To my eye the most significant passage in Anatol Lieven’s post at Responsible Stateraft is this:
Instead of a Communist-led nationalist movement to reunify Vietnam, the Vietnamese Communists were portrayed as a force that could start toppling a row of “dominoes†that would end with Communist victory in France and Mexico. Instead of a tinpot regional dictator, Saddam Hussein became a nuclear menace to the U.S. homeland. The Taliban, an entirely Afghan force, supposedly had to be fought in Afghanistan so that we would not need to fight them in the United States.
And today, U.S. officials in their rhetoric somehow manage to combine the supposed beliefs both that Russia is so weak that Ukraine can completely defeat the Russian army and catastrophically undermine the Russian state, and that Russia is so strong that if not defeated in Ukraine it will pose a mortal threat to NATO and freedom around the world.
On the surface that appears to be a very severe case of cognitive dissonance. Or is it possible for Russia to be weak enough it can be defeated on the ground by Ukraine but strong enough that it poses a threat to all of Europe?
It is undoubtedly a case of forgetting. We are forgetting Vietnam. We are forgetting Iraq. We are forgetting Afghanistan. We are forgetting 9/11.
Dave Schuler: Or is it possible for Russia to be weak enough it can be defeated on the ground by Ukraine but strong enough that it poses a threat to all of Europe?
Have you seen pictures of the damage the war has done to Ukraine? Or counted the civilian deaths caused by the Russian invasion? So, yes. Even an incompetent Russian army is a threat. Even now, if they manage to conquer Ukraine, it will be a victory for the Putin and the oligarchy.
Not seeing that much similarity to Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq where we invaded other countries. On 9/11 we got attacked. Ukraine doesnt fit these paradigms. I am also not seeing the dissonance. Russia has nukes. Ukraine could kick Russian ass and reclaim everything and the Russians limp home. They could still turn Europe into a nuclear wasteland.
Putin and Russia have offered a lot of reasons for invading Ukraine. Among the ones you have mentioned are the desire to establish the old empire and also to kill Nazis and protect ethnic Russians. Are there people they would call Nazis in the rest of Europe? Yes (their definition is pretty loose.) Do other countries have ethnic Russians? Yes. Is there other territory after Ukraine that Russia would need to control to remake the Russian empire? Yes.
So besides the inherent immorality of what the Russians are doing now, killing more people in a country where they have a prior history of killing millions, there is a very realistic concern that if they win they wont stop.
Steve