I feel almost obsessed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now is the time where the actions of those in the “free world” will either cause us to slip back into a dark past or move into a brighter future.
The issue of Ukraine in my mind is not that this is the greatest humanitarian tragedy of my lifetime. I don’t even know how such things can be measured. How can we compare all the afflictions that so many pass through in this life to say one person or people’s suffering is greater than another’s? Is this the single largest number of displaced persons in my lifetime? I don’t know. Certainly what is happening in Ukraine is not the greatest number of people killed due to indiscriminate killing or faced with starvation.
What this is, in my opinion, is the most blatant use of military force by a large nuclear armed nation against a smaller non-nuclear sovereign neighbor where the sole motivation seems to be conquest and the imposition of the bigger nation’s will. Some will argue this is no different than when the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t think there is any comparison between the effort to topple Saddam Hussein by the United States and others with the effort to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government and annex the Donbas and the Black Sea ports of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin. Likewise the effort by the United States to topple the Taliban and dismantle al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The United States made many mistakes in both those invasions but I don’t think anyone can reasonably argue that seeking to overthrow Volodymyr Zelenskyy is morally equivalent to seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda.
Eastern Europe in particular has endured so much suffering and wasted so many years under the totalitarian thumb of the Russian dominated Soviet Union. Such an outpouring of hope sprang forth when the Berlin Wall crumbled, the Iron Curtain fell, and the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union dissolved. Millions upon millions of people, in Eastern Europe and throughout the world, awoke to a new day of possibility. Could Eastern Europe really be returning to those dark days of Russian hegemony?
Eastern Europe does not want to turn backwards and sink once more into that darkness. No one who remembers or knows of those times wants to live in a Neo-Soviet future, not even the vast majority of Russians I believe. Except of course the former KGB officer types like Putin who cannot stand to live in a world which does not share their sense of themselves as all important, all knowing, and all powerful. To be thought of as a strong man and to be feared is the addiction of Putin and the like.
To not slip back into that darkness Ukraine must not only win this war against Russia but must also win the peace. The goal should not be to defeat Russia. Russia has already lost this war. Even if Putin captures the whole of the Donbas and the Black Sea ports, or all of Ukraine and beyond, Russia has already crept back in time, into the spiritual abyss. Putin has made Russia a pariah, a roll it will take decades to shed.
Of course many outside Russia’s closet neighbors, and Communist China, will be willing to forget Russia’s indiscriminate bombing and shelling of residential neighborhoods and torture and murder of civilians in Ukraine. But the next in line countries of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and others will not forget. To share in the spoils from the exploitation of Russia’s vast natural resources, many will certainly be willing to forgive Putin. But not those who see what is happening in Ukraine and still remember the Soviet yoke on their necks. those countries understand most of all what is at stake.
So Ukraine must be rebuilt. Ukraine must not only win the war but win the peace. Together we must show the people of the Ukraine, and by extension the whole world, that it wasn’t pointless and futile for the Ukrainians to fight against Russian aggression, to try to stand up to the nuclear behemoth. By rebuilding Ukraine together we can build a brighter future for all of us.