Who Supports Ukraine By Abe Aamidor

A friend sent me a link to an online Newsweek opinion piece that claimed “the Woke Left” and “neocons” on the Right have united in their support for Ukraine’s struggle against Russia. The author, David Sacks, was identified as a venture capitalist and co-host of the All-In Podcast.

I know Newsweek is a mere shell of its former self, but this guy Sacks must be a friend of a friend to be given even that limited forum to flaunt his ignorance.

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Sacks argues that a “twitter mob” has shut down debate on American foreign policy in order to shape U.S. policy toward Ukraine; he claims that even proposals for peace are seen as taking Putin’s side in the Russian war of aggression. He uses the example of Elon Musk to prove his point – Musk recently proposed that Ukraine concede the Crimean peninsula to Russia and accept internationally-monitored elections in the four areas Russia is now claiming as its own to see what the people really want (presumably, this would be the ones who are still alive, or who haven’t fled yet). You can read the full column here.

I don’t know what media outlets Mr. Sacks has been following. Far from “the Woke Left” and the “neocons” (the radical conservatives of the early 2000s) joining hands to argue for more support for Ukraine, or a further escalation and an increased risk of World War III, the evidence is that the Right and the Left are of like minds in restricting support for Ukraine so that the besieged country would have no choice but to capitulate to Putin’s demands. If anything, it is only mainstream politics and the mainstream media that can be counted on to back our continued support of Ukraine, not the Far Left or the Far Right.

Foreign Policy magazine clearly sees current perspectives on the war very differently than our venture capitalist cited above. Foreign Policy is not gospel, of course, but I think it is better informed than Mr. Sacks. “Why America’s Far Right and Far Left Aligned Against [emphasis added] Helping Ukraine,” reads the July 4, 2002 headline on its website.

Two notable public figures the article cited? Tucker Carlson on the Right and Noam Chomsky on the Left. Carlson has repeatedly mocked Ukraine as a corrupt country (not altogether wrong) and has argued that any money spent propping up the current government there should be dedicated to domestic needs (though I don’t think he means using the money save to lower health care costs or improve public education).

Chomsky’s position, more accessible here, characterizes the conflict as a proxy war between Russia and the West, and repeatedly holds that NATO expansion into Warsaw Pact territory was always misguided and may have pushed Putin into attack mode – these are standard Leftwing arguments, though they’ve been made by some neutral observers as well. The point here, though, is that David Sacks is simply wrong when he claims the “Woke Left” supports arming Ukraine.

The most recent refutation of Sacks’ position is a recently revealed letter signed by 30 “liberal House members,” all Democrats, who, according to The Washington Post, questioned our unwavering support for Ukraine and urged the president to try harder for a diplomatic solution. The letter was quickly withdrawn but not because “the Woke Left” objected to it. The signers were the Woke Left!

Nonetheless, Sacks has a point – calling for peace, which in reality means capitulation, may be shouted down but, again, the opposition is likely to come from mainstream politicians and the mainstream media, not the political margins. The “Woke Left” in fact opposes the current Biden administration strategy. The position on the Right is more complex – Sen. Mitch McConnell backs Biden on this issue but the MAGA crowd within the Republican Party clearly is wavering.

I support peace, and so do you. Yet ‘suing for peace’ on the ‘best terms you can get’ is not merely a chimera in this context. It’s a hoax. Putin stated his terms verbally before the war – Ukraine must promise never to join NATO and he (Putin) gets a veto on future NATO military exercises, presumably in any former Warsaw Pact country or anywhere close to Russia’s borders. Those demands were non-negotiable, so what was there to negotiate?

More pointedly, Putin announced his terms for peace (in deed, not merely words) when his mechanized army units tried to take Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, by force early in the war he launched. Peace for Putin means Ukraine is no more, in other words.

Nonetheless, one may legitimately question whether we have any vital national interests in Ukraine. Well, Putin has made many statements to the effect that he lusts after all former Soviet Republics, and he’s called the dissolution of the Soviet Union the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century. Those aren’t negotiating positions – it’s the essence of Vladimir Putin. I think he misses direct control of all the Warsaw Pact countries, too, and the divine right to roll into neighboring states any time the masses get restless. Do we have any vital national interests in stopping that kind of behavior? European states think they have a national interest in stopping it, including Finland and previously neutral Sweden. Do we have a national interest in supporting any of those countries?

One might also legitimately argue that supporting the Ukrainian resistance is just prolonging the agony, just increasing the number of people who will die in vain. This is a tougher claim for me to challenge. Certainly, any effort to stop the bloodshed can be seen as a moral imperative. Yet it’s not for us to tell Ukraine what’s worth dying for. And I suspect that people who take up this position, that we must stop the bloodshed now and no matter what, are unintentionally revealing that they would never die for a cause such as national independence or freedom itself.

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