It’s been a while since I wrote on the war in Ukraine (recall here; and here). As regular readers know, I don’t think my comparative advantage is in punditry. In what follows it will seem I am engaging in it, but that is really just bait.
In a recent (April 13, 2024) editorial by J.D. Vance (a Republican senator from Ohio) in The New York Times, he writes with a number of examples that “we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.” In fact, he goes on to argue that the US is in dubious position to supply the needs of Taiwan. (He does not mention the needs of Israel, but these surely have gone up, too.)
Now, one might have expected this consideration to be in support of the conclusion that the the Unites States should rapidly expand its military manufacturing base (the Senator is from the industrial powerhouse, Ohio, after all). But he does no such thing. Nor does he propose to induce the American allies (say Germany) to expand their military manufacturing base rapidly. Rather, he concludes:
The White House has said time and again that it can’t negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.
Hidden here is a further implied consideration: that the earlier one sues for peace the less disastrous defeat in Ukraine will be. But that should not be America’s consideration. Before I get to that, one more thing: I agree with Vance’s claim that “The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque.”
But it is possible that that to “prolong a bloody and gruesome war” is in America’s interest. I have four things in mind. First, it does reduce Russia’s opportunities for engaging in mischief elsewhere. Second, it leaves Russia reliant on China, which is, in fact, much more cautious than Russia’s current government. Third, it would, in fact, buy America and its European allies time to re-arm properly. Obviously, this may not be in Ukraine’s interest, but that’s for its government and people to decide.
Now, before I get to the fourth, one may well wonder why re-armament is necessary if there is peace in Ukraine. And this really gets to the nub of Vance’s implied position. Of course, he is right to claim that one can negotiate with Putin. It is indeed absurd to deny it. But the real question is what the point is of doing that would be. Senator Vance implies we can return to a peaceful status quo.
Senator Vance’s hope looks hopelessly naïve; it assumes that once Putin’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine are satisfied, Russia will become a status quo power. We can admire President’s Zelenskyy’s heroism and his people’s bravery, while recognizing that his government has been rather imperfect. But one need not wish for a new cold war to see that Russia has explicit ambitions in the Baltics, eastern Europe, and Caucasus that it can act on more readily if its armed forces are not tied down in Ukraine. Selling out the Ukrainians does not improve America’s or Europe’s bargaining position with Putin downstream.
In fact, the alarming bit of the Senator’s argument is precisely the implication that even after several years of war in Ukraine the US and its main partners have not yet created the industrial conditions to defend Europe from Russia in an old-fashioned, prolonged conflict. And since we’re often told Russia is much weaker economically and industrially than China this is not a good look as great power rivalry across the Pacific intensifies. (Senator Vance himself is on record that “the U.S. should shift its focus to East Asia and called on European allies to “step up.”” )
Senator Vance is remarkably sanguine about the possible vulnerabilities on the fringes of America’s European alliance. I think this is representative of a wider shift among some American political and financial elites, who think there is profit to be had in dealing with Putin and his cronies, and that American government spending should be used to (again quoting Vance) “rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict.” The Senator clearly expresses the idea that there is a trade-off between protecting America’s allies and the financial interests of (at least a subset of) his own voters. But, and this is my fourth reason, the quasi rules-governed Pax-Americana (with its network of alliances, rule-based international orders) also benefits Ohio’s voters. It makes international business and travel much more predictable and so profitable/safe.
Unfortunately many of these same elites also seem eager to re-import the political methods of Putin into the United States. By this I mean, especially, the cronyism and corruption; but the lack of concern over former President’s Trump increasing flirtation with political gangsterism is also disconcerting.
Watching this from afar in Europe is somewhat surreal. The war in Ukraine makes no enduring headlines unless it involves the status of Ukrainian refugees and, especially, non-resident aliens who had to flee Ukraine to European host countries. The Russian military’s poor initial performance in Ukraine has reinforced widespread complacency about any possible future threat. I don’t mean to suggest this complacency is unique (and after all I could be completely wrong about Russia’s future plans); despite daily reports about the risk of climate change, voters vote for parties who make tackling it a relatively low priority. At the moment those are the very same parties that are rather sanguine about Russia.
Lurking here is my real interest in the topic. What my last three paragraphs suggest is that when liberal democracies’ economic and political leaderships are profoundly disunited, it is in the political and financial interests of a sub-set of these (at least in the medium term) to sow mistrust about liberal institutions even at the expense of American empire and its alliances. (This insight I first learned from Ryan Muldoon.) This process is not inevitable and not irreversible, but it is already far along for over a decade now. So, rather than being merely electoral competitions between competing programs and leaders many contemporary elections also have the feel of a vote over the kind of regime voters favor.
The trap for liberal political theory here is that it becomes merely a defense of the status quo. This despite the fact that from the perspective of left-liberalism the status quo is the product of deep structural (and intersectional) inequalities; and from the perspective of right-liberalism the status quo is the product of rent-seeking and lack of polycentrism and self-governance. For liberals the status quo is not sufficiently liberal enough in all kinds of ways not the least that global governance is very far removed from liberal ideals.
In fact, the political agonism over the nature of the political regime can be informative to political theorizing. That is, while little good can be expected from those that wish to shift the status quo toward accommodation with Putin and the kind of business of politics he represents, liberals should use the present uncertainty to think afresh about orders, institutions, and policies.
In Europe this also urgently entails, alas, commitment to re-armament, and the end of the long period of (perhaps welcome after imperialism and two world wars) neglect of global politics. It also means re-learning how to think about liberal international politics without a narrow focus on international law alone. How to reconcile this with liberal desiderata cannot be postponed.
To be continued.
Excellent post NESCIO13. One of the weaknesses of 'liberal' political leadership is that it offers little, beyond participation in the marketplace, to give people a sense of meaning in life.. In this way it accepts rather than challenges the existential emptiness of modernity. https://areomagazine.com/2022/05/05/a-human-hearted-modernity/
So when people feel economic insecurity they're more likely to look at ideologies, however flawed, which offer meaning, like fascism, religion and hyper nationalism. As one of liberalism's problems is its failure to offer an overarching vision of meaning and the the good life, beyond economic concerns. This then feeds into the stresses you identify. In this context World Wars One and Two can be seen as nationalism and other isms offering a meaning based challenge to the existential emptiness of modernity and liberalism. If we don't develop a more inspiring and fulfilling global political ethos and system we may be continuing the same path again. So this definitely is as you note a key challenge for political theory today.
This is overly charitable to Vance and to Trump, for whom he is little more than a microphone. They want Putin to win, and would like to emulate his policies.
And if I understand your terms correctly, right-liberalism (for example, the US Republican Party) is in the process of capitulating to far-right movements of one kind or another, though divided about Putin (roughly, the closer Putin is, the less they like him)
Here's my analysis from 2019
https://crookedtimber.org/2019/07/05/a-new-two-party-system/