower of its attacker. In any event, it is really quite a sad set of circumstances in that part of the world; but then again it isn’t really that surprising, given the two competing “systems” involved—one where the government has to answer to the people, and the other where the people have to answer to the government.

Outside of threats from Vladimir Putin and  his stooges to take out the east and west coasts, we have been fairly fortunate to live in a “peaceful” country free from outside interference—except, of course, cyber-attacks from Russia and China. This certainly isn’t Afghanistan, where “rule” under the current version of the Taliban is just as bad as you thought it could be.  In fact most of what we call “Western” countries have maintained the peace within their own borders because they have stable democratic systems and a free press,

Of course there are the occasional “hiccups” where instability can occur when one element of the press (in this country Fox News) disseminates false conspiracies in support of “politicians” with authoritarian tendencies. The last time “the West” saw a major conflagration was when one country within its sphere, Germany, fell into that trap. Most people in Germany still wanted to live a peaceful life and have a good time, and if that meant looking the other way at what the regime was doing to dissenters and Jews, well that was fine as long as they personally were left alone. Of course that wasn’t enough for its “leader,” who had very personal visions beyond the “normal” and expected the people to share his vision of their “destiny”—because if they did not, it was prison or death.

It’s the same for the Russian “average citizen.” They have not been “threatened” by an outside enemy, only from within by a man with delusions of grandeur. Putin seems to share characteristics with both Hitler and Stalin; as with the former who saw the Germans after World War I as a "master race" crushed by inferior peoples, Putin perceives loss of "respect" for Russians in the world order, and Russia can only regain its "rightful place" as a "superpower" by brute force. As to the latter, Putin desires to lord over a party apparatus that sees its own people as the "enemy" that needs to be beaten into cowering submission. 

These delusions are the main explanations for why a country like Russia ruled by someone like Putin is perceived the way it is. After all, when was the last time Russia’s “sovereignty” or people threatened by anyone since World War II, save for the odd terrorist attack that all countries in the West have encountered and still managed to carry on as before? The break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s was of its own accord; it wasn’t “forced” by pressure from the West or NATO.

Few in the West really wants anything to do with Russia if they can help it. Yet ignoring or avoiding “antagonizing” Russia—or more correctly its paranoid leaders—only makes the Russians more paranoid. Now we have this mess in Ukraine that nobody in the West wanted; of course the West felt compelled to respond when Ukraine, because of the fear of what adventures Putin had planned  after the annexation of the Crimea, tried to find greater “security” by making feelers for incorporation into Western Europe’s sphere.

Naturally this antagonized Putin, who it seems had other ideas, mainly to re-incorporate Ukraine into Russia’s sphere either as a proxy state or back into a Russian province. It is clear by looking at the map that Putin’s long-term plan (or short-term, depending how his military does) is to absorb all of Ukraine. Russia’s foreign minister, Lavrov, continues to be all over the map with his threats, changing from claiming that Russia wasn’t intending on “regime change” in Ukraine to now saying they are. It is clear that Putin is not satisfied with a couple of eastern “provinces” or even just Ukraine’s southern coast; he wants all of Ukraine. We know that.

So what we are seeing is why there can be no actual “peace” when an allegedly “European” country whose people want the “perks” of democratic societies, but don’t want to do the work, choosing instead to live under an authoritarian regime that has a powerless, rubber-stamp “legislature” and lacks a free press—and they have chosen to allow this to happen. Ukrainians for their part seem to want to be more “like us,” but Putin can’t allow that because it might set a “bad” example for Russians who see the example of Belarus as a “country” that confirms that East Slavs are not by nature people who like “conflict” between opposing parties, and prefer to do as they are told and not make any waves that might get them imprisoned or shot.

Ukraine thus cannot be allowed to become a “stable democracy” more like the West than the East. Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine are thus not just a “message” for Ukrainians, but for Russians or people in the client states who have ideas about “self-rule” and the possibility for a better life.

The truth is that there are lessons we can all learn from this. An authoritarian regime without a free press, and with citizenry caught up in the rhetoric of nationalism and “culture wars” represents a warning to those who fall under the spell of personality cults that promise “stability” at the cost not just of the freedom to speak the truth in an effort avoid unnecessary violent action both within and without, but ultimately the freedom to act as well. We already have seen a neo-Trumpist, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, sign one law outlawing mass protests that was subsequently delayed in its implementation by a court order, and another law which bans anti-hate instruction in schools for being "anti-white."

The destruction of democratic processes and a free press allowed a psychotic authoritarian like Putin to act unimpeded; this country came close to seeing an insurrection that would have allowed a psychotic authoritarian—Donald Trump—to undermine the democratic process, with the help of a political party with the mindset of a single-party system, and a news network that acts as its official propaganda organ. Contrary to what its perpetrators believed, if the January 6 insurrectionists had been “successful” they would have taken this country a step toward where Russia is today. What they call “freedom” today is tomorrow’s servitude.