Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s barbaric and unnecessary invasion of neighboring Ukraine is an assault on democracies the world over, something his cheerleaders in America would do well to remember.
As of this writing, the war’s outcome is still in doubt, although the balance of forces weighs heavily against the brave Ukrainian women and men facing down Russian tanks like their spiritual forebearers in Prague and Budapest more than a half-century ago.
Putin’s precise endgame is also uncertain, but it’s obvious he means to overthrow Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and the country’s other elected leaders. In a speech – which some observers likened to an unhinged rant by a man out of touch with reality – broadcast as the attack began last week, he declared he was “de-nazifying” Ukraine and cleansing it of a “junta” that had seized control of the country. He made clear he sees a Ukrainian people not laying prone beneath his boot heel a threat to his and his cronies’ hold on power.
Too many prominent Americans on the left and right have looked at this war and decided – their minds perhaps corrupted by the toxic stew that is today’s hyper-partisan political atmosphere – that they like what they see.
A few on the left and disturbing number of right-wing media figures, plus former members of the Trump administration, have heaped praise on Putin and sown doubt about why Americans should care that this thug is attempting to dismember a European democracy.
These reactions to the nauseating series of events unfolding in Ukraine miss two key facts.
First, Russia is one of the leading proponents of autocracy around the world today. Putin poisons and jails his political opponents and, as the world saw just last week, violently represses protests and other forms of political dissent. He also sits atop a massive system of corruption that’s let him assemble a net worth of between $70 billion and $150 billion from his official salary of $140,000 per year, according to Fortune magazine.
Second, in the last decade-plus, Ukraine is striving mightily to build a flourishing democracy after escaping from its tottering post-Soviet strongman system via not one, but two anti-oligarchy, anti-corruption revolutions. Even the country’s Russian-speaking minority has widely embraced a flowering Ukrainian identity, while the country’s civil society has become increasingly vibrant. The country’s political leadership is far from perfect, but before the Russian invasion they were working hard to build a fairer, more open political system.
The contest between autocracy and democracy is the central fight of our time. Here in America, minority factions and huge corporations try to circumvent, circumscribe or subvert voters’ ability to take part in government. Abroad, people like Putin try to stamp out democratic shoots. We should hope he doesn’t succeed.
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