I don’t know if I just have a very strong gene for contrarian thinking. Or if years of working as a conservative in orthodox left institutions (ie universities, so make that really, really left-wing institutions) have shaped and inculcated me to be highly sceptical of all elite, establishment opinion. Either way, I don’t find remotely convincing the establishment consensus on the war in Ukraine, the ‘don’t deal with that marauding thug Putin’ perspective. This is the view that the West should and must fight on against the Hitler-like Putin. Here are what I will call some fallacies undergirding that attitude and the pro-war position. These are why I’m with President Trump in wanting to cut a deal to end the fighting as soon as possible.
#1 Fallacy) This Ukraine war is a lot like the second world war
It’s not like the second world war though, is it? If Hitler had had nuclear weapons he would not have lost the war short of total world devastation. We’d have been happy to negotiate some sort of deal. Plus, Britain was an island. Had it been part of the European landmass Churchill and Britain would have lost. And again, Britain stood by and let Czechoslovakia be swallowed up. Britain and France – not the US – declared war only when Poland was attacked. They did so to protect Poland from a thuggish, totalitarian dictator. Sadly, in the end, Britain saved itself but Poland did get swallowed up by a thuggish, totalitarian dictator and for over half a century was under the Soviet thumb. And, of course, Stalin murdered more people than Hitler.
I have long said that Churchill was the greatest person of the 20th Century. And I don’t think it’s all that close really. No Churchill then … no defeating the Nazis, in my view. But Churchill certainly played the cards he was dealt. And we know that Churchill cut unpalatable deals when he had to (think Yalta, think Eastern Europe). Nor is it remotely convincing to compare Zelensky to Churchill. For one thing, Churchill did not outlaw the main opposition party. He invited it into a wartime coalition.
#2 Fallacy) The Americans now and in the second world war
There is a strong line of elite opinion that criticises the Americans of today for wanting to cut a deal and get out of funding this war which has already cost US taxpayers between US$190 billion to over $300 billion (depending on if, and how, you count ‘in kind’ donations). And these same people also like to make comparisons to the second world war. Well, in the second world war the Americans just left the Brits and their Empire to fight Hitler (and up until Hitler invaded Russia remember that Stalin and Hitler were on the same side, so the British Empire stood alone against both these brutal, murderous dictators). Americans back then barely lifted a finger. President Franklin Roosevelt did not send anything remotely like what the US has provided to Ukraine in proportional terms. And back then what FDR managed to get through Congress for the Brits wasn’t free, remember. It was lend-lease. So despite the US lavishing Marshall Plan monies on Europe after the war they made Britain pay back every single penny, the last payment taking place at the end of 2006. Again, the US did not enter the second world war until it was attacked by Japan. So comparisons with the second world war for why America today needs to continue to pay up are not that convincing.
Put bluntly, until the US itself had been attacked by Japan the left-wing FDR had not been able (or willing) to get the US involved in a war against a dictator (make that against two dictators for quite a while) who had much more patently expansionist plans than Mr Putin. Not when Czechoslovakia was invaded. Not when Poland was invaded. Not when France and Belgium were invaded. Not when Britain was attacked and London was being bombed nightly. The US joined the war and sent big help and many military supplies only when the US itself was attacked at Pearl Harbour. And before then its contributions were rather meagre by the standards of what the pro-Ukraine war crowd demand today.
And moving to today, the American public simply does not want to fund this war any longer. That is just a fact about the world. Trump ran on an explicit pledge to end the Ukraine war and he won a thumping victory. On top of that, all polls right now, as I write, show majority support for that Trump position (and it’s over 60 per cent ‘stop the money to Ukraine’ for Republican voters who have delivered control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency). The elite view of ‘we need to keep funding Ukraine and fight, fight, fight’ seems to just want to wish away this fact about the world. Worse, when it comes from outside the US it is coming from people who live in countries who basically aren’t willing to spend enough to defend even themselves. No one really believes that the Europeans can step in for the US and help defend Ukraine for any length of time. France and Britain have nuclear weapons, true, but their militaries right now are grossly diminished and probably incapable of taking on Turkey. It would take the taxpayers in Germany, France, Britain and the rest of the EU countries to be willing to bump up defence spending to 3-5 per cent of GDP now and for years and years. That would mean big cuts to the bloated welfare states there. Who’s betting that is something the lefty socialist leaders in France and Britain will even try to do? (Germany is a complete write-off in terms of defence spending.)
So in clear, explicit terms, all these ‘we’ve gotta help Zelensky’ types need to tell us what their plan is. It’s not even an obviously moral position to be saying, ‘Look, we in my country won’t be spending this sort of money but you poor shmucks in Arkansas have got to keep coughing up hundreds of billions of dollars.’ Why do they have to when Australians and Brits and Germans cannot and will not? To do what? To keep this world war-type meat grinder going? I’ve been asking the pro-keep-fighting crowd for ages what their end game is. No one can say. Wars only end in one of two ways. You cut a deal or you go on to crush and obliterate the other side forcing unconditional surrender. Anyone advocating the latter is advocating for a third world war. The West will not march into Moscow (or really into any biggish chunk of Russian territory) without the world’s second biggest nuclear power unleashing a nuclear response. I am not for that. If the crowd that throws around ‘you’re an appeaser’ with gay abandon wants that then they can call me what they will. I think they’re bonkers. So that leaves a negotiated settlement. And you play the cards you have. You know, the way Churchill had to do at the end of the second world war when Stalin (and a naïve FDR) forced him to abandon basically all of Eastern Europe to the communist thugs. Had Churchill morphed into an appeaser by then or was he playing the cards he had? Meanwhile, if you’re talking really tough while living in a country like Australia, or most anywhere else, remember that you’re like the weakling in the bar who’s calling one of the big brutes names because you’re champion boxer brother is standing behind you. When Big Brother leaves the bar you won’t be talking tough for much longer.
3) The European hypocrisy gets worse
Get this. And it’s from that left-leaning journalist Jake Tapper, so no one can claim it’s a source friendly to President Trump. This year, year three of the Ukraine war, European Union imports of Russian fossil fuels were more than Euro 18.7 billion, which is more than the amount of aid these countries sent to the Ukraine. Got that. The pontificating gasbags in the EU (and Britain) who condemn Putin are buying his oil to help keep his regime going and they are buying more of it than the military aid – actually, for the EU it’s loans – they are sending to Zelensky. And remember back in 2017 when then First Term President Trump warned Merkel and Germany and Europe to cut its dependence on Russian oil and all the assembled great and good of the European project laughed at Mr Trump? Well, they’re not laughing now. No, they’re still buying Russian oil. That level of hypocrisy is really rather stunning. But then with all the suicidal Net Zero dismantling of their own economies, they don’t really have much choice. Still, maybe they should cut back on the moral preening.
4) Can today’s deal be great?
As all sorts of hard-nosed US commentators are pointing out, the draft peace deal known as the Istanbul Accords was on the table and therefore Ukraine to take in the first month or two of the war. It would have left Ukraine with all its territory save for the Donbas and Crimea (which had been taken when Obama was President, and he didn’t lift a finger to do anything). Of course, what that early deal also wanted was for Ukraine to disarm so Zelensky could not sign up to it. No present-day deal will force Ukraine to disarm. But it’s pretty clear Zelensky also won’t get back all of the land Russia and Putin now hold. If you think that somehow Ukraine can and will get it back then you have to explain how this will happen. Be precise. Don’t wallow in moral abstractions about the way the world should be. Is that sort of outcome fair when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died? No. Was it fair to hand Poland over to Stalin at the end of the second world war after having gone to war in the first place to save Poland? No. But back then, once the US made clear it wouldn’t fight the matter out, what was the alternative? I mean that as a serious, not rhetorical, question. Bloviating Australian and British PMs talking today about supporting Zelensky and the Ukraine are simply being gasbags while implicitly hoping and praying and wishing that those poor Arkansas taxpayers can somehow be convinced to keep stumping up the cash that their own taxpayers most definitely will not. That sort of wish does not obviously put you on the moral side of any equation. It’s virtue-signalling par excellence.
5) It’s the Principle of the Thing
No, it’s not. When the North Vietnamese invaded South Vietnam the US eventually lost the will to keep the struggle going. (By the way, this was mightily cheered on, indeed aided and abetted, by the left side of politics don’t forget.) And so we didn’t save any of South Vietnam. We allowed the whole of it to be swallowed up. Was that appeasement? Was it worse or better than cutting a deal to save most of Ukraine? While you ponder your reply go and listen to the former Foreign Minister of Singapore. He was asked why Asian countries don’t seem to be as worked-up about what’s happening in the Ukraine as Western countries are. In a nice, polite way he explained that if this is about the principle of a country wanting to keep its borders intact, and not let some small minority part of that country break away, then he and many Asians don’t see what the difference is between Serbia a quarter century ago and Ukraine today. Serbia tried to keep Kosovo from breaking away and we – the US and Britain and Europe and Nato – decided to bomb Serbia into submission. We sided with the minority ethnic group and had no qualms about an existing country dividing up along ethnic lines. Indeed we facilitated it. But when ethnic Russians want to break away from the Ukraine? Is that not the same principle involved? And remember, not all that long ago Ukraine had a pro-Russia elected government that was undermined, if not brought down, by Obama and the Europeans. Nor has the Ukraine under Zelensky been a model citizen as far as Russian language rights are concerned. Or heck, go back and look at the denominational split between Catholics and Orthodox Christians that runs right through Ukraine and goes all the way back to 1054 AD. The Russia and Ukraine links are longstanding and very historical.
So there is a bit of special pleading involved by the pro-Ukraine war people here – or at least I’m willing to bet that the Serbs see it that way. And why did we have to push Nato membership right up to the Russian border? Yes, yes, yes from our perspective the Russians are paranoid. But if the Soviets had made Mexico an offer to become part of the Soviet bloc and the Mexicans had been inclined to accept I rather suspect the Americans would simply not have stood for it. Period.
All up then, we live in the world as it is. Putin is a murderous thug who invaded Ukraine but the West has dealt with his type, and far worse, before. All the time in fact. This war ends with a deal or with total submission by one of the parties. I vote for deal, not least because my two kids live in London and there is no sane person who believes we can push on to take Moscow. American taxpayers want out. There is no plausible path to victory for the Ukrainians without (or even with) American money. That’s a fact about the world. The Yanks pay way, way more for the democratic world’s defence than any of the rest of us. It is hypocritical to complain about their wanting out when you know that Australians or Brits or the French or Germans will not pay the needed near on 5 per cent of GDP to begin, just begin, to build a credible military. So we are like Churchill towards the end of the second world war. Hyper-moralised moans about the unfairness of the world offer no way forward. You try to get the best deal you can.
Isn’t that what President Trump is doing? Maybe you are a genius negotiator and you can criticise his negotiating strategy. If so, fair enough – though any lawyer who has been to mediation knows that to run a mediation you have to appear to be somewhere in the middle between the two camps. You can’t call Putin an evil thug and Zelensky God’s gift to mankind and then expect to be able to cut a deal. It never happens that way. Mediators always pretend there is something to both sides’ cases. I think we all know what any final deal will more-or-less look like anyway. No Nato membership. (I agree with that, by the way.) Implicit-only US security guarantees, in part by bringing in US companies to mine those minerals throughout the Ukraine. This will be fine as long as Trump and the Republicans are in office. It’s fair to worry about a future Democrat administration. And then a call has to be agreed as to where to draw the borderline. This is where the negotiating action will be. If you insist that Russia give up everything it now holds save for the Donbas and Crimea – ie the position before Russia invaded – then you need to say what your plan is if (make that when) Russia balks. Because it will. Not fair, I agree. But once the US walks away (again, look at today’s polls about US voters’ tanking support for Ukraine) any future deal is going to be worse for Ukraine. Trump explicitly said as much and I think that is pretty convincing. Again, if you are for continued war you need to tell us what your end game is. But they don’t.
Of course, if you are someone who sees this, and everything else, in hyper-moralised terms about the way the world ‘should be’ then aside from me suggesting you become a human rights lawyer I will just say the world we inhabit delivers unfair, unjust outcomes all the time. That’s why I am a Hobbesian who believes in spending a lot of money on defence. You play the cards you’re dealt and try for the best outcome you can get with them. And right now it seems to me that the elite, establishment view about Ukraine fighting on will deliver worse outcomes for the Ukraine. What are the upsides of fighting on with American taxpayers poised to cut funding, Europeans basically impotent, and no sane person wanting a third world war? And to be clear, I do not count as relevant upsides the warm, self-congratulatory feelings that come from hyper-moralised virtue-signalling by Western elites and the displaying of their own fine moral sensibilities.
That’s my contrarian position on the Ukraine war, though it’s not contrarian for many, many US taxpayers.