February 27, 2022
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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Notes:
https://warontherocks.com/2018/09/russian-performance-in-the-russo-georgian-war-revisited/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/russia-ukraine-live-updates-n1290057/ncrd1290120
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-send-military-aid-ukraine-pm-andersson-2022-02-27/
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/27/world/russia-ukraine-war
https://www.reuters.com/business/bp-exit-opens-new-front-wests-campaign-against-russia-2022-02-27/
https://agsiw.org/russias-syria-intervention-paved-the-way-for-its-attack-on-ukraine/
https://www.gao.gov/products/b-331564
https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ukraines-culture-war-9838
Thanks, Heather for alerting us to the importance of this historical moment. I'm hoping it is not the beginning of the end of history.
Like most people who are even dimly aware of current events, I am horrified and saddened by the truly reckless and gratuitous war Putin has decided to wage against Ukraine, but I am also thrilled and uplifted by the Ukrainians’ courageous defense of their country and of their right to live in a peaceful democracy.
I have even become a fan of President Zelenskyy who, despite earlier being roundly dismissed as a neophyte and a lightweight by many commentators, has clearly mastered the fine art of true leadership under the most trying of circumstances in less than one week. Whatever it is he’s got, it’s extremely rare, and I will be devastated if/when the Russians finely manage to kill him. Putin is such a shit.
I agree with Biden’s calm and firm way of dealing with what he surely saw from the beginning as a crossroads in history and a moment of extreme danger for all of humanity.
And, I am also impressed with how quickly most of the world’s leaders have rallied around to support Ukraine and NATO and apply sanctions to Russia, even though they know that these will greatly complicate their attempts to solve all the other problems they already have on their over-filled plates. They understand that our continued existence as a species is at stake and that Putin’s behavior cannot go unpunished. And normally at this point in my rant, I would say, “Of course, global warming is the real elephant in the room.”
But, no. The elephant, the really big one, is the world’s collective failure to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons in the 77 years since our -- and the world's -- first and last use of atomic bombs in anger. I read today that the USA and Russia still have something like 12,000 nuclear weapons between them, with many more belonging to China, India, Great Britain, France, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and perhaps Iran by now. Did I leave anyone out? My apologies.
Am I wrong, or hadn’t we all pretty much decided that once the Berlin Wall had fallen and some Russians had discovered how much fun capitalism could be, we could just not worry about nukes as much as we used to back in the good old days of duck-and-cover and Dr. Strangelove? Does everyone realize how close we all are to human extinction as a bitter, twisted, frustrated and possibly mad-as-a-hatter Putin ups the ante day by day, coyly hinting that we may soon see something extraordinary and unimaginable if we continue to torment him with threats of sanctions as he rapes his peaceful, hopeful democratic neighbor?
Now, as if to make amends for his coyness, he has put his nuclear defense forces on “alert”. And after the alert, what is there, a loud warning of some sort? Sirens, perhaps? Or are we totally depending on some senior Russian minister or general to be Putin’s “adult in the room” when the great would-be tsar and judo champion stands on the button while blowing out his own brains? Will he leave the “recall” codes scribbled on his long desk? Does hair-trigger nuclear readiness even allow for recall codes anymore?
I think if we – all of us – survive this Ukraine crisis, and Putin is given a graceful way to back down while blaming all the anguish on us, which is to say everyone, and some wiser heads in the Kremlin can push him into early retirement or make him "disappear" by other means, sooner rather than later, then our first order of business -- after downing something sternly alcoholic and taking to our beds for a week – should be to somehow gather all the world’s leaders together and convince them to agree to universal nuclear disarmament.
No. MAD has kept reasonably sane US and Russian leaders from destroying our world, but it has not led to our creation of a better world in which war is never the answer. No. Limits are not good enough. No country or individual can be trusted with nukes. Ban. Eliminate.
If we, as a species, wish to continue to exist – at least for a while -- we just have to get this done.
We are still here. Kyiv is not surrounded. Kharkiv has not fallen neither has Mariopel. Munitions coming in from Europe. Special ops veterans from America and Britain coming to join the Foreign battalion. Tanya says the French Foreign Legion Ukrainians are on their way. Those guys fight like Chechens. Russians really pouring it on today, now targeting civilians more and more.
We have been on blackout here two nights. I mean black. No light of any kind. I learned I cannot find my ass with both hands in the dark