“Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones.” — Major Kong, “Dr. Strangelove”
It’s been a sobering few days. For those of us old enough to remember, the ugly specter of the Cold War has reared its head once again in Ukraine. For those of you too young to remember, the 40-year postwar period from the 1950s to the late 1980s was dominated by a feeling that the United States and our NATO allies might have to face off against the Soviet Union at any moment. This general unease manifested itself in the Red Scare, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, the Space Race and in proxy wars all over the planet throughout this period.
I happened to be in grade school in South Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We conducted duck and cover drills every day. A TV was on in the school office all day long — something that would have been otherwise very uncommon at that time. For about a week during October 1962, we all thought that there was a real possibility we were going to end up as radioactive dust at any moment. That’s probably why we were too busy to be worried about personal pronouns and factually challenged revisionist views of American history.
The Cold War did, however, beget one good thing: the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film, “Dr. Strangelove.” “Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.”
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is, quite predictably, viewed differently depending upon which part of our political spectrum you happen to listen to.
The far right seems to be of two minds on this conflict, with neocons demanding swift and determined intervention, and isolationists demanding that we do absolutely nothing.
The left seems upset, too, but mostly because Russia has weakened the prospect for any widespread adoption of progressive policies on energy. That giant sucking sound you hear is the slate of hallucinatory green energy policies championed by progressives sinking like a lead balloon on Jupiter.
As for me, I don’t know what to think about all of this. I don’t really know what to do about it either. I can see both sides of the neocon versus isolationist debate. The answer, as usual, probably lies somewhere in the middle. I just don’t have the wisdom to know exactly where.
One thing that I am pretty sure of is that this is no one’s fault except Vladimir Putin. Yes, every American president since George H. W. Bush (41) has been naive and short-sighted in terms of foreign policy — but so have most other world leaders during the same period. As much as I have disliked many of our national leaders for the past two decades, including the current lot, this isn’t on them. None of them are invading Ukraine. This is on Putin, alone.
It seems clear to me that we should not involve American troops in Ukraine unless the current conflict spins up into something that threatens our NATO allies more directly. In that event, we’ll have some real skin in the game and will have to respond accordingly. But as it stands, as much as none of us likes a bully, we simply cannot police the entire world with our military. That’s what treaties are for. If Ukraine had cleaned up it’s act before now, it might be a NATO member. It didn’t. Our treaty obligations to Ukraine are nil.
Unless NATO decides to step up, our lone effective option appears to be economic sanctions. That being the case, I’m all for scorched earth. Make the oligarchs who are propping up the Putin regime feel some hurt. Make it as difficult as possible for them to make financial transactions in dollars, isolate them from the world banking system, terminate visas that allow their children to study at prestigious schools in the United States. Limit exports to and imports from Russia. Isolate Russia in cyberspace. When it comes to Russian economic resources and foreign trade, exterminate all the brutes.