Putin’s War, And OursBy Rod Dreher
February 21, 2022
There will be war in Ukraine. I don’t know how anyone could have watched Russian president Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary extemporaneous speech to his nation just now and conclude otherwise. It was shot through with every grievance in the book, and concluded with him declaring that Russia will recognize two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, creating the pretext for war.
It was a frightening speech, because Putin looked enraged and not fully in control of his emotions. It seemed to me that this has gone beyond any kind of rationality now; it’s personal with him.
What should we do if the Russians invade? I was at a Danube Institute geopolitical conference in Budapest early today, and naturally everybody was talking about Russia and Ukraine. I missed the opening keynote by Tony Abbott, the former prime minister of Australia, but I was told by several people who heard that it was a hawkish anti-Russian stemwinder. I’m not surprised. I was at a small dinner party with him on Friday night, and when Russia-Ukraine came up, Abbott was passionate in his belief that the West can’t let Putin get away with attacking Ukraine.
But what does that mean, exactly? I didn’t hear his proposals today, so I can’t say. But I talked to a bunch of different Hungarians in the coffee break, and every one of them was alarmed. Their general view was that Abbott — whose views on the matter, when I heard them articulated on Friday evening, sounded like a standard Republican senator’s — is wholly unrealistic
“He talked about the moral high ground, but for people like him, the moral high ground is far away from where we live with our families,” one fumed. This person went on about how arrogant the Americans and other Westerners far from the potential battlefield seem. “What do you call it in English when people refuse to see any evidence that doesn’t confirm their beliefs?”
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The more the world sees of what American life and culture is doing to its young (e.g., 21 percent of Generation Z now identifies as LGBT), the less any sensible peoples will want to have to do with America. We have long thought of ourselves as a light unto the nations, but now we are becoming a flashing neon warning sign.
Crawford then brought up what he called the “Soviet strategy,” which involves playing a weak hand well by telling one’s adversaries that your side is tougher than you can imagine. He showed this video of Putin, back in 2002, answering a reporter’s question about Russia’s war in Chechnya. The reporter asked if he didn’t think that Russia, by going after Islamic militants there with overwhelming force, risked killing the civilian population of Chechnya. Here, in Russian (no subtitles), was Putin’s answer:
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/putin-war-ukraine-russia-ours/
