It is becoming a problem for the Right — Ukraine is causing them a sad over the troubles Ukraine is making for their “strong leader” and role model, Vladimir Putin.
Dr. K. has been paying attention, and their idolatry for ‘strength’ is not holding up all that well. Here’s a trip through The NY Times pay wall to Paul Krugman’s latest.
On Aug. 29 Tucker Carlson of Fox News attacked President Biden’s policy on Ukraine, asserting among other things: “By any actual reality-based measure, Vladimir Putin is not losing the war in Ukraine. He is winning the war in Ukraine.” Carlson went on, by the way, to assert that Biden is supporting Ukraine only because he wants to destroy the West.
Carlson’s timing was impeccable. Just a few days later, a large section of the Russian front near Kharkiv was overrun by a Ukrainian attack. It’s important to note that Putin’s forces weren’t just pushed back; they appear to have been routed. As the independent Institute for the Study of War reported, the Russians were driven into a “panicked and disorderly retreat,” leaving behind “large amounts of equipment and supplies that Ukrainian forces can use.”
ICYMI:
Oh what a difference a few days and hundreds of square miles of territory recovered make. Krugman doesn't neglect the tankies and friends either.
To be fair to Carlson and other right-wing cheerleaders for Putin, they aren’t the only people clinging to delusions of Russian success. There’s a whole school of self-styled “realists” who considered Ukrainian resistance to Russia futile and who, despite the failure of Putin’s initial assault, have spent the past six months calling on Ukraine to make big concessions to supposedly superior Russian power.
When it comes to equating MAGA Macho-ness with military might, well…
On the right, however, approval of authoritarian regimes is all bound up with assertions about their military prowess. For example, last year Ted Cruz tweeted about a video comparing scenes of a tough-looking Russian soldier with a shaved head with a U.S. Army recruiting video featuring a female corporal raised by two mothers. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea,” opined Cruz.
Actually, the U.S. military is sort of woke, in the sense that it is highly diverse and inclusive, encourages independent thinking and initiative on the part of junior officers and is, at the higher levels, quite intellectual.
The Russian Army, on the other hand, definitely isn’t woke. Conscripts face brutal hazing. According to Mark Hertling, a former commander of U.S. forces in Europe, it’s riddled with “mafialike” corruption and its officers are terrible.
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While the war in Ukraine is a brutal struggle and the Ukrainian people deserve full credit for what they’ve been able to accomplish so far, the war has also become something of a proxy for the political struggles here in America. There can be little doubt if the former guy was still in the Oval Office, Ukraine would have been crushed by now, NATO would be in shambles, and the right wing would be blaming it all on Liberal decadence that only they can fix.
Krugman’s conclusion bears some thinking:
The result is that the war, while it is of course overwhelmingly a fight for Ukrainian freedom, has also, weirdly, become a front in America’s cultural and political wars.
There’s growing speculation about what will happen inside Russia if the invasion of Ukraine ends in outright defeat. But you also have to wonder how the U.S. right will handle the revelation that sometimes tough guys finish last.
Good question.
Enjoy!