Note: This piece started as a roundup of selected items by the bipartisan foreign policy establishment and allies on the Russia-Ukraine war. But, as it got longer, in the fairness of non-twosider balance, I have included material that also addresses Putin-whisperers.
With that, let's dig in.
(Update, March 18: Not all of it is dishonesty, but earlier this week I posted a roundup of further Russia-Ukraine thoughts and observations and have Week 2 in the hopper. I certainly hope this doesn't last as long as my coronavirus weekly roundups.)
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Within American establishment media, intellectual dishonesty over the Ukraine-Russia War abounds. One good example? Graeme Wood, at the Atlantic, says Ukraine's leaders should just follow the example of 1939 Finland in the Winter War.
He talks about how the Finnish defense led to a Soviet withdrawal ...
And only later tells readers that the USSR returned a few months later, per the second link, and wound up taking more Finnish territory than it had originally asked for, which he doesn't tell us at all. It's intellectually dishonest of him to omit that, and intellectually dishonest of his editor, Adrienne LaFrance, to let it run with that omission. It's intellectually dishonest for him to call it the "Finno-Soviet Winter War of 1939" when nobody else does that, with the "of 1939" as part of it. And, it's intellectually dishonest for her to let that run.
But, that's not the biggest intellectual dishonesty.
What is? Wood makes it sound like the Russkies never returned, post-1940. But, he again omits the "why." Instead, of course, at the tail end of Finland's involvement in WWII, Finland surrendered and gave up the Petsamo area in addition to its 1940 land surrenders. And, of course, it agreed to remain neutral in the post-WWII new era. The mere threat of a second invasion was enough.
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Of course, hints of Molotov cocktail use lead to major dishonesty No. 2 — US media, including the likes of Woods Atlantic, normalizing any action by Ukrainians that it would attack in the sharpest terms when done by a Palestinian. Mondoweiss, as it has since the start, has the goods on this, including the goods on Molotov cocktails. Of course, this is nothing new, either. To Ronald Reagan, in places like Central America, any leftist with an AK-47 was a terrorist while any rightist with an M-16 was a freedom fighter.
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That said, Putin, in his screed last summer, and before and after, oversimplified Ukrainian history leading up to this point. Katya Cengel has
a decent piece about that at the Smithsonian, but by ignoring modern neo-Nazism in Ukraine, the amount of Russians on left-bank Ukraine and other things, arguably contributes to the disinformation herself while giving the impression of cleaning it up. And, decent may be saying too much. Giving Markian Dobczansky as much airplay as she did only adds to my impression. The fact that he
rejects the issue of broken NATO promises about non-expansion says it all.
Cengel gets one other thing incomplete. The Ukrainian People's Republic was created after the March 1917 Revolution, not the November one, and thus did not originally declare independence from the USSR, but from the post-Tsarist social democratic Russia. (It did, in 1918, after the second Revolution,take that step, though.) As someone who lived in Ukraine, she either should know that and doesn't, which brings her credibility into question, or does know that and glosses over it ... which brings her credibility into question, at least on the issues of Ukrainian nationalism and complexity of issues. One should also note, per the map at the Wiki link, that it claimed more "Rusyn" lands than the eventual post-WWI USSR did, and within that area, claimed more Belarussian lands than today's Ukraine. And, that goes back to Ukrainian nationalism. It's true that Putin leaves out the Holodomor. It's also true that Dobczansky and Cengel leave out the Azov Force et al. And, yes, Cengel, there ARE neo-Nazis in modern Ukraine. Again, you talk about the "complexity" of the issue, but it's like you're gaslighting people on the complexity of the issue after modern Ukraine's independence. In short, I know you know this, too, and you're engaged in intellectual dishonesty. I tagged Cengel on Twitter with a milder version of that statement; she didn't respond.
At the same time, Cengel may have undercut herself by not including something she probably knew, and that more educated Putin-whisperers do, even if they might not want to admit it. In the late 19th century, Tsarist Russia began a major "Russification" push. Three areas were targeted: The formerly independent Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Finland and ... Ukraine. Any quasi-legitimate aggrievement Putin has is underlaid and overlaid by a new version of this nationalism. And, this is why Ukraine set itself up independently in early 1917, not late 1917. It saw the first opportunity it had to stake itself free, or at least semi-free, of Russia, and took it.
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That said, per Cengel's links to his comments? Putin is dishonest himself, of course. This is ultimately about "Great Russian" nationalism, part of why I called him the Black Tsar last week. And, as part of that, even if the NATO issue is partly behind it, it's why I suspect he never planned to just have a limited incursion into the Donbas and neighboring areas. On the third hand? Since Zelensky has proven himself to also be not so trustworthy?
This, like World War I if Wilson had been a true neutral, is something we the US has no damned business getting involved in. And, claims otherwise are the biggest domestic dishonesty of all.
But, the second biggest domestic dishonesty is twosiderism. By that I'm referencing the allegedly outside the box thinkers, often stenographers themselves, who reject not just some things, but everything, the bipartisan foreign policy establishment says. Many of these people cut blank checks to Xi Jinping Thought, too. I don't. Also, while I reject Trump-Putin collusion in 2016, I do accept as fact the findings of the Russian IRA meddling in the 2016 elections. (That doesn't deny that the US also meddles in foreign elections, but it is to again reject twosiderism.)
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OK, no retweeting the Kviy Independent. Its defense reporter was once (and still is?) an "embed" with, and glorifier of, the Azov Force. More links to that at this Tweet.
And, the newspaper also surely knows that, which goes to its
credibility as well. That said, most Americans don't know this, they
don't know about the genocidal burning in Odessa and more.
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Speaking of Azov Front, it may have come under (nominal) Ukrainian governmental control.
Not all far-right forces have. US MSM won't tell you that, either.
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And, re Putin, and thinking now he never intended a limited incursion? His Caesaropapism is part of his intellectual dishonesty, and as a secularist I find both it, and some bits of the US Religious Right glomming on to it, disgusting. And, the Russian Orthodox Church is dishonest for playing along. Of course, MOST autocephalous Orthodox churches have done similar, and in general, Orthodoxy is worse to far worse on this than Rome.
James Dorsey has some very honest, and insightful as usual, insights about today's Russian Orthodox Church, including a number of parish priests calling for an end to the war. If 150 of them have actively called for that, there's surely many more who silently feel that way. And, surely Putin won't start arresting them; if noting else, Patriarch Kiril doesn't want to be between that rock and hard place.
Autocephalous Orthodox churches in general have a long history of Caesaropapism. While some of their theology makes them a non-twosider alternative to Catholicism and Protestantism alike, were I looking to a return to Christianity, and could find a suitably intellectual and socially liberal version of Orthodoxy, this is a stumbling block. People my age or older can recall Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus. But, that's a story for another blog post, and probably at my second blog.
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That said, none of this is "crazy." Especially when uttered by US foreign policy mandarins, this is the height of dishonesty, in large part because they've done it before. Saddam Hussein? Crazy. Muammar Gaddafi? Crazy. Probably has been applied to Maduro. I think it was applied to Fidel decades ago. So, that's a warning to world leaders. Cross the US enough, and be a small enough country? If your leader is called crazy, run for the fucking hills immediately. Putin's Russia, fortunately for its people and for him personally, isn't that small, of course.
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It's also dishonest to call Putin a genius. He's not. Of course, one Donald J. Trump, born with a silver spoon of dishonesty in his mouth, is a leading purveyor of this. Very few world leaders are or have been geniuses. Warmongering included, Frederick and Alexander both earned their "Greats." Catherine? Not so much; being a sucker for her lover's Potemkin villages does that. Elizabeth I? Definitely. Anyway, Putin's smarter than Trump, and more conniving than Biden. Doesn't make him a genius.
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It's dishonest to promote a Berlin Airlift 2.0 when so many things are different.
First, that was just to West Berlin. Are you going to do an airlift to Kyiv only and exclude other Ukrainian cities?
Second, Kyiv is over twice as far from the nearest border to the west as was West Berlin. We're talking 350 miles (600 kilometers) vs 150 miles (250 clicks).
Third, Putin could do much more than the intermittent hazing Stalin did. Radar ramming, communications radios jamming, maybe even a cyberattack against Ramstein Air Base.
Fourth, would Putin believe that only humanitarian supplies were being sent? And, would that actually be the case, or would this be like the Lusitania, an armed ship carrying guns and ammunition in the hold beneath generally clueless passengers topside?
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It's dishonest to claim that oil blocking Russia will be a crushing blow. Oil remains semi-fungible. Plus, Russia's an exporter of other high-dollar items, like gold, diamonds and platinum. Are we going to strip jewelry off American oligarchs? Beyond that, only 4 percent of TOTAL Russian exports go to North America.
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It's highly dishonest to go Alex Jones and claim this is a false flag. And, no, Jones is no longer on Twitter, but I've seen false flag claims, and by at least one person invoking the spirit of Jones. Of course, self-delusion goes hand in hand with dishonesty here.
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Not dishonest, but perhaps somewhat self-delusional, is the claim to oppose the leaders of both Russia and Ukraine, but standing with "the people" of both countries. Putin's seizure of the Crimea was pretty popular at home. This will be less so if it drags on, but not so far. The Maidan? The genocide in Odessa? Azov Force and other groups even more wild? Even when not explicitly embraced, they're not explicitly disavowed, either.
This, too, is nothing new. Look at the start of World War I. Germany's Social Democrats were as avid for war as anybody and remained so for years.
Beyond that, it's self-delusional in another way far beyond either of those conflicts or wars in general. The quasi-Rousellian view of the uncorrupted worker as a naif, a noble savage, is laughable.
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In many cases, willful dishonesty often bleeds over into self-delusion. Take the huzzahing yesterday over Poland "laundering" its old MIG-29s to the US for presumable forwarding to Ukraine. Putin had repeatedly previously said this would be a bright line. But the same savants who pretend that we never made promises not to expand NATO have often come to actually believe that's true. I suspect willful self-delusion will soon pop up here,. too. (Fortunately, part 1, it's only 29 planes. Fortunately, part 2, Slovakia and Bulgaria aren't so self-delusional. Fortunately, part 3, officially, the US went radio silence on the announcement. Unfortunately, part 1, the "average Joe/Jane" in MeriKKKa thinks of poor, picked on Poland without knowing it once owned Kyiv and 415 years ago tried to put a puppet Tsar on the throne in Moscow. Lots of BlueAnon blue checks on Twitter need a clue.)
Fortunately, the Pentagon has more brains than Keith Olbermann and other blue checks, as well as more brains than the gummint of Poland. (Oh, per that link? The legend of the Kyiv Ghost is almost certainly bullshit.)
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Speaking of military hardware? Per this Medium piece, the American foreign policy establishment genyuses yakking about "how long" it's taking Putin should just STFU. America invaded Iraq 19 years ago, a country with a smaller population and much smaller size than Ukraine, even while the US has the world's most vaunted military and a population twice that of Russia. And? It took MeriKKKa well over a month for the initial (and incomplete, mission not accomplished) conquest.
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As for people talking about "justice"? I've addressed this issue many times. Read my review of Walter Kaufman's "Without Guilt and Justice."
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Bottom line? Bismarck once said the Balkans weren't worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Ukraine isn't work the bones of a single U.S. soldier or sailor, and the fog of disinformation isn't worth too many American brain cells.
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