Will Ukraine Be Russia's Vietnam?

The effects of the Vietnam War  have long died off here in America. They were vanquished by the Reagan Administration's decision to speak and act with bravado. And that means that we, as the greatest nation ever on earth, can no longer face our mental and moral failures. And so we invaded Grenada, used terrorism to disrupt a new democracy in Nicaragua which came courtesy of the Sandinistas'  overthrow of the US backed Somoza regime, and trained military and paramilitary forces in the use of torture to support an authoritarian regime in El Salvador. In fact, that last involvement helped start the creation of the MS-13 gang. Reagan gladly fed our nation's hunger for patriotic pride with his Cold War tirade against the Soviet Union which was tempered a bit when he dealt with Gorbachev.

So what were the effects of the Vietnam War on the nation? According to Chris Hedges in his brilliant lecture entitled, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (click here for a video of the lecture), our venture in Vietnam 'humiliated' us because it forced us to look into a non-patriotic, non-magic mirror to get a true look at who we were. For we had committed many atrocities in Vietnam in an effort to stop the nation's reunification and instead supported tyrants and proxy leaders. And so our intervention into Vietnam carried with it the potential to help us mature as a nation by forcing us to see our nation's need for self-control. But, again, the Reagan, and even the Bush I, Administrations wanted America to feel about itself like it did before that war.

So now we have Russia led by the tyrant Vladimir Putin. Some of the atrocities directed by his leadership are documented in the works of Anna Politkovskaya as she wrote about what she witnessed in Chechnya. It is, perhaps deservedly, suspected that Putin directed the attacks and assassination of some of his political rivals as well as critics, critics like Politkovskaya who was gunned down. 

We could also point out that despite the elections in Russia, there is no real democracy there because Putin controls what candidates and political parties can participate in elections.

And now Putin has unwarrantedly directed Russian forces to invade Ukraine hinting that the nations that would help Ukraine resist the invasion faced possible retaliation with nuclear weapons. Since then, Putin has cooled down his nuclear rhetoric, but the unwarranted invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities that have come with it continue.

So now, Russia has been flailing in Ukraine. And if the invasion and subsequent moving of the goal posts continue to falter, Russia will have a choice. Either it can seek to overcompensate for its humiliation by eventually attacking a far weaker nation than Ukraine, or it can face not just its military failure there, but it moral and intellectual failures that have justified the invasion and its accompanying atrocities.

Which road will Russia choose to travel on? Nobody knows. While it already depends on the final outcome of its war against Ukraine, it might also depend on who follows Putin as the leader of Russia. However, there are steps that the West can take to help achieve the best possible outcome. The first step is to respect Russia's history. Here I am not referring to Russia's history of atrocities, but its history of being invaded. And the best way to respect that history is to neither move NATO eastward nor put advanced weaponry and other strategic technology near Russia's borders. 

This invasion of Ukraine has already shown that its military is not able to cleaning pull of a simple invasion of a and advanced nation. Russia is not militarily ready to become the center of world power that it is rumored to desire. We can thank technology for that. Advancing technology gives the underdog nations certain advantages in fending of tyrannical rule--such as the kind of rule Putin has over Russia. 

By respecting Russia's history of being invaded, we give any future Russian leaders less reason to be so defensive that it acts offensively against its neighbors.

The second thing that can be done is to have the leading powers in the world, such as the US, follow the rule of law rather than the rule of force. An example of following the rule of force would the US invasion of Iraq. There are many interventions, invasions, and wars that the US has conducted that illustrate a complete lack of concern for the rule of law. So, in other words, wannabe superpowers need role model superpower nation that exercise self-restraint by following international law in its foreign policies.

Hopefully, Russia loses its war against Ukraine. And if they do, hopefully the post invasion time will see Russia's leadership reflects over their aggression and atrocities so that, for at least a little while, Russia changes course with both its foreign policies and its treatment of its own citizens. Hopefully, Russian leadership will see their own moral failures and seek to correct them. We did that for a while after Vietnam, hopefully Russia reflects on the error of its ways for longer than we did.

Same Battle, Different Means: Our Culture Wars And Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

What first appeared to be merely a political-military move, which is the Russian invasion of Ukraine,  has also shown signs of being a culture war, Russian style. 

Up the until invasion of Ukraine, there were a significant number of my fellow religiously conservative American Christians who looked at Putin as a spiritual hero of another nation's culture wars and saw the relationship between Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church as a template to be followed here only with conservative Evangelicals taking the place of the Orthodox Church. In fact, we were very much going in that direction under President Trump

But while the invasion of Ukraine has put a bad taste in the mouths of many of those previously mentioned Christians, the culture wars go on both here and there. Regarding here, many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians look to either reelect Trump in 2024 or elect a Republican candidate who will pick judges that will rule against  certain rights for the LGBT community and will possibly pick SCOTUS justices who will reverse the Obergefell decision. They are hoping that the current conservative majority SCOTUS will decide on a Mississippi law that will reverse Roe v. Wade.

The culture wars are in full swing there, and by there I mean the Ukraine and Russia too as the Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church has defended the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a battle to stop Western influence, an influence that he believes to be decadent (click here for the source ). He has also said that Russia is battling the Anti-Christ when talking about Russia's invasion of Ukraine (click here for the source).

His references to Russia as being Holy Russia, which would make Russia a New Testament equivalent to Israel, seems to imitate how some of my fellow religiously conservative Christians refer to a former America from the past.

What both culture wars have in common is the seeking of government help to suppress the freedoms of unbelievers when those freedoms are used to enjoy practices, especially sexual ones, that are outside the bounds of the Scriptures. And so I hope that many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians, who complain about having lost the culture war here, take a good hard look at the invasion of Ukraine because that invasion and conflict is in par a culture war to the extent that Putin is following the direction provided by Patriarch Kirill. For just as some religiously conservative Christians believe that they are now surrounded by a culture that is antagonistic to their faith, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has been promoting Putin's domestic policies and his war against Ukraine as a way of preventing Russia from being surrounded by a secular culture.

The Good News And Bad News From The Ukraine

 There is good news from Ukraine. The Ukrainian resistance has been quite effective in putting a damper on Russia's advances. What some would have thought might be a David and Goliath matchup, has turned into a stalemate of sorts and that is good news for Ukraine, Europe, and the world.

There is another piece of good news regarding Russia's invasion of the Ukraine. It seems that Putin is backing off his implied threat to use nuclear weapons over his invasion of the Ukraine.  Putin's stated policy now is that he would only consider using nuclear weapons if Russia's existence were threatened.  Of course, we might caution against celebrating too early here because at least some of the economic sanctions being employed by the West, especially by the U.S.,  could eventually be seen as threatening Russia's existence.

The above is the good news, there is bad news as well. The bad news is not news, but it is bad. This non-news is that Putin still hangs on to the sense of entitlement that gave him permission to invade Ukraine. That is right, he felt entitled to direct Russian forces to invade and conquer Ukraine. And therefore, not only will this invasion continue until it is considered no longer feasible to do so, future invasions by Russia into other European nations could be on the table.

Of course, Russia is not the only 21st century nations that feels entitled to try to seize control of land that belongs to others. The U.S. invaded Iraq under false pretenses and Israel continues to take land away from the Palestinian people. 

So just perhaps the worst cases of feeling entitled to take what is not theirs  doesn't have to do with either the poor acquiring material wealth or the incompetent being protected at the work place. Rather, the worst case examples of any entitlement culture involves the leaders of one nation using force to take what they claim is rightfully theirs from other people. Of course, when conservative sources complain about an entitlement culture, they are referring to the business world either in terms of employees or the market place. That is what conservatives target when complaining about any supposed entitlement culture. Thus, conservatives, more often than not, are complaining about either the poor or those who struggle at the workplace.

It's not that conservatives either don't care or believe it is ok when a leader of one nation feels entitled to attack another nation or group of people. They just never seem to describe the aggressor in terms of feeling entitled to take what is not theirs. And that might be because conservatives tend to favor authoritarianism and thus tribal loyalties might cause them to either be blind to or rationalize a favored leader's feeling entitle to take land or wealth from another nation. And thus conservative analysis of a given war tend to be based on those tribal loyalties rather than to focus on delusions of entitlement by an authoritarian leader like Putin.

The biggest problem that occurs when one leader feels entitled to direct their military forces to attack another nation is this: losing battles and the war they started will seem unfair to them. Why? It is because they attacked a nation or group of people because they felt entitled to. Thus losing a given war or even battle only serves to make these aggressive leaders angry because they feel cheated. And the anger that results from feeling cheated only prolongs the wars they started. It can also cause them to take out their frustrations on the the victims of their attacks.

Putin's reasons for feeling entitled to invade the Ukraine are varied from historical, ethnic, and religious reasons. In that sense, there are some similarities between what makes Putin feel justified in attacking the Ukraine and what enables Israel's leaders to continue with the Occupation and the confiscation of Palestinian land. For the U.S., what makes us feel justified in invading any nation are our delusions of moral superiority. We presumptuously assume the right to be the judge, jury, and executioner of international law But that often results in us turning a blind eye at the actual violations of international law carried out by allies while we do not allow for any international due process when accusing enemies of violating those same international laws.

So that is what we currently have in the Ukraine. We have a Russian leader who feels that the Ukraine rightfully belongs to Russia. And Putin believes that regardless of the loyalties of the Ukrainian people, he has the right to invade and conquer them. So he will have his military vent his anger  for him at those who most effectively resist his advances until the war is no longer feasible to fight. And he will feel morally justified in doing so. And that is what we are witnessing in Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.