U.S. and Russian histories aren’t that different — not really, both countries have bloody and sordid histories — but the present-day is different and that’s what’s crucial.
Think of it this way — imagine Joe Biden feeling that Communist Cuba’s administration wasn’t to his liking, announced that Cuba wasn’t a real country. And that because the U.S. used to administer Cuba for a brief period a long time ago, it’s really been U.S. territory all along.
Inconceivable, right?
Of course the U.S. *did* meddle in Cuban affairs extensively during the Cold War, propped up dictators, opposed the Cuban Revolution, plotted to have Castro assassinated, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, etc. Not saying we’re innocent of any of that.
But!
The U.S. doesn’t operate like that anymore. It’s inconceivable that America would unilaterally start a war to try to annex a neighbor.
But wait! What about Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya?
Those wars, misguided though they were, were based on fundamentally different ideas than territorial conquest and subjugation. In Afghanistan we had a legitimate self-defense motive — at least initially. In Iraq, it was a combination of Saddam Hussein flagrantly violating U.N. resolutions on weapons inspectors, and his history of genocide against the Kurds and his own ambitions of conquest with respect to Kuwait. In Libya, Gaddafi literally announced he was going to squash his own citizens like cockroaches.
In all three cases, America assembled a coalition of international allies and really made its diplomatic case in front of the U.N., etc. Russia didn’t do any of that in the run-up to invading Ukraine. By all accounts, Ukraine wasn’t turning away U.N. weapons inspectors, or repressing women left and right, or committing genocide against its own people. Russia’s war rationale is based on pure fiction, not even a shred of evidence for the claims or transparent public debate allowed on the matter either before or after the fact.
And of course — if the American public begins to tire of a war, we actually have a say. We can speak our minds freely, march in protest without fear of arrest, vote for a different President. Can’t do that in Russia.
That’s a mouthful, but it’s critical to how modern democratic and authoritarian approaches to war differ. And it’s why Putinist and far-left and far-right whataboutism fails.
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