You can always count on David Brooks to come up with fluff and nonsense purveyed in a tone of sweet reason; it’s almost pointless to summarize his latest: How Do You Handle a Wounded Putin?, but here goes:
- Putin has acknowledged things are going really badly — “like a wounded tiger” who is threatening to go on the attack.
- Mr. Brooks spoke to unnamed officials who are giving him an ‘inside’ assessment of how badly Russia is doing.
- The idea that Putin might use nuclear weapons should be considered a real possibility — but nobody can say how real it is.
- They won’t say what they will do in response, but Putin should take it very seriously as a bad thing.
- The US strategy is to help Ukraine defeat the Russian invasion — but slowly, so as to not provoke an extreme reaction.
Magic happens:
The first American hope is that Putin will eventually do a cost-benefit analysis and conclude that his best option is to negotiate. The second American hope is that the Ukrainians will also do a cost-benefit analysis. They will realize that while they are winning the war, it is also nearly impossible to physically dislodge the Russian troops who are dug in in eastern Ukraine. They too will decide to negotiate.
If that happens, a territorial settlement will be reached and the global rules-based international order will be re-established.
But...Brooks worries that the aims of Ukraine are not getting enough attention from the west, and that they will persist in fighting to reclaim their territory regardless of what Mr. Brooks sees as the ‘best’ solution.
What Mr. Brooks slides past is how does a “global rules-based international order” accommodate itself to the matter of horrendous war crimes against Ukrainian people, military and civilians: torture, forced removal from their homes, mass graves, attacks on civilian targets for no legitimate military purpose except to destroy morale and make life impossible — all from an invasion based on lies?
How exactly can Vladimir Putin be relied on to carry out any agreements, given the brutal aggression Russia has resorted to over and over again and his ignoring the rules-based international order?
This coming from David Brooks is not surprising — this is his schtick after all. One comment on his opinion piece jumped out at me. Mr. Brooks ignores the crazy at home. I took a screen shot of it just to make sure I had it on record.
Transcription:
Putin, the wild tiger was provoked by Biden, to please Ukraine which was paying a lot of money to Hunter (and a share to the big guy) and this tiger is making havoc now. Biden is trying to kill this tiger who has lot more destructive power in him. Trump knew how to handle this tiger and making him a pet. If what Tucker Carlson reported is true, Biden is responsible for the destruction that is happening in Ukraine and suffering the are going through in Europe and all over the world. Tucker reported in April Putin offered to withdraw in exchange for Ukraine’s pledge that it won’t join NATO, but Biden scuttled it as he wanted regime change in Russia.
And here I thought regime change was all the rage in Republican circles. It’s now a bad thing when it’s about Putin?
We shouldn’t overlook the Fifth Column Putin has working for him here in America. Putin’s calculations have to be taking into account the possibility that Republicans in the midterms will take back one or both chambers of Congress. In that event, the party of people like Alex K will be doing everything they can to disrupt the Biden Administration, including its efforts to support Ukraine and keep the alliance against the Russian invasion working together — if the former guy, who is also a ‘wounded tiger’ hasn’t already unleashed another January 6 by then to keep from being held to account.
(And how many secrets has he shared with his good buddy Vlad?)
Meanwhile Ross Douthat has also weighed in on Putin’s nuclear threat, invoking the ghosts of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr with: What Putin’s Nuclear Threat Means for Ukraine and the U.S.
Douthat inadvertently exposes the conservative ambivalence about nuclear weapons as part of their obsession with “strong leadership.”
At a 1985 banquet marking the 30th anniversary of National Review, with Ronald Reagan in attendance, William F. Buckley Jr. gave a speech celebrating the American nuclear deterrent, and the willingness of the American president to use it. Those weapons and that willingness, Buckley declaimed, had sustained American freedom through the Cold War, so that future generations could look back and be grateful that “at the threatened nightfall, the blood of their fathers ran strong.”
Some decades later, after Reagan’s passing, Buckley would write that he had changed his mind. He now believed that “the critical moment having arrived,” Reagan “would in fact not have deployed our great bombs, never mind what the Soviet Union had done.”
What?
Funny how that works. Douthat concludes — like Brooks — that Ukraine is the danger here, if they insist on fighting for their country.
So I return to a point I’ve made throughout this war. American support for Ukraine is good and necessary, but there is a point at which Ukraine’s goals and America’s interests may diverge, and the combination of Ukrainian military breakthroughs and Russian nuclear threats brings that point closer than before — the point where the Ukrainians want to go all the way, and we require negotiation and restraint.
I say this understanding why Kyiv might be willing to accept an unusual degree of nuclear risk, even absorb a nuclear strike, for the sake of its own territorial integrity. In a battle for their very freedom, the Ukrainians, no less than Buckley, want their children to look back and say that in the greatest crisis, the blood of their fathers ran strong.
The hagiography of Great Republican Leaders is that they are always strong — and Democrats are weak. Douthat is arguing that the threat of nuclear weapons makes being too strong a bad thing. (Funny how neither of them can admit that Biden’s leadership is proving far better than ritual saber-rattling and chest-thumping.) All of a sudden Douthat and Brooks are urging caution and concession.
You’d almost think they are more worried about Biden and Ukraine succeeding while Putin crumbles than they are about a nuclear exchange of some kind — and that they expect Putin will respond to concessions and stop behaving badly. (As with Brooks, Douthat ignores the horrors inflicted on Ukraine which might make the ‘moderation’ he’s urging result in a popular uprising against the Ukrainian government.)
Given that Republicans are always claiming that there are no limits on what they will do to defend ‘freedom’ and ‘American values’, and that only they can deal with a dangerous world, it’s a bit of schadenfreude to see how timorous they become when the stakes are real and actions have consequences.
It’s also disgusting, considering where they are coming from. I offered a comment on Douthat’s column:
Funny how things change depending on circumstances. It's fascinating to watch how conservative pundits are now worried that President Biden risks 'forcing' Putin to use nuclear weapons if we push him too far. It's also fascinating to see how badly they want Ukraine to agree to concessions to avoid the conflict going nuclear.
The idea that Putin will respond to moderation is not supported by events; quite the contrary. If anything, the demonstration of how effective western arms and western military doctrines have proven with the near collapse of the Russian military should make Putin more reluctant to go too far - especially as his support at home weakens.
If he gives the fatal orders, can he be confident they will be carried out, or that it won't be the final straw for those who could act to remove him from power? Tall building syndrome isn't just for oligarchs in the energy sector.
More to the point, for four years we had a President who was so erratic and irresponsible, the entire world was worried if he would 'go nuclear'. He asked why we had them if we wouldn't use them - and he was ready to use them to take out a hurricane.
There's no question that Putin and nuclear blackmail can't be dismissed - but let us not forget the threat we have at home, and how he is promising to unleash another January 6 as he too becomes increasingly wounded. Would backing down in the face of his threats improve the situation?
emphasis added
(Before Putin made his speech threatening to go nuclear, Bret Stephens had a column all gung ho about inflicting a crushing defeat on Russia, brushing off nuclear concerns. It will be interesting to see if he’s still ready to go full hawk.)
I am not saying we should ignore the risk that Vladimir Putin will resort to using nuclear weapons, far from it. But, I would also point out that Vladimir Putin has to be wondering what will we do in return if he does. Having Biden at the helm has to be giving him far more qualms than it would if the “Count of Mostly Crisco” was still in charge.
I would also suggest the last people we should be listening to are the ones who inflicted the worst president ever on us, who can’t kick him to the curb, and who remain mesmerized by Putin’s ‘strong’ leadership even as it proves how flawed it is. Anyone who can talk about a “global rules-based international order” while embracing the Hobbesian world view that is the essence of conservatism is not to be taken seriously.