The peace movement should insist on a proportionate and restrained response by the Biden administration to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Such a response would include, in collaboration with the Ukrainian goverment, diplomatic initiatives such as a ceasefire (already articulated by Ukrainian President Zelensky, but ignored by Putin) as well as the avoidance of any steps that would widen and escalate the war. It should also provide aid – including certain forms of military aid – to the embattled and underequipped Ukrainian army and people.

I obviously don’t agree with many on the left who insist that NATO should provide only non-military assistance to beseiged Ukrainians fighting for their lives and their country against a predatory and heavily militarized state. The provision of military support is a difficult and dangerous needle to thread, but it can and should be done.

The essence of the present military clash in Ukraine is that a sovereign country – Ukraine – was invaded and its territorial integrity and national sovereignty were brutally and illegally violated by a far more powerful and heavily armed, imperialist, and predatory neighbor, Russia.

That there are other layers to this conflict and an array of poltical actors involved, including the U.S. and the other NATO countries, who are indirect participants with their own agenda, shouldn’t be surprising. That’s the nature of wars in particular – remember WW II – and political struggles in general. The expectation of pure forms with the good guy on one side and the bad guy on the other, battling it out with everybody else on the sidelines innocently observing the clash, is a fool’s errand.

But the complicated nature of war in general and this war in particular shouldn’t obscure the fact that ordinary Ukranian people, fighting, dying, and running for safety, are the central protagonists in this war and the central demand of this war is to compel Russia to stand down and withdraw its troops.

And yet too many analysts on the left assign a minor role, sometimes no more than afterthought, to the Ukrainian people and their struggle for national independence. Instead the rollback and demilitarization of NATO or the neutralization of Ukranian fascists (sounds like Putin) or the profiteering of energy interests or the suspension of assistance from the Biden administration become the primary lens through which they see the war and its combatants.

Moreover, these same analysts fail to understand – captured by magical thinking – that none of their demands are remotely feasible while Russian boots are on the ground and Russian guns are blazing away in Ukraine.

I hear frequently that the country is polarized to which I reply: first, it’s the GOP that is the polarizing element in U.S. politcs. It has moved – triggered in no small measure by the election of Barak Obama – outside the bounds of democracratic discourse and practices into the lane of racist, anti-democratic authorititarism – fascism if you like. At its core is its intense opposition to – no hatred for – multi-racial democracy. Such a democracy in its view would open up the well springs of progress and progressive advance in every area of social life. And that possibility is something this rancid and revanchist gang is ready to resist, as they have demonstrated by any means necessary.

And, second, our side isn’t polarized enough insofar as it isn’t fully attuned to the clear and present danger that the other side – the Republican Party and the far flung right wing authoritarian network – presents to our country’s future. And thus ready to act on that basis.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” (Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message, December 1, 1862)

At the close of the Cold War, successive administrations, Bush first and then Clinton, imposed a humiliating and punitive settlement on Russia and its people. At the time, critics said that such a settlement would create severe hardships, stoke divisions, encourage plunder of state assets, throw the economy into a steep fall, and nuture a soil for the rise of revanchist, strong man leaders. But their voices were drowned out in the clamor of self congratulatory speeches of the “winners.” 

A decade later, the critics had their “I told you so moment.” The economy had imploded in spectacular fashion. Tens of millions had been stripped of their jobs, meager savings, and pensions. Life expectancy had fallen precipitously. State assets and natural resources had been privatized and seized by a handful of oligarchs. Barter had become commonplace. The country had splintered along national and ethnic lines. Civil wars had erupted. The experiment in parliamentary government and democracy had disappointed many. And Russia, a great power in the 20th century, had been reduced to an also ran before the sun dawned on the 21st.

Meanwhile, NATO, not ready to retire, even though its raison d’etre had disappeared, proceeded to expand eastward in order to consolidate its post Cold War dominance.

Russia’s unparalleled societal descent and implosion triggered a surge of resentment and neo-nationalist feeling, a collective yearning for a Russia that commands respect and fear – not derision – in capitals around the world. Predictably, many Russians and their leaders felt betrayed and embittered. A motto, popular in Russia at the time (and remains so today), captured the depth of the social breakdown and national humiliation, “The nineties: never again.” 

Into this hypercharged cauldron stepped Putin. In Putin the Russian people found someone who wanted to Make Russia Great Again. Though there was little in his early working life that would have predicted his political temperament or his meteoric rise, it became apparent in the first days of his presidency that his ambition went beyond bringing some coherency to the Russian state, or reinvigorating the Russian economy, or restoring some measure of respect to Russia internationally. 

Putin in power set his sights on the reconstitution of the Russian empire, reaching beyond its present borders and projecting fearsome power on a global level. If he had any inspiration, it wasn’t Lenin, who he despised for his advocacy of the right of nations to self determination. Rather his lineage is to Russian empresses and emperors in earlier centuries who successfully defended or pushed outward the boundaries of the Russian Empire.

It is in this light that we should understand Putin’s order to invade Ukraine. If anything, the expansion of NATO – ill considered and provocative for sure – was as much a pretext and cover for the invasion as its underlying cause. Does anybody really think that Putin would have respected the sovereignty of Russia’s neighbors if NATO had remained within its old borders? To believe so is to misread Putin, as reactive and defensive, not imperialist, belligerent, and empire building. It is to be trapped in old Cold War categories of analysis that can easily conceal new realities.

And that is no place to be if you want to understand Putin’s mindset and motivations for invading Ukraine – not to mention appreciate that the rollback of NATO and construction of a new peace and security architecture in Europe pivots, first of all, on Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine. It is, Lenin might say, the key link in the chain of struggle at this moment.

Even as Putin’s army ruthlessly pounds Ukraine, a significant section of the racist authoritarian right here still allows no day light between themselves and Putin. Thinking about it though, it isn’t surprising. Putin is admred by this movement that, if given the opportunity, would crush democracy and descend quickly into Putin-like rule.