Like all right-thinking people, I've been glued to the TV and internet this week, following what's happening with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and devouring all sorts of takes from mainstream news sources and also people on social media. Going back through the archives of this blog, it's not the first time we've been here, but the difference back then, almost exactly eight years ago and coincidentally right after the Winter Olympics, is that the Russians appeared content with just taking over a portion of eastern Ukraine and scaring their former satellite.
Now, however, they've gone all out, rolling all the way into Kyiv and intending to topple the entire country. The reaction from the West has been surprisingly unified, though not without some foot-dragging here and there: the EU took a day or two to commit to cutting Russia and Vladimir Putin out of the SWIFT financial messaging system, and Britain's immigration apparatus has had a few missteps with regard to letting Ukrainian refugees in. But even Putin allies like Poland and Hungary have been quick to offer help to fleeing Ukrainians (quicker than they would to Syrian refugees, who were in many cases also displaced by Russian activity, but never mind).
On the one hand, it's hard not to think that these are the actions that the West should have taken eight years ago, when Russian forces drummed up a separatist movement in Crimea and shot down a passenger plane. Re-reading my blog post from back then, it's clear that this week's actions wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't been emboldened by his success in pulling those other things off back then: after all, his vision of an imperial Russia, protected from the West by a buffer zone comprised of former Soviet vassal states, is unchanged.
I've seen pleasingly few tankies arguing in favor of Russia's invasion, but it's worth talking about Russia's claim that the invasion is caused by the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. This article claims it's a smokescreen to hide the fact that Putin views any liberal democracy on its doorstep as a threat, which is persuasive when you consider that Ukraine's thoughts on joining NATO have changed various times over the last few decades - at the very least, NATO didn't seem in a huge hurry to sign Ukraine up. That seems to bolster the argument I made in the paragraph above.
On the other hand, there's been a lot of commentary over the enthusiasm of many high-profile Republicans, including Donald Trump, for Putin and this invasion. My suspicion is that Trump is excited because he can't see anything outside of the lens of how it makes him look, so anything that threatens to make Joe Biden look bad is good for him. Other Republicans have dredged up "wokeness" and... being tolerant of LGBTQ people as reasons to support Putin. Whatever, guys.
I can't shake the feeling, however, that it's good we don't have Barack Obama in the White House to deal with this. He whiffed hard on the Crimea thing and the Syria thing, which likely has something important to do with Putin's actions this week; if he had still been president, I'm sure Obama would be taking the same actions as Biden, but it's an open question if his State Dept team would have been equipped for anything happening in Europe.
To put it another way, if Biden or (God help us) Hillary Clinton had been president in 2014, would they have taken a stronger line against Russia swallowing Crimea, given their more Eurocentric understanding of foreign relations?
That said, I think the unity among western democracies now is also a response to years (decades) of Russian-funded far right extremism and populism across the US and Western Europe. Trump's presidency and the Brexit vote may have been wake-up calls for the US and EU of just how well-integrated Putin's allies were in media (i.e. Russia Today) and among far-right parties like those in France, Germany and Italy. Germany must also be feeling increasing heat (no pun intended), given its reliance on Russian gas and former chancellor Gerhard Schröder's closeness to Putin.
It's easy to criticize the response in 2014 with hindsight from the Trump administration, where the "president" went out of his way to praise Putin, but eight years ago Obama had no idea who'd be succeeding him as president, nor that the UK would vote to leave the EU. But as I said, kicking Russia out of SWIFT and isolating the regime is probably what Obama should have done in 2014, when the seeds for the current conflict were being sown.
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