Coop Scoop: Ukraine And The Tale of Two Convoys (resend)

After a week of historic resistance, Ukraine faces the Convoy of Doom

March 3-4, 2022

By Marc Cooper

How powerful, ironic, and downright ominous were the events, people and symbols that all seemed to converge a couple of nights ago as Joe Biden gave his first state of the union speech. As Russia cut deeper into Ukraine, the political future of both the Ukraine and the U.S. came egregiously into play. This, while a third country, Putin’s Russia, seemed to be blundering toward an ugly and perhaps terminal phase.

As Biden’s speech and the news that day evoked the harrowing images of Ukrainian families digging defensive trenches in their yards or fleeing in panic in masse to Poland to save their lives, a number of snowflake Republican senators dodged the event claiming, as Marco Rubio did, that having to be tested for COVID in order to attend was just too much of a sacrifice to ask. If the U.S. were to somehow ever be invaded, one can bet these blow-dried former car salesmen in the Congress would not be following President Zelesney’s example of resistance, but would rather be up there in pressed suits cutting deals with the occupiers.

Other Republicans who attended the SOTU speech had their staff buy them the proper yellow and blue accessories so they could quickly claim to “stand with Ukraine” after just days earlier nodding to their Maximum Leader and their Maximum Talker who during the entire previous week had encouraged Russia.  One is tempted to ask if Leader McCarthy had to phone Trump for permission to wear the tiny Ukrainia lapel pin while on camera.  And no accident that Tucker Carlson’s insincere rants were played as is on Russian television, adorned only with subtitles.

When the president’s speech ventured into the poor treatment that many US veterans receive, sometimes leading them to “a coffin,” the Chimpanzee from Colorado, Rep. Lauren Boebert, thought this would be a good moment to disrupt the speech by shouting out that Biden himself put 13 soldiers in a coffin, an obscure reference to the US service members who died in the bombing at Kabul airport.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, fresh off a speech to a gathering of proto-fascist White nationalists, pitched in on the fun and with great distinction joined Boebert in mouthing “fucking idiot” as the president spoke.

While this sordid little show was playing out on the Capitol floor, two different road convoys, thousands of miles and several continents apart were also slowly converging on their respective targets.

Somewhere in the Midwest, a so-called “People’s Convoy to End All Mandates,” fueled by more than $1.5m in right-wing donations and an infinity of disinformation, was rolling toward DC.  The organizers claim they will avoid disrupting the Capitol and they disassociated themselves from yet another Freedom Convoy that collapsed in ignominy drawing only 12 people to it's inside the Beltway protest on the eve of the speech.

I doubt that the People’s Convoy will make much of a splash either when it gets near the nation’s capital.  It’s timing to protest tyranny in the U.S. seems very poorly chosen as it is the Russian dictatorship that is sucking up all the oxygen on the tube. And given that this protest “to end all mandates,” comes precisely at a time when the government is, in fact, ending most mandates, underlines to just what degree that convoy is driven by ignorance, fear, and zealous political partisanship.

That other convoy, the one temporarily stalled on the rocky border of Russian-protectorate Belarus and Ukraine, that 40 mile long (?) steel-skinned snake bristling with missiles, rockets, heavy artillery, heavy caliber machine guns, Russian infantry and even thermobaric weapons –that suck the oxygen right out of your bodies—was pointed right at the heart of Ukraine.

The immediate future of Ukraine over the next days and weeks as well as that of the U.S. in the run-up to the November mid-terms, are very much at stake. Protest all you want about calling Ukraine or the US democracies. But make no mistake, both countries are threatened by dark clouds of autocracy.

 And while the media and U.S. officials have chortled, rightfully so, over the obvious failure of the initial Russian offensive and miscalculation by Putin, it would be prudent for them and for the people of the US to assess this situation with the sort of seriousness that seems to have evaporated from our politics.

Putin might have only been grandstanding when he ordered Russian nukes onto “high combat alert” and issued a direct warning to the West to stay out of the conflict. Or maybe he wasn’t.

Either way, both sides know that engaging NATO in the conflict is a trip wire setting up a direct confrontation between US and Russian forces as an opening act to World War III. At a bare minimum, the world has completely changed in the last two weeks and we better start facing that fact.

HEROIC KYIV

The first week of the war has been marked by the heroic resistance of Kyiv, President Zelensky, the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the peoples’ militias.  Anybody not inspired by this should immediately consult a cardiologist to find out how your heart was excised.  This week will long be remembered in history and regardless of how he eventually fares, President Zelensky’s name will appear on dozens of parks, bridges and plazas throughout Europe in the years to come.

That said, and without in any way disparaging that resistance and the effort of the Ukrainian people, they are but hours or, at most, days away from a bloody, Russian-imposed Gotterdammerung.

Putin’s language justifying the invasion, branding the Ukrainian leadership as Nazis and drug-addicts and accusing them of tolerating “deviant culture” (read LGBTQ) makes it very clear he will settle for nothing less than killing Zelensky, vaporizing the political leadership, and installing a puppet regime – at any cost.

Analysts that I trust agree that Putin horribly miscalculated.  He thought the months-long build-up of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border would soften up Kyiv, that once his troops moved there would be a pro-Russian coup in Ukraine, he would keep a few troops there to protect the new regime and within a week he would be out and the hullabaloo would die down.

Instead, Putin has managed to re-invigorate a lagging and divided NATO, he has inadvertently given new life to a Brexit-battered European Union, he has united the world against him (even Hungary’s Victor Orban has chided him, he has sparked a noticeable and growing protest movement inside Russia (while state censors have banned the use of the word “war”), he has lost his international propaganda TV network, he has tanked the Russian stock market that remains closed, the ruble has lost most of its value while prices have skyrocketed, and Western economic sanctions are pushing Russia out of the world financial system, a detail sure to rile his legion of oligarchs.  On top of this, his troops are bogged down by resistance and his Convoy of Doom stalled for lack of gasoline and food, reminding one of the legacy of Soviet industry and technology. If for any reason your sympathies reside with Russia, it would seem your biggest enemy this week is Putin himself.

CONVOY OF DOOM

Put this all together and you have Putin turning now to Plan B.  Let me better spell that out for you: Plan Grozny-Aleppo.  For those who just recently discovered some of the more unappealing aspects of Putin, you might want to revisit the respective histories of these Chechen and Syrian cities  Both were as much as levelled by Russian airpower and troops under Putin’s command. And as I write, comes word that the International Criminal Court has just opened a case on Russian atrocities and war crimes in Ukraine.

Though, I would suggest that the worst atrocities are yet to occur, as they await the arrival of the convoy. Again, Russian analysts predict that Putin will flatten Kyiv and that which awaits us will make Stalingrad pale. Worse, are the predictions that Putin will not negotiate seriously and that he will absolutely not accept anything except a “victory.” That’s a pretty frightful though considering how difficult it will be to occupy Ukraine.

I think it likely that by next week, the Ukrainian government will be dissolved or in hiding or in exile.  But how on earth Russia is going to “pacify” or occupy Ukraine without carrying out wholesale massacres is beyond me.

On the one hand we have some very sincere people standing in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. On the other, we are going to have the systematic butchering of Ukraine and its people live in our living room for some time to come. How are we, as a people and as a government, going to react to the blood feast that will be presented?  Will the temptation to intervene overcome common sense?  I’m not making any bets.

We also have state actors in the US who have their own agenda. Some of it is about solidarity. Most of it is about perceived US interests and not about sentiment.  There are already prominent political and even diplomatic voices publicly kicking around the idea of a setting up a no-fly zone over Ukraine.  One prominent US analyst even mused on Twitter that the convoy of doom could be eliminated in 10 minutes by two NATO warplanes.  That’s absolutely the case, if you don’t want to think of what would come next.

Aleppo

If History had started last year, I might give Joe Biden a solid A for his handling of the war so far.  The airing of US intelligence (that was on the money for once) was a rather brilliant way to defuse and expose the Kabuki dance Putin had actually pre-recorded to justify his war.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I have not seen anything from the administration encouraging war as its efforts have been concentrated on diplomacy.  Unfortunately for Joe, history began a long time ago and its currents in the US for the last half century keep us in a state of semi-permanent mobilization for war.

NATO AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CRISIS

American media and domestic political pundits have an easy explanation for the outbreak of war. Putin is a madman, he’s an insane megalomaniac bent on imperial conquest.  He was a crazy Soviet dictator and now he’s a crazy Russian tyrant. Mostly true, but just  a little too easy.

It depends where you want to start history in order to understand the roots of this war. The most convenient place to start is with the collapse of the Soviet Union some three decades ago.

The end of the Cold War should have meant a great peace benefit that never materialized thanks to our ruling duopoly. A small part of that benefit would have included the disbanding of NATO, a U.S.-led defensive military alliance standing as bulwark against any Soviet aggression. 

Why on earth maintain this alliance once it became obsolete?  The obvious answer is that the thirst to project U.S. military power over-rode any long-term thinking about maintaining peace in the region. Hubris drove the US to swagger as the victor of a twilight struggle and who really gave AF anymore about Russia?

Over the next decade and a half, the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations embarked on a radical eastward expansion of NATO, scooping up as many of the small former Russian satellites as possible. The reverse of what should have been done.

And then, in another fateful date, in 2008, George W. Bush urged NATO to include Georgia and the Ukraine even though myriad political figures from Henry Kissinger to George F. Kennan warned that we were boxing in Russia who would eventually respond (as they did, cutting off the top of Georgia in 2008 and the Ukraine this week).

It would not take a rocket scientist to very clearly see that the hubris behind the American expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia itself would be taken by Moscow much as the way the Germans, and Hitler in particular, viewed the Treaty of Versailles.  Our National Security Blob, apparently, couldn’t care less and treated Russia much as the “loser” of the Cold War rather than as new partner nation.

Yet, anybody who would today claim that France “caused” World War II by imposing the Treaty of Versailles would be laughed out of the room, given the clear record of repeated aggression by Hitler.

And yet…and yet… there is a whole current inside a degraded and almost dead American Left that boldly claims that this war is a direct responsibility of NATO . Look no further than once-lefty writer Matt Taibbi, who having spent a lot of time in Moscow ought to know better. And yet his latest podcast, along with his Sandersista sidekick Katie Halper  is tiled: “How the US Caused the Ukraine Crisis.”  Perhaps next week’s show will be an expose on how Poland made Hitler invade in 1939.

If you want to blame the US for Russia invading Ukraine, why not go all the way and –truthfully—blame the US, at least in part, for launching the career of Vladimir Putin, It was uncritical support for the drunken and dysfunctional Boris Yeltsin for a near decade that led to him naming Putin as his successor. And we had no objections at the time.  After all, Russia in the view of the Blob had magically become a “democracy” and it was our solemn duty to stick by Yeltsin as he drove Russia to ruin and gave the Oligarchs keys to the kingdom.

That the US expansion of NATO and US policy in general has been a major contributing factor to the conflict is undeniable.  But for those on the Left who insist that the US is the primary culprit here, allow me to answer you in a Ukrainian phrase I learned this week: “Go fuck yourselves!”

As legitimate as German discomfort and anguish was with Versailles, it did not justify Hitler destroying half of Europe and killing millions.  Same goes for Putin. Even if you believe 100% that this conflict has an American origin, it does not excuse or justify his barbaric attack on a fellow Slav nation, its government and its civilians. And the real folly here is that when and if the smoke ever clears, Putin and Russia are going to be in an even more isolated position facing a fattened up and smug NATO.

GREAT POWER POLITICS

I would venture that Putin’s invasion was, indeed, motivated by a series of factors: resentment over NATO expansion, anger over Ukraine ousting its pro-Russian president, Putin’s lust for an imperial legacy, and certainly some degree of personal psychological anguish and turmoil. But mostly it’s about Great Power politics (something different than “U.S. imperialism” or “Russian expansionism.”

Great power politics, as Isaac Chotiner describes it a New Yorker interview with its leading proponent, John Mearsheimer, is “a school of realist international relations that assumes that, in a self-interested attempt to preserve national security, states will preemptively act in anticipation of adversaries. “

Here's how Mearsheimer sums up the conflict:

“If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of nato, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no nato expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, nato expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.”

These are some tough sentences to digest as they can and in fact should be read as not really caring if a given state is democratic or not, if it is in the sphere of influence of a great power. 

It’s a view for which I have a lot of sympathy because its veracity is self-evident. Think of the Monroe Doctrine and just how intolerant the US would be of any regime in the neighborhood that is not compliant enough.  What would the US do if a democratic Mexico would host, say, a Chinese military base in one of its northern states? Or look at the history of relations with Cuba.

As Mearsheimer would argue and as I would agree, the mantle of “democracy” has been used time and again to cloak a much more nefarious U.S. political and military intervention. And, by the way, is there ever a case where that US intervention has actually produced a stable and democratic regime?

So, logically, I would not be supporting Ukraine as it could be used as some sort of US battering ram. Except I am supporting Ukraine. I am, while knowing full well that the odds of sustaining an independent Ukraine on the Russian frontier defies all the odds. There are certain junctures when morality and human sentiment trump practical politics.

In the end, it does not much matter who I or you for that matter “support” in any international conflict. We command no armies. We have little to no influence unless we act in the millions, which is quite rare.

That said, I measure my support for this or that international movement or government by putting myself in the shoes of the people who live there.  While I have been a socialist my entire adult life, I know very well, that if I were a Cuban I would oppose the regime. I have been there many times and I know both the dark features of the regime, and the aspirations of the people who live there.

I have not been to Ukraine (I had planned a visit to Chernobyl a couple of years ago when I was in Yerevan, but I got sick and could not travel). But I have spent a lot of time in the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Armenia. The population of both those countries are acutely aware of Russian power breathing down their neck. Both countries have a different approach to Moscow but they share one thing in common: after 70 years of Soviet dictatorship, those countries may or may not be “democratic” based on your assessment, but the population of both countries, especially the younger generations, face resolutely West.

In no manner do they wish to once again fall into the darkness of Russian rule and while they are not blind to the inequalities of late capitalism., they much prefer it over Stalinist rule.  I know enough about Ukraine to say the same. Like the Georgians and the Armenians, Ukrainians have grown used to an open media, competitive elections, some basic economic opportunity and a lack of secret police knocking down their doors. To put it bluntly, Eastern Europeans have learned to appreciate at least a modicum of freedom and that is in direct confrontation with Russian rule.

This is not so much about democracy vs autocracy as it is East vs West. One does not expect the Ukrainians to get up in the morning and say, oh fuck, we might as well just accede to Russia because we are so damn close.

Nope. They are going to fight. And they have a right to do so, no matter the odds.

What kept me up last night was knowing that the bloodbath will begin in earnest soon enough in Ukraine. We will watch the butchering every night on TV. And we know that a clamor to intervene will gain more adherents.  We must keep front and center the lessons of history and comprehend that these sort of “democratic” interventions never work. They just entangle us in conflicts that we generally make worse. Indeed, if there is any recent war that most closely resembles the attack on Ukraine, was the disastrous U.S. war in Iraq.

Whatever our sympathies or support for Ukraine we need to hold fast to principles of non-intervention. No to a no fly zone. No to sending troops to protect a Zelensky government set up in western Ukraine. No to any engagement in any way by NATO.

In the meantime, the Ukrainians have some very concrete needs: basically they need Javelins and surface-to-air-missiles as Putin prefers to use overwhelming air power to flatten his enemies.  Some firepower is coming from Europe. And the Biden administration has also escalated arms transfers.  We can debate it, but it’s an irreversible fact.

So, I can say that in the short run, I am glad the Biden administration agrees with me on arming the Ukrainians. In the long run, if we do not get sucked into a catastrophic world war (a real possibility), we will emerge from this crisis with an emboldened and rather arrogant Western alliance, a much-fortified NATO and an even more pumped-up military budget.

There is nothing good here. But hopefully, an independent Ukraine will survive. ++

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