Ukraine After the War: Two Scenarios Redux

 

Last May in this space I considered two scenarios for what Ukraine might look like once its war against Russia's aggression was over. I return to that theme now that the war is in its second year.

 

Contrary to what most observers expected when Vladimir Putin launched his war, that nation has held on and even pushed the Russian army out of some of the territory it occupied in the Donbas region in the nation's east.  I write when a stalemate largely prevails, although Russia appears to have launched a spring offensive in recent days. Ukraine no doubt will soon follow with its own offensive. It is not my intent to predict possible outcomes of such actions here, although few believe that the war will end soon. In a moment, I'll sketch out two post-war scenarios that are polar opposites to suggest their very different consequences for world order, depending upon which side ultimately prevails.

 

From the war's start, it has seemed implausible for Ukraine to win back all the territory--Crimea included--that Russia has seized in recent years. That is, of course, because of the great disparity in the size of the two countries; Russia has nearly three-and-a-half times the population of Ukraine. Given that difference, it is little short of astonishing that it is now at least conceivable for Ukraine to expel Russian forces from all the land that Ukraine claims. If that is a real possibility today, it nonetheless remains less likely than an outcome favorable to Ukraine in most respects which still might leave Crimea's status unresolved. Given the imbalance in material forces, manpower included, the most likely prospect still may be for Russia to claim at least a partial victory by holding onto some of the territory it now occupies.

 

Now to my two scenarios. The first model posits a total victory for Ukraine and corresponding defeat for Russia. Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized. Unprovoked aggression is definitively brought to heel. After that, the government of President Zelensky almost certainly moves quickly to join the European Union and NATO, securing its place as a European democracy removed from Russia's orbit. In his defeat, President Putin might be replaced by someone else from his elite circle, though, to take the most optimistic possibility, the kind of humiliation this scenario suggests could lead to popular push-back by the Russian people to demand an end to autocracy.

 

We might even imagine a replay of Russia's perestroika movement at the end of the Cold War, but this time with sustained liberalization proceeding unchecked for years to come to build a lasting, truly representative system there. In simplest terms, this scenario imagines that democracy becomes strongly rooted in Russia and thrives throughout most of the world.

 

The second scenario reverses that outcome. Now the Russians succeed in defeating Ukraine so completely that the Zelensky government is ousted and Ukraine becomes a puppet state of Russia, or is annexed as part of Russian territory. Putin remains triumphantly in charge in the Kremlin. Wherever in the world interstate conflict shows itself in the foreseeable future, the threat or force of arms will now likely determine the outcome. NATO may collapse, since to oppose Russia at this point would almost certainly invite a nuclear exchange, and that is an even more dreadful prospect than seeing Ukraine reincorporated into Russia's empire. Democracies that do not fail will surely be on the defensive in the coming era.

 

In the real world, we can no doubt expect the war's outcome to lean in the direction of one pole or the other without reaching either completely. A victory for Ukraine that nonetheless leaves Putin fully in power could also set the stage for him to direct future attacks to try again to win at least some of what had been denied him. Even with an overwhelmingly positive outcome for Ukraine, democracy-building in Russia would be a long and complex undertaking. Conversely, an outcome favorable to Russia very likely would embolden Putin to try again in the effort to eliminate Ukraine's independence once and for all. However this war ends, western democracies will have an important role to play to keep it from  happening again. It will no doubt be essential for them to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity for some time to come.

 

                                                       (March 2023)

 

 

 

 

Redemption: When Hate Is Transformed into Love

 

The current political era in America is marked by cleavages so deep that normal partisan divisions seem to have been replaced by an all-out culture war. The most prominent physical proof came on January 6 two years ago with the attack by an angy mob on the U.S. Capitol. But the war has continued throughout the land in myriad ways. Election deniers now hold elective office in many states. They and their associates are making it harder for the "wrong" citizens to vote even as they are set to delegitimize future elections not to their liking.

 

There's also nothing like backing legislation to defeat one's enemies. A number of states have passed laws to ban the teaching of the full history of racism in this country. In Florida, Governor DeSantis is behind recent legislation that limits free speech in its public colleges and universities. That's in addition to the "Don't Say Gay" law which prohibits teaching anything about that subject in public schools. But it's not just Florida. At last count, 202 bills have been introduced in legislatures across the country limiting what can be taught about rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. And then there are the abortion wars.

 

One further result of all this is likely gridlock in Washington for the remaining two years of President Biden's term.The Republican-majority House of Representatives is dependent on many in that caucus who evidently don't wish to help govern the nation but want to engage instead in investigating members of the president's family. And Trump's MAGA rallies are back, vilifying those whom the participants view as their enemies. It's surely no coincidence that hate crimes have risen in each of the past four years, surging by nearly 30% in 2021.

 

Disturbing as all this is for the health of our democracy, I recently got a jolt of hope from a short documentary called "Stranger at the Gate." From film-maker Joshua Seftel, this true story unfolds in Muncie, Indiana, when Mac, a middle-aged former Marine, who has recently moved to that city with his family, is stunned to learn that a sizable Muslim community gathers daily in Muncie's Islamic Center. Mac has been convinced from the moment he heard the terrible news of the death and destruction in Manhattan on 9-11 that all Muslims are potential terrorists. He sees it as his duty to construct a bomb, plant it at the center at a time when hundreds of "the enemy" are present, then detonate and kill as many as he can. But first, he has to get inside the building to see how best to carry out his plot.

 

That visit changes everything.He is greeted by a doctor, now a U.S. citizen, who grew up in Afghanistan. The man greets this stranger with a hug and a smile, and asks if he might help him. Soon others, men and women, gather and greet him just as warmly. Mac soon understands that these people are genuinely kind and interested in helping him. His extended visit leads to another the next day, and others after that. He has discovered that he likes these people. A complete revolution has taken place within his brain: far from wanting to kill these Muslims, now he wants only to be their friend. His terrible hatred has been transformed into love.

 

I recognize full well that the kind of redemption Mac experienced, though wonderful, is rare, seldom impacting the realm of politics. Nor, I trust, do most Republicans and Democrats regard each other today with an enmity so great that it calls for mass murder of the other side. Still, there are lessons here. We must start by acknowledging that our opponents share our humanity and may have at least some worthy goals. That is the only basis, now and always, for allowing democracy to function and to thrive. We must learn to love, at least a little, all our fellow citizens.

 

                                                   (February 2023)

 

 

 

 

Will There Be a Biden/Trump Rematch in 2024?

 

At the start of this new year, Donald Trump is again a candidate for president of the United States. So, presumably, is the current occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, although he has not yet made that official. Neither man now garners approval from a majority of voters. One can almost hear the collective sigh rising across America at the prospect of these two oldsters facing off again.

 

That Trump has already thrown his hat into the ring is very much in keeping with his overarching narcissism. He insists on the limelight and revels in the adulation of his base. More than that, he must have calculated that as long as he's in the race, his chances of being prosecuted for various crimes are diminished. He can continue to claim that all charges against him are manufactured by his enemies to try to keep him from returning to the White House.

 

Yet, even if a decreasing number of the faithful accept that as truthful, Trump's path to the nomination is not without hazard. His hard-core supporters are dwindling, no doubt, as more and more of them begin to conclude that perhaps his time has passed, that there are others in Trump's mold who are more likely to achieve victory than Trump himself. Governor Ron de Santis of Florida is one such prospect, and there are others.

 

It strikes me that the most horrifying prospect of all for Trump right now is that he might fail to secure the Republican nomination in 2024. While he might convince himself that his loss to Biden in 2020 was because the election was rigged, that lie would surely not sound plausible to the millions of Republicans who back a different candidate for the election next year. Picture two scenarios: in the first, Trump is on stage at the Republican convention, graciously congratulating whoever beat him out of the nomination and pledging his full support. In the second, at some point well before that defining moment, Trump gives a speech full of heroic tributes to himself explaining why he has decided--perhaps because of Melania's concerns about his health--not to pursue his campaign further. I'm surely not alone in finding the second imagined event way more plausible than the first.

 

Then there's Biden. Already the oldest president ever to hold that office, these next two years are unlikely to give him the opportunity to do great things, not when the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans, almost none of whom has shown the least interest in cooperating with the president to advance significant legislation. Clearly, some leading Democrats wish that he would step aside at the end of this term and let someone else battle for the presidency next year. Yet, even if Biden is considering doing just that--and there's no indication at the moment that he is--that would pose a dilemma. The moment he declares that he won't run for a second term he becomes a lame duck president, presumably with even less ability to accomplish much during the next two years. But, by not declaring his intentions, Biden either prevents any potential Democratic candidates from announcing their candidacy or--worse yet--invites one or more to compete with him in the primaries. Neither prospect is a recipe for a happy and productive conclusion to his presidency.

 

The next two years could be less than rosy for either or both of the two men who fought it out for the presidency in 2020. That could mean a bumpy foad for the rest of us.

 

                                                        (January 2023)

 

 

 

 

A Well-Lived Life

 

My partner and spouse of more than half a century died when November was half spent. His end was not unexpected, but that does not make it less painful or his absence less profound. It's a cliche to say that no one is ever prepared for the death of a loved one, but like all cliches, it's true. That, I suppose, is because no one can ever prepare for the silence, the empty rooms, or the sudden inability to bounce a thought, a dream, or a platitude off the one who for so long has been your other half.

 

I could not have imagined all those years ago, nor, I think, could he, that we would make such a match of it. I was the product of a Midwestern upbringing, newly arrived in Philadelphia, while he had lived here always. I was (too?) highly educated and fully embarked on an academic career. His schooling had largely stopped with high school. But we quickly learned that what we shared was a love of fine music, orchestral, operatic, and otherwise, as well as theater and art. And we both liked to write.

 

I soon discovered that he was already making a mark in the city as the producer/director of a concert series which promoted promising young artists just embarking on their careers. He had seized that brass ring several years earlier when a local patroness of the arts had offered it to him as a project she would underwrite as long as he took charge of organizing and producing the concerts. She had picked out this young man as one who could implement her dream. And that is exactly what he did. I have no idea how they became acquainted, or how that led to this. I only  know that she recognized an enthusiast and an entrepreneur in him, and that her judgment was sage.

 

These were some of the green shoots from which our love grew. As I look back on it, I think that what must have drawn me ever closer to him in those early days was seeing how well centered he was. He seems never to have wavered from his conviction early on that it was his calling to do everything he could to provide financial assistance to, especially, young people determined to build careers as performing artists. And that is just what he did throughout the rest of his life, and with a passionate commitment. He was authentic to the core.

 

I helped to develop his love of travel. Together, we made 36 trips to foreign nations in addition to repeated journeys around our own, visiting 40 countries overall. It's how we endeavored to conquer the world together (and conquering the world has surely been my life's mission). But meanwhile, we built our lives right here in this city we both loved. Philadelphia will miss him, and I shall miss him to the end of my days.

 

                                                  (December 2022)

 

 

Changed Parties and the Greater Challenges to Our Polity

 

There was a time not long ago when Democrats attracted working-class voters and the Republicans were the party of business and the elite. But recent shifts in loyalty are shuffling party support in something of a reverse direction. Republicans inreasingly win the favor of non-college educated, blue collar workers while Democrats attract those who have college degrees. This shift has been dramatic in the age of Trump--an age which, many supposed, would end with that president's defeat for re-election. Instead, Trump and Trumpism continue to dominate the Republican Party.

 

In an earlier era, coinciding with the industrial age, it was common wisdom to suppose that an intellectual elite, which served to critique capitalism and the captains of industry, spoke up for oppressed workers and others left behind. As Democrats, these groups formed a natural alliance on the left. Their agenda included greater protections through social welfare for the most vulnerable, and advancing equal rights for all. Republicans were united in their view that, as a Republican president of the period once noted, the business of the federal government was business. Laissez-faire should be the guide to all governmental policy. Critically, however, in spite of their different views of the world, for both left and right the ideal end of politics was a society in which the blessings of prosperity fell on everyone through the creation of a social order in which all had a stake.

 

Today, however, the politics of grievance increasingly dominate our lives. Those left behind by economic forces are responding to the siren song of Trump and Trumpism: take what you can get, take it for yourself and to hell with any common good. The establishment has done nothing for  you, so you owe nothing to the establishment (which evidently includes everyone who's made it in this world that's left you behind). So much for the alliance between those with a vision for a better nation and those such as you.

 

This is only some of the evidence that our democracy is being challenged today as it has not been since the Civil War. There is also the alarming rise in challenges to the legitimacy of our elections. I write days before a midterm in which more than half of the Republican candidates across the nation question the outcome of the 2020 election. Here in Pennsylvania, a top adviser to the Republican candidate for governor calls voting machines "cheat machines" and advises followers to vote as late in the day as possible on November 8 to deliberately overwhelm the system. We are likely to see chaos from challenges by the losers, not to mention trauma to follow when such individuals are elected to offices from which they can challenge outcomes with results not to their liking. Federal agencies now have warned that domestic extremists fueled by election falsehoods "pose a heightened threat" to the midterm elections.

 

Days ago, the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked by a man who broke into their San Francisco residence, demanding to know "where's Nancy?" The attacker was only the most recent exemplar of the conspiratorial views that were so in evidence in the riot at the Capitol on January 6 of last year. For the millions of Americans who evidently hold such views, the rest of us are not brothers and sisters or even fellow-citizens, but enemies to be exterminated. More than 1800 threats to federal office-holders were recorded in the first three months of this year.

 

Next week's elections may or may not prove to be the breaking point. But I see no evidence that we are about to shuck off the politics of grievance. Until we do so, we shall continue to see undermined the first principles upon which our republic must stand if it is to remain a multi-cultural democracy offering equal opportunity to all its citizens. And the hour is late.

 

                                                     (November 2022)

 

 

 

 

The Midterm Election and the Threat to Our Democracy

 

I write forty days before the midterm election. These half-way points in any president's administration are typically a referendum on that occupant of the White House. Yet, this year's outcome at the polls could determine whether the American republic will survive its greatest challenge since the Civil War. Across the country, candidates for state and Congressional offices include a number of election deniers, who still insist that the 2020 election was fraudulent in spite of zero evidence to support that fiction. If elected, they will mostly be in position to wreak havoc on the next presidential election in 2024. Most of these individuals also have no qualms about messing with other aspects of our political system. The next two years could bring open civil conflict and the loss of the public's confidence in the viability of our Constitution.

 

Here in Pennsylvania, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano, is a poster boy for such right-wing extremism. A retired career officer in the U.S. Army, a "Christian nationalist," and now a state senator who was deeply involved in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, he pushed for an alternative (illegal) slate of electors to cast Pennsylvania's votes for Trump in 2020 in spite of the fact that Biden clearly won the popular vote here. He has received support from Gab, a social platform filled with anti-Semitic commentary. He has argued that women who obtain an abortion after a "fetal heartbeat" is detected are guilty of murder, as are those who provide them, for abortion is "the single most important issue in our lifetime."

 

Not far behind in importance, evidently, are this senator's efforts to prohibit gender transition surgeries for teen-agers and to end "draconian quarantine and vaccination policies" in Pennsylvania, i.e., those that mandate protection against COVID-19.

 

So, if it's clear that these are the issues a Governor Mastriano would make his priorities, it's just as evident that nowhere on his agenda are goals of achieving greater social equity, protection of the environment, improving access to health care, or increasing financial support for public schools and state-supported colleges and universities. Like the most extreme Trumpists throughout the nation, Mastriano's political plalybook is all about overturning what has long been the establishment consensus, thereby to get even with those politicians whose policies supposedly have wronged them. They would get their revenge by first putting theselves in positions of power, even if that meant fiddling with--even undermining--Constitutional norms and requirements. "Quasi-fascist" is what President Biden called the outlook represented here when he warned America from Independence Hall recently of the threats we face from within.

 

Even if Mastriano is one of the most extreme, and therefore dangerous, of the MAGA candidates running for office, the hold of that faction over the Republican Party generally means that once elected, the "policies" I've just ascribed to one candidate will surely dominate many of the others. Pennsylvania's Republican candidate for the Senate, Mehmet Oz, may not be as far to the right as Mastriano, but his campaign has been built around demonizing his Democratic opponent, John Fetterman, as too far on the left. Granted that Fetterman, usually dressed in shorts and hoodies, looks less like a senator than any such candidate in memory. But his record as, first, mayorof a small town, then lieutenant governor, reveals a politician who's clearly in the mainstream. (Dare I note that his opponent is always named, and calls himself,"Dr. Oz," perhaps to avoid using his given name, which is a derivative of "Mohammed" and, thus, conceivably off-putting to some in his base?)

 

This is what we've come to on the eve of what could be a cataclysm.

 

                                                           (October 2022)

 

 

 

 

NATO's New Lease

 

Russia's attack on Ukraine last February quickly united the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in support of the target of Russia's aggression. That was in spite of the fact that Ukraine was not itself a member--if a member-in-waiting--but merely a neighbor of a number of NATO countries. While determined Ukrainian resistance kept the Russians at bay, military and logistical support from NATO nations began to even the playing field, and soon gave the victims a fighting chance of repelling the aggression. 

 

These events quickly led to other remarkable changes for the coalition of Western democracies. Two perennially neutral states, Finland and Sweden, soon applied for NATO membership. Germany announced a considerable increase in its own defense spending, as did other European members. Meanwhile, the European Union brought Ukraine closer to joining their community.

 

Whether or not these events marked the start of a new cold war, as some suggested, they were at least a reminder of what brought NATO into being in 1949. Its original twelve members were united in their opposition to the Soviet Union's further expansion in Europe after World War II. Over the course of the next four decades, that goal was accomplished largely thanks to America's military might and the protection its nuclear umbrella afforded the allies.

 

When, forty-two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, I was among a number of Western observers who supposed that NATO should go out of business. Its goal had been achieved with the end of the Soviet Union itself. But NATO soon began to add new members instead, bringing the total to thirty today. The newest are mostly newly independent states that had recently been part of the Soviet empire. That they wanted to join this U.S.-led alliance of democracies says much about what might be called the spiritual failure of the Soviet system. Yet, several them in addition to Ukraine had been part of the Russian empire before they were made "republics" of the Soviet Union. Putin's desire to restore that empire is what explains his action on Russia's western border since February.

 

Clearly, Putin launched his "special military operation" against Ukraine when he did as a way of pre-empting that country's own bid to join NATO. He no doubt understood full well that, once Ukraine was admitted to membership, the NATO treaty required that such an attack would be regarded as an attack upon all, which would have triggered a full-scale war against Russia from the world's greatest military power and its friends. What he may not have counted on was the substantial support NATO has provided his adversary in spite of the fact that Ukraine was not a member of the alliance. That, after all, has been unprecedented in NATO's history.

 

Six months into the war, what looks most certain is that it will continue to be protracted, its outcome unclear.Those NATO members who have been contributing arms and training may eventually conclude that they have done enough and back away. That would likely lead to ultimate success for Russia, which has more arms and manpower than its opponent. NATO's more expansive vision of its role in Europe would also take a hit. Whether it could then be trusted to take up arms against a Russian attack on a NATO member state, such as Estonia, might also be in question.

 

Yet, if NATO were to give Ukraine the kind of assistance that might let them expel the Russians from all the territory they've seized from their neighbor in recent years, Crimea included, that could trigger the kind of apocalyptic war of the sort that the superpowers--and all humanity--managed to avoid throughout the cold war. That prospect may require us to accept an outcome that no one will regard as ideal. It also may suggest a somewhat less expansive place for NATO in the future.

 

                                                         (September 2022)

 

 

 

 

The Threat to Our Democracy, Continued

 

As I noted in this space last month, the Congressional commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol has done a remarkable job in revealing to the American people the events surrounding that most serious domestic attack on the seat of government in our nation's history. Their work has now progressed to the point that we can see that they are uncovering a conspiracy, with Donald Trump at its center, to overturn the 2020 election. We can also see that the Department of Justice, whose work is always conducted out of public view, is very much focused on investigating those efforts by Trump and his allies. It was recently announced that the January 6 committee will share with the DOJ twenty of the interview transcripts its work has produced. 

 

Neither the January 6 committee nor the DOJ has yet concluded its work. While the public will no doubt hear more damning testimony when the committee resumes in September, its role is only to expose wrong-doing, which it is doing with a vengeance. It is not empowered to prosecute crimes, which is the responsibility of the DOJ.

 

Although some have feared that Attorney General Merrick Garland is too timid to prosecute the former president since such a move would be unprecedented in American history,  Garland hismself has said that, depending upon where the investigation leads, no one is exempt from legal action. Almost daily, new evidence appears in the press pointing to Donald Trump as a conspirator. The kinds of opinion leaders I'd still like to regard as in the mainstream increasingly are arguing that he should be criminally charged.

 

Yes,Trump's prosecution would be higihly fraught, to put it mildly. Certainly, the evidence against him must be watertight.It is hard to imagine that anything could be worse for the nation's political health than for Trump to be charged with a criminal offense and then acquitted, once tried. Such an outcome would not only glorify the behavior of our 45th president in the eyes of his followers, it would also legitimize scurrilous challenges to our elections for years to come.

 

Conversely, although a successful prosecution might rid the nation of Trump, it could also set in motion unknowable changes to the political culture, if not the very constitutional system, that has always made the United States the distinctive democracy it is. One can imagine an eruption of partisanship too poisonous to allow for even the minimal comity and legislative action now still barely possible in Congress. Presidential impeachments might become commonplace. Worse yet, civil conflict could overwhelm the nation. Or--a very different scenario--in order to survive, future presidents would increasingly find it necessary to act as mere heads of state: figureheads, and not leaders of their party and the nation. Where, then, would real political power reside? 

 

Regardless of the possibilities for discord should Trump be indicted and convicted, not to charge him if the evidence against him proves overwhelming would be a far graver outcome. It would lay waste to what has been America's most fundamental claim since its founding as a republic: that we are nation of laws and not of men. The goal of the January 6 committee and the Department of Justice should be, not to fear the negative consequences of trying a former president, but to complete their investigations no matter where they lead. That outcome will tell us whether the threat to our democracy can, with much effort, be well and fully overcome--laying to rest all the scenarios I laid out above--or whether the events connected to January 6 were but a dress rehearsal for worse to come. 

 

                                                        (August 2022)

 

 

 

 

Trump Trouble

 

The Congressional Select Committee to investigate the January 6 riot at the Capitol is doing the job set out for it--and how! Its half dozen televised sessions over the past month have revealed a president utterly fixated on schemes to stay in office in spite of his defeat for re-election in 2020. Trump refused--and still refused--to abandon his claims of election fraud even though they were long ago proved false. He brow-beat his associates to acquiesce in that lie, as has been clear in the testimony of a number of Republican officials.

 

Some of the most shocking testimony came from Cassidy Hutchinson, a young aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows. She provided details on Trump's fury when he was not allowed to join the mob that attacked the Capitol following his speech on January 6 at the Ellipse. Had he done so, in the words of his chief counsel, "we're going to get charged with every crime imaginable."

 

As a result of Hutchinson's testimony, a number of legal experts thought it more likely that the Justice Department would pursue the question of charging Trump himself with a crime. I write on July 1, when Attorney General Merrick Garland has not commented publicly on that possibility. But his agents have clearly been moving the investigation closer to the former president's inner circle. Already, crimes that may be attributable to him seem at least as great as those with which Richard Nixon was charged before he was driven from office. In Liz Cheney's words, Trump is "a domestic threat that we have nevver faced before."

 

Meanwhile, the January 6th committee's investigation continues. Soon we should see whether its revelations have set back Donald Trump's front-runner status for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. So far, those in his base have generally remained loyal, parroting Trump's denunciation of the committee's work as a witch hunt, and no doubt refusing to watch, let alone accept, testimony from the committee's televised hearings. Now the question is whether piling up ever more damaging testimony will eventually persuade Republicans to look to someone else to be their leader, or whether willful blindness will continue to prevail on the part of Republican officials and their electorate regardless of the evidence.

 

It is said that we are a nation of laws, not men. I take that still to be true today, and believe unlawful behavior, even by a former president of the United States, will not go unpunished. But that hope is tied to another, which relates squarely to the politics of this case. There are Republican leaders other than Trump who would like to be president, but who are biding their time in the hope that Trump's days in the spotlight will fade. We may be approaching the moment when some of these individuals will take public note of the bravery of that handful of their fellow Republicans who have stood by their oaths to the Constitution in testifying before the January 6th committee. When they do, they should discover that some who consider themselves loyal Republicans support them in their stance. That could begin real movement in their direction while inspiring other would-be candidates to follow suit.

 

Remember that Richard Nixon had a loyal base of support almost to the day when he resigned from office. Once that happened, reality set in even for those most fervently in his corner. The nation moved on, and so did the Republican Party. Eight years later, Ronald Reagan was elected president. From then until today, Republicans have held the White House for a total of 26 years, more than half of the 48 years that have passed since then. Clearly, Nixon's crimes were not his party's death knell because the party moved on.

 

Are we nearing the moment when Republicans will begin to accept the reality of a Republican Party--and an American future--without Trump? If they do not, the Republican Party may die on the ash-heap of history.

 

                                                            (July 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

Our Second Amendment Fetish

 

Here we are again (and still): in two mass shootings last month, ten mostly black Americans were murdered at a supermarket in Buffalo followed by 21, including 15 children, at a school in Uvalde, Texas. Even while the grief took hold, an all-too-familiar scene was replayed. Calls for stricter gun controls were again shot down (pun intended) by the claim that the Constitution's second amendment guarantees the right of citizens to bear arms. Enshrined as it is in our Bill of Rights, that pledge is sacrosanct. As a result, Americans now own roughly 400 million guns, which means there are millions more guns than  people in this country. It also explains why the U.S. is an outlier among advanced nations when it comes to deaths by gunfire. Last year, more than 45,000 people in America died from gun injuries. The equivalent number of deaths in the world's  other richest countries never rose to more than a small fraction of that. Since the start of this year in my own city of Philadelphia, more than 900 people have been shot, of whom over 200 have died. 44 were shot over the Memorial Day week end. We bemoan the loss then wait for the next round of violence.

 

Yet, I write at a moment when it's conceivable that either local lawmakers or Congress itself might agree to some small steps toward increasing gun safety. They almost certainly won't go so far as to prohibit ownership of assasult weapons, and probably won't do much to close loopholes in requiring background checks for gun purchasers. The latest assassin of children in Texas had no such check when he purchased two assault rifles and high-capacity magazines on his 18th birthday. About the most we can hope for is legislation that would make it harder for the mentally ill to purchase weapons or maybe not allow gun sales to those younger than 21. But if the past is prelude, even such modest measures may be doomed.

 

So, let's have another look at the second amendment. It reads as follows: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." When these words were written in the 1780s, civilians routinely kept at home the same weapons they would need if called to serve in the militia. A musket would likely have been the household's principal or only firearm. Several steps were required to prepare it for firing. If a man was properly trained in an infantry, he could load and fire four or five rounds in a minute. Doubtless the untrained farmer who kept such a weapon mainly for hunting would have been slower at preparing his musket. What no person so armed could do, of course, was to massacre rooms full of individuals before they could escape. Think for a moment of how our Constitution's creators might react to the mass slaughter that is always close at hand today.

 

As technology for making weapons evolved over the last two centuries, so did the assumption that arming the militia--or today's modern army--meant that its members needed little more than the rifles they had hanging on their chimneys. Soldiers increasingly were equipped with weapons that differed significantly from those thought appropriate for civilian use. As a result, judges in America came to treat the second amendment as something of a dead letter. They did, that is, until 2008, when the Supreme Court invalidated a law for the District of Columbia that forbade nearly all civilians from possessing handguns in the nation's capital. In a five-four decision, the majority ruled, astonishingly, that the second amendment protects a private right of individuals to own arms for their own defense, not a right of the state to maintain a militia. Two years later, in a case brought against the city of Chicago, a similar majority struck down such a ban at the state level.

 

Those decisions opened the floodgates, inundating the country with more and more guns. There is evidently nothing to be done about that, short of abolishing the second amendment. Revolutionary changes in the views of those who sit as federal judges might also do the trick. How confident are you that either will come about before--I dunno--the nation simply collapses in a killing frenzy?

 

                                                        (June 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

After the War in Ukraine: Two Scenarios

 

It's ever clearer that the outcome of the dreadful war now being waged by Russia on Ukraine will do much to define the next era in world politics. From its start, the unprovoked attack seemed a throwback to an era many thought had been largely laid to rest in the aftermath of World War II. That war ended with a clear repudiation of attempts to change the map through overt military conquest of one's neighbors. It also ushered in the nuclear age, which came to threaten the superpowers with mutual suicide, thereby fortifying the norm against aggression of the kind that saw conquering armies march into other states' territories. Any outcome of the Ukraine war that might allow Putin to claim victory would give new life to the view that might makes right, that powerful states are permtted to dominate those around them and control their destinies. Let us call this the aggression succeeds scenario.

 

An alternative vision supposes that the Russian campaign is utterly thwarted. In its rosiest version, not only would Ukraine regain all the territory it held when Russia invaded late in February, it would also take back what had previously been contested pieces of the Donbas territory in Ukraine's east as well as the Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014. Such an outcome would strengthen norms surrounding the view that nation-states are self-determined and self-governing, free to choose their own destinies so long as they allow others to do the same. This is the self-governing scenario.

 

These of course are opposing models of possible directions in world politics. In the real world, the shape of whatever peace eventually comes to Ukraine will more likely look like some mix of what these two scenarios depict.

 

In the first weeks of the conflict, Putin's aggression succeeds vision was almost completely routed. Instead of a quick takeover of Ukraine's capital and the creation of a puppet government, the Russian army fell into disarray, Zelensky stood his ground and roused his people, and Western governments united in the effort to help the Ukrainians stave off the enemy. The self-governing scenario got a mighty boost. Yet, Russia didn't admit defeat but instead regrouped and redefined its goal. No longer trying to occupy the whole country, its new aim was to secure the Donbas,where Russian speakers were in the majority. Although that changed strategy evidently gave Russia an advantage, Ukrainian resistance remained strong. What looks most likely today is that the conflict will continue with no early end in sight.

 

My purpose here is not to predict the outcome, but to clarify the implications to the extent the outcome mirrors one or the other of the scenarios I've sketched out here. Should the Donbas fall to Russia, the aggressor will have won enough of a victory to embolden Putin to continue to pursue his effort to regrow a Russian sphere of influence around Russia's periphery. It will also serve as a model for other would-be invaders elsewhere in the world. If, on the other hand, Ukraine, with continued strong support especially from NATO, should succeed in repelling the Russians altogether, then invaders-in-waiting would be made to reconsider their options.

 

Or not. Here's the rub: if the self-governing scenario is to dominate how states behave in the near future, Putin's strategy must be so thoroughly discredited that the Russians themselves turn against him and what he stands for. Russia after Putin would become a real democracy. That is more or less what happened after World War II in post-Nazi Germany and post-imperial Japan. The players and their doctrines that had turned both countries into aggressors were ousted and discredited. If, in contrast, Putin survives a Ukrainian settlement that denies him the Donbas, his revanchist aims will live on with him to fight again another day. A more surgical outcome leading to the same aggression succeeds scenario is also possible: Ukraine agrees to cede some or all of the Donbas to Russia. Then what the world will notice is that might still does make right when the chips are down.

 

Much now hangs on how the chips come down.

 

                                                           (May 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

The War in Ukraine: Prospects and Possibilities

 

Five weeks after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, his troops have not come close to occupying the entire country, let alone replacing the West-facing government of President Volodymyr Zelensky with a pro-Russian puppet. Unexpectedly strong resistance from Ukrainians has produced a stalemate in much of their territory beyond the Donbas, the region bordering Russia which had already been largely under Russian control for the past eight years. Most observers saw a long and grinding war of attrition ahead.

 

Then a moment of hope surfaced late in March. During peace talks in Istanbul, both sides made substantial rhetorical departures from their previous positions. Russian delegates declared that Moscow would significantly draw down military operations around Kyiv and Chernihiv "to increase mutual trust and create conditions for further negotiations." Ukraine laid out a framework committing the nation to neutrality, providing for its security to be guaranteed by a number of other nations. The Russian announcement was greeted with understandable skepticism throughout the West. Sure enough, within two days, bombs and mortar fire again struck both of the named cities. Russian operations also increased in the Donbas.

 

Now, Western experts are concluding that the recent announcement was nothing but a cover to allow time for a complete overhaul of Russia's campaign, not a peace initiative at all. So, the war continues, as does the devastation. More than four million Ukrainian citizens have fled abroad, while millions more are internally displaced. The huge imbalance in the military forces of the two nations means that the Russians can continue to rain down destruction on their smaller neighbor for weeks, months, even years to come regardless of their inability to occupy the country. And occupy it they cannot.

 

So, we still seem to be far from a peaceable outcome. That will only be likely if and when Putin concludes that he can't attain his original goals. A retreat to the Donbas would at least give him an acceptable off-ramp. An assurance of Ukraine's neutrality, giving up its desire to join NATO, could also give the Russian leader an excuse to claim victory. Nor of course would Russia be the only party to win. Ending the Ukrainian bloodletting to allow the nation to rebuild would be the best possible outcome for that beleagured society. And a guarantee of genuine neutrality should be a win for all of us.

 

Yet, even if peace talks become productive, they will face big issues. If "liberating Donbas" is now the Kremlin's main objective, that is not an ending that has been acceptable to Zelensky and, presumably, most Ukrainians. There is also the matter of securing the agreement of a number of third countries--Ukraine has proposed the U.S., Britain, France, Turkey, China, and Poland--to join together to guarantee the nation's neutrality. One must wonder whether such an unprecedented group can credibly create such an arrangement as well as whether Russia might not view it, apart from China's awkward presence, as betraying a decidedly Western bias. Finally, should another Ukrainian proposal come to pass, that talks should take place over fifteen years on the future of Crimea (which Russia seized in 2014), a host of other minefields may lie there.

 

Here, I think, is the bottom line today: Unless the two sides can reach a formal agreement in which each gives up something it has very much desired--reclaiming Ukraine for Putin, membership in NATO for Zelensky--their power imbalance will ultimately favor Russia. That is so in spite of its near disaster of a campaign to date. Moscow can keep up the pressure on Ukraine longer than Ukraine can keep up the pressure on the West to continue to support Ukraine's fight for freedom and democracy. If peace comes soon, many nations can surely be counted on to help Ukraine rebuild. But the longer the war drags on, the more likely that the world may regrettably come to see the Ukraine struggle as a lost cause and leave it to its dreadful fate. World order will also have suffered a terrible defeat.

 

                                                              (April 2022)

 

 

 

 

Russia's Ukraine Invasion and the Future World Order

 

I write when the Russian attack on Ukraine is less than a week old. But it has been clear from the invasion's first moments that its outcome could shatter the world order that was largely set in place in the aftermath of World War II. It was that war more than any other which ended by repudiating naked aggression. Not only have then-new institutions such as the United Nations been tasked with preventing such attacks, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by the two new superpowers actually fortified the non-aggression doctrine: if a military attack on one's enemies might lead to Armageddon, such attacks were off the table. The Cold War certainly had its dangers, but we generally understood, following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, that neither superpower would dare to attack a member of its opponent's allliance. However noxious as a moral code, the doctrine of mutual assured destruction helped keep the peace. 

 

For some two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its alliance system, democracies were established throughout much of the former Soviet sphere.The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, but NATO, the West's Cold War alliance, began to grant membership to what had been client states of Russia. I thought at the time that we should have worked instead to create new East-West institutions to maintain peace across the northern hemisphere in this new era (see last month's post). It is very clear today that because we did not, Vladimir Putin's grudge against what he sees as Russia's losses to the West has grown throughout his twenty years in power, leading us to the present moment. 

 

Yes, Putin is a throwback, a latter-day Hitler in the way he has launched this war. The West, sadly, has allowed him to come to this point. But he now must be dealt with on the terms he has laid down. Just as some eighty years ago the world's democracies banded together to crush Hitler, they now must unite to defeat this baldest attempt since World War II to insist that might makes right. To do less, to look the other way while Ukraine is conquered, could only end in hurling the world back to its fraught state in the 1930s, when, after Japan had attacked China, Hitler dismembered Czechoslovakia and then attacked Poland. setting the stage for unimaginable bloodshed across the globe before the world could again be made safe for democratic self-government.

 

So far, there is some cause for optimism. The Ukrainians are forcefully resisting the Russians, slowing  their advance and defending their cities. Their President Zelensky has behaved heroically in remaining in the country to rally his people, even though, as he notes, he is surely the man most targeted by Russian forces. President Biden has successfully led the Europeans, including not just NATO but the European Union, to send military assistance to Ukraine and enact severe economic sanctions on members of Putin's elite and Russian banks. Japan, Australia, and others have now joined in these efforts.

 

There are sure to be costs felt by the public in all these nations, as the price of fuel and some commodities are bound to rise. The challenge for all who want to see world order strengthened is to convince those many millions for whom this war is distant news that their sacrifices are in a just cause, one to secure the right of states to govern themselves and remain free of aggression from abroad. As others have noted, our willingness to undergo pain will reveal our determination to stop Putin.

 

It should be possible to end Putin's war if virtually all the rest of the world opposes it--and without any of Ukraine's friends having to send their own soldiers into the fight. (Were that to happen,it could encourage a nuclear strike from Moscow, a thing already more than hinted at by Putin.)

 

Should Putin fail in his effort to realign Ukraine, that would of course be a win for free and self-governed societies. Then the challenge for world leaders will be to make that outcome the basis for strengthening a global political culture wherein peaceful change is the norm, where win-win solutions to interstate conflicts become the rule. That means helping Putin find an off-ramp from Ukraine, and not rubbing Russia's nose in its failure to change the map by force. Russia, too, must become committed to a world in which it can be seen to prosper only by turning away from military aggression.

 

                                                       (March 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

Ukraine, Russia, and the West

 

The threat of war in Ukraine has dominated the news lately. The Russian government of Vladimir Putin has moved more than 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border while demanding that the United States and the West never admit Ukraine to membership in NATO. The Biden administration's response, which is widely but not universally shared by its NATO allies, is that Russia's behavior is so provocative that the Kiev government must be supplied with new arms and military support. Moscow calls that the provocation. Ukrainian leaders are now bracing for a possible military attack. But even while their President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has expressed his gratitude to the US for its support, he has also criticized the Americans for, as he says, causing panic.

 

What to make of this seemingly three-sided perspective? Ukraine of course was one of the most important constituent states of the USSR until that empire was dissolved in 1991, at which point it became an independent republic. Within a few years, it had established a partnership with NATO and an association with the European Union. Throughout the first decade of this century, Ukrainian politics see-sawed between leaders leaning toward the West and those wanting greater connections to Russia. Then, early in 2014, the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, backed out of those agreements with the West, and was soon removed from office by vote of parliament. Within months, a pro-Western president was elected.

 

In Moscow, an alarmed Putin soon engaged his plan to invade Crimea, which had been made part of Ukraine during the Soviet era. Once that peninsula was brought under Russian control, in March, 2014, a referendum allegedly showed that 97% of the Crimean population wanted to join Russia. Since then, in the rest of Ukraine, public opinion polls have shown steady upward trends favoring EU and NATO membership. The pro-Western Zelensky was elected president in 2019 with 73% of the vote; shortly thereafter, his Servant of the People party won a majority of the vote for parliament, allowing him to govern without a coalition. This government considers Euro-Atlantic integration its primary foreign policy objective even though, in practice, it attempts to balance its relationship with the EU and the US with strong ties to Russia.

 

What we see today is simply the latest in what has been central to Ukraine's history for a thousand years: In spite of its very close ethnic and cultural connections to Russia, Ukrainians have mostlly resisted Russian domination while often being made to submit to it. Today, Putin is a leading avatar of the Realist view which assumes that a great power--which is how he imagines Russia--must surround itself with a sphere of influence in order to enhance its power vis-a-vis perceived opponents. He no doubt views the West's encouragement of a closer relationship with Ukraine as an unacceptable effort by the US to extend its sphere of influence to Russia's very doorstep.

 

Here's a thought experiment: What if, at the end of the Cold War, the members of NATO had decided to dissolve their alliance on grounds that it had accomplished exactly what it was created to accomplish, which was to prevent the world's domination by the Soviet Union? They might then have worked to construct, not a military alliance, but a new structure whose purpose would be to assure peaceful conflict resolution among all the nations that had been in opposing camps throughout the previous half-century.

 

It's true that, as the Cold War was winding down, NATO and Warsaw Pact nations did join to create the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in which they all became members, along with several European states that had not been part of those alliances. But the OSCE operates entirely by consensus, and has mainly served to observe elections in new or would-be democracies. It has certainly not been made a powerful engine of the foreign policy of its leading members, and is largely unknown to the general public. Had it been given a real capability to work for peaceful change throughout the northern hemisphere, one can imagine that the three-sided perspective referred to above could by now have brought non-zero-sum outcomes from which all might have benefitted. The current crisis would not have arisen That it has done so unfortunately reveals regression instead of progress in the way large human communities called nation-states interact. And we must learn to live together in greater harmony if humankind has a future worth celebrating.

 

                                                    (February 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

Can the U.S Survive the G.O.P.?

 

The most troubling fact of American political life throughout 2021 was Donald Trump's continuing hold on the Republican Party. His Big Lie, claiming that he had lost re-election only because of massive voter fraud, became fixed orthodoxy for a majority of Republicans by year's end. That was a stunning fact of our politics, given that such a claim had been repeatedly disproved and dismissed throughout the year by courts as well as official and unofficial recounts across the land.

 

Now we can only conclude that one of the only two parties that really matter in American politics will contest the midterm election in November from a platform whose central plank will be a lie. This has hugely negative implications for the future of our republic, for never before in our history has either of the two major parties sought victory with so fraudulent a campaign. Yes, we've often seen politicians play fast and loose with the truth: in the 1950s, Joe McCarthy claimed that the Democrats "lost" China thanks to Communists in high places in the State Department. More than a century earlier, Vice President John C Calhoun, an ardent supporter of slavery,  which he described as "a positive good," gained followers among southern Democrats with his argument that any state could nullify an act of Congress within its borders. Other examples abound of outrageous efforts to move one party or the other to bend the truth or create its own set of "facts" in the effort to win elections.

 

But here's what's novel about such efforts at the start of 2022: none ever succeeded in capturing a major party as fully as Trump appears to have done with today's Republican Party. Leaders who before Trump were in the Republican mainstream, figures such as Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, are now virtual outcasts within their own party. Those who "lead" it today regard as illegitimate what was meant to be a bipartisan investigation of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. They challenge mask mandates intended to halt the COVID pandemic, assail those on the Democratic left as traitors, and seek to ban any teaching of the history of institutional racism in this country. In trumpeting these and other such views, they yearn above all for Trump's endorsement. 

 

So, almost nothing is left of the Republican Party today that would be recognizable to those who supported it in the age of Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan. Both those presidents opposed much that Democrats endorsed without demonizing them. But at the same time, they accommodated themselves to much that Democrats stood for. Ike made internationalism part of the mainstream of Republican politics, just as Reagan, the Cold Warrior, helped move his party and the nation toward a post-Cold War era. It's impossible to imagine that the politics of grievance, faux populism, and invented histories that characterize the Trump party of today can ever play such constructive roles in the life of the nation. 

 

And that is exactly what is so troubing about our current situation. In contrast to the fate of other former presidents who've been defeated, Trump not only isn't going away, he's still heading an apparently powerful movement that is both the wreck of a political party and a wrecking ball for our democracy. It's a wrecking ball precisely because it refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of its opponents and, in some quarters, even refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the electoral system itself. When one party seeks to overthrow the very rules of the game, the days in the life or our Constitution are surely numbered.

 

If the Republican Party is still to be reformed at this late date, that may come about only if and when Donald Trump is finally and thoroughly discredited, perhaps in one of the several lawsuits now pending against him. That is not at all a sure bet at this writing. Unless and until such a thing happens, the G.O.P.'s initials now stand for the Grotesque Out-of-control Party.

 

                                                      (January 2022)