Should we continue supporting Ukraine?
Dear Dale:
I’m confused about this Ukraine thing. I was all for it at first because I saw it as a chance to give the Ruskies a bloody nose but it’s two years now and I’m worried it’ll turn into another pickle like Afghanistan or Iraq. Maybe it’s time to cut our losses and find another war, one that’ll give us a better return on our investment. What do you think? Should we continue supporting Ukraine?
Signed,
Wavering
Dear W:
Absolutely! We invaded Afghanistan and Iraq to free them from evil dictators.
(Turns out they actually liked those guys. Who knew?)
That and punish them for 9–11. Which, believe it or not, they nothing to do with. Turns out it was a bunch of Saudis from Germany.
(Maybe we should’ve invaded them instead. They’ve got even more oil.)
Sucks for the people whose countries we destroyed but that’s just the way the ball bounces.
(Like in a bar fight. Blind drunk and fists flying, innocent people sometimes get hurt: servers, patrons, cops.)
Ukraine is totally different. For one thing, we didn’t invade them.
(We used to love doing that. Now it seems more trouble than it’s worth.)
No, the Russians did. Some beef they have about NATO getting too close.
(Like that’s a problem. Mind you, we did get our noses out of joint when they put nuclear weapons in Cuba so I guess they have a point.)
And we aren’t even sending soldiers. Just giving them guns.
(Like someone offering to kill your boss for free and all you have to do is give him a gun and some bullets. Wouldn’t you jump at the chance? I sure would.)
As for why… well, we’re going to have to talk a bit about Europe.
I know, I know. Believe me, I don’t want to either. The only thing less exciting than a meeting of EU ministers is a Canadian constitutional crisis.
Let’s start with the Brits.
They’re not actually European — they’ll be the first to tell you that — but, whenever anyone, the French or Germans especially, get too strong, they send soldiers across the channel to restore order so we got to count them.
They used to be bigshots, running a full quarter of the world.
(Some of them still think they do.)
Now, of course, they’re Europe’s appendix: a useless bit of dirt that just sits in the North Sea, doing nothing.
Which they removed themselves. Something about taking back control.
For some reason, they saw themselves as desirable and thought that, as soon as they were free, all their old colonies would come running back to them.
(Much like a middle-aged man who leaves his wife and family to buy a sports car and hit on young chicks — only to find that, old, fat and bald, no one wants to fuck him. So now he lives in a singles’ complex, eats junk food and jerks off to clips of strict headmistresses caning schoolboys.)
Now, having realized their mistake, they’re trying to repair their relations with Europe. Actually think they can wrangle a deal that gives them all the benefits of being an EU member while ignoring all of its laws.
(Which is like getting a divorce and expecting to come over for Sunday dinner. But it doesn’t work that way. Believe me, I know. Sleep with your wife’s sister once and see how many family reunions you get invited to.)
So now they’re fucked.
Next up, the French. Believe it or not, they used to be big shots too. I know most Americans see them as a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys but the truth is, up until a couple hundred years ago, they ran things.
French was the language of the elite and people all across Europe aped their culture: things like wear a wig, spout witticisms and never bathe.
But then Napoleon shot his wad at Waterloo and it’s been all downhill ever since. Now, like the rest of the Latins — the Italians, Spanish and Portuguese, they’re a bunch of has-beens who, having lost their empires, just sit around, eat good food, drink good wine and try to sleep with one another’s wives.
Which brings us to the Germans. For centuries they were content to just drink beer, eat sausage and wear funny hats but then, like Frankenstein’s monster, they suddenly woke up and decided to terrorize everyone.
(And not just by making us listen to oompah music.)
Still, despite what they say about German aggression, WWI was caused by envy not anger. The Germans had both unified and industrialized, people were pouring into the cities and their economy was taking off. But, in their hearts, they still felt inferior to the French: their cities weren’t as nice; their food wasn’t as good; and their women weren’t as attractive — something the French, arrogant bastards that they are, did nothing to discourage.
(They’re still like that, sneering at tourists, especially us Americans, when we go there on holiday — just for talking at the top of our voices, overtipping and expressing surprise that the Louvre has no Harry Potter wing.)
So they invaded. Figured that, if they couldn’t make the French respect them, they could at least inspire fear. That and steal their cheese.
But things didn’t go the way they planned. Knockout blows rarely do: see Pearl Harbor, Operation Barbarossa and pretty well ever bar fight I’ve been in.
(The temptation of a sucker punch. So hard to resist.)
Next thing you know, they’ve lost and a blind Hitler is lying in a hospital bed screaming for revenge.
(He did a lot of that. Screaming, that is. People seemed to like it.)
Gave himself a devilish haircut and a Charlie Chaplin moustache and set about conquering Germany with his strange fanatical charm.
Which he did. Bad shit happens in tough times. Inflation, unemployment and the feeling that everything is falling apart often ends in dictatorship.
(Good thing that could never happen here.)
People today complain about inflation. Which is only three percent. Try forty-one percent — per day! Your yearly salary… that’ll buy you a newspaper.
At which point you might be tempted to blame foreigners for your troubles.
(Even now, someone stubs their toe, they blame the Mexicans.)
Which he did. Told the Germans they had won the war but been cheated out of their cheese by the Jews. Which they were more than happy to believe.
(Denial is an amazing thing.)
Took over the country, threw all his enemies in jail and stared taking big bites out of the European cake: the Rhineland, Austria and Czechoslovakia.
At first, the French and Brits let him. Felt bad about winning the war and figured they could be friends. Plus which, they had problems of their own.
(A Great Depression will do that to you.)
More than friends, actually.
These days, fascism is about as popular as broccoli on a steak.
But not back then. Truth is, those days, a lot of people shared his ideas: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia and even a lot of people in England and France, including some members of the royal family.
(Just ask Edward VIII.)
At first, things looked good: Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia and Greece… they all fell like leaves in an autumn breeze.
But then he made the mistake of invading Russia. As well as declare war on the good old U. S. of A. At which point, he started losing, his tanks went into reverse and fascism lost its luster, becoming as cool as last year’s fashion.
(The death camps didn’t help. Talk about a PR blunder.)
But that’s what you get for losing a war. If the Japanese had won WWII, we’d all be eating seaweed, shouting “Banzai!” at birthday parties and celebrating our status as a Japanese colony by watching fireworks on Pearl Harbor Day.
In the end, Hitler shot himself and Germany was split in two, half of which settled down, worked hard and gave the Beatles their ‘do while the other focused on winning gold medals by turning women into men with steroids.
(To each his own.)
Eventually, of course, the wall came down and the Germans celebrated by going to raves, doing drugs and indulging in all-night homosexual orgies.
(Berlin is one long continuous Pride Parade.)
Now, militarily anyway, they’re a spent force.
(They’ve still got lots of money.)
Not that it matters: even if they were able to terrorize Europe, they wouldn’t since they’d rather raise children than Cain.
(Much like their brothers to the north, the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians, who used to be Vikings but now are just a bunch of pussies pushing baby carriages. The less said about them the better.)
So much for the big three. The rest, the small countries, are Europe’s scraps — like the bits and pieces of a model plane that are left over if you do it without reading the instructions.
Countries like Hungary. Like the Finns and the Basques, their language is total gobbledygook. I don’t even think they understand it.
But they sure love the Germans. Join in their wars every chance they get. Not that it does them any good: every time Germany loses, Hungary gets smaller. But they don’t care, so long as they can fight the Slavs.
(Nothing makes a Hungarian happier than suppressing Slavs. Which is the real reason they don’t want to help the Ukrainians. They’re not pro-Russian. They just don’t want sixty million more Slavs joining the EU.)
As for the Slavs… well, there’s a lot of them and, contrary to what you might think, they’re not all the same. Some of them, like the Czechs, living as they do in the armpit of Germany, are reasonably civilized.
As are the Slovaks, Slovenes and Croats.
(Say what you will about Austria-Hungary but it was a much nicer place to live than Czarist Russia or the Ottoman Empire.)
The Poles, on the other hand, are considerably less cultured: apart from Chopin and Copernicus, their only contribution to Europe is Polish jokes.
The real troublemakers, however, are the Serbs. Not only did they start WWI — it’s amazing what a nineteen-year-old can do with a pistol — they’re the only country NATO has fought in a war.
(Talk about one-sided. They might as well have been using pellet guns.)
They’re also extremely masochistic: their idea of a good time is to sit around, get drunk and cry about all the battles they’ve lost.
Which brings us to the Russians. For all their faults, they’re really good at two things: drinking and stealing. They started off small but, bit by bit, grew into a giant by stealing the land of the people around them.
(Much like we did with the Indians.)
Problem is, as usual, the powerful took the best of everything for themselves and the poor were left with next to nothing.
Some people didn’t like that. Thought it unfair. So they formed revolutionary groups and plotted to overthrow the Czar.
Not only that, they wanted to take everything and give it to the government. Figured folks would work harder if no one had any reason to.
(Economics is a strange science.)
And, thanks to WWI — even the most dedicated patriot loses his enthusiasm after several years of running straight into machine-gun fire — they did so. Seized power and stole everything, turning Russia into a workers’ paradise where no one had anything and everyone went hungry.
But then Stalin came along and decided that turning peasants into workers was more important than making sure everyone had the exact same amount of nothing.
Problem is, he needed money — real money, not that fake Soviet stuff — to buy machines so he told the farmers to move in together and work for free.
But, for some reason, they were reluctant to do that. What’s worse, rather than hand over their food, they either ate it or hid it somewhere.
So Stalin sent in his secret police to confiscate their crops and shoot anyone who showed signs of not wanting to starve in the street.
Which was a roaring success. Millions died, many of them Ukrainian.
(They’ve been a bit peeved at the Russians ever since.)
Even better, he had the good luck to be invaded by Hitler, which resulted in him gaining control of most of central and eastern Europe — at only the cost of thirty million dead. Quite the bargain.
And, for a long time, they were number two, an Avis to our Hertz. They had nuclear weapons and put the first man in space but, try as they might, they could never catch up. We were just so much richer.
But then Gorby came along and tried to square the circle. Figured he could have the best of capitalism — homelessness, over-priced healthcare and drive-by shootings — while retaining the essentials of socialism: censorship, prison camps and mile-long line-ups for toilet paper.
But it doesn’t work that way. You have to choose. And, first chance they got, the nations of central and eastern Europe did: they deserted the Russians and went running back to the Germans.
(Deutschmark uber alles.)
Which must’ve been a bit galling. Especially after all the good things the Russians did for them: invade their countries, destroy their economies and supply them with TVs that explode in your face.
(Even if you are a drunken asshole who beats his kids, you’re still going to feel betrayed when they choose to live with their mom instead of you.)
Still, the Russians understood. Because they wanted that German money too.
(Despite getting their asses kicked twice last century, the Germans still ended up running the show — largely because of their work ethic: a German’s idea of a good time is to sit down, sharpen some pencils and lay them out at evenly spaced intervals, in anticipation of a hard day’s work.)
So the attitude was: easy come, easy go. Those countries were never really ours anyway. The Czechs, Slovaks and such were always in the German orbit and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact just meant a return to normal.
But then the Soviet Union itself imploded and the Balts and Central Asians got their independence. Along with the Ukrainians and Belorussians.
(Just like after WWI. What a great time that was.)
At first, people hardly noticed.
(The collapse of your country will do that to you. It’s hard for us Americans to understand just how traumatic the end of the Soviet Union was for Russians. Imagine an America where Prohibition and the Great Depression occur at the same time and Al Capone becomes president.)
No, they were too busy struggling to survive — remember how you could go to Moscow and buy an RPG for pennies? — to care about the other republics.
Especially Central Asia. All those -stans. Because, truth is, except for a few foreign policy wonks, the Russians never really liked them. They’re Muslims after all and they make too many babies. So good riddance.
The Balts, however, were a bit of a problem. Russia had so few good beaches to begin with and now they have even fewer.
(Which explains why they’re trying so hard to hold on to Crimea. Someone should just give them a Club Med membership.)
Plus which, a million Russians were stranded in countries whose languages they didn’t understand.
(That’s one of the many benefits of being a conqueror: you don’t have to learn the local language. It’s also why the vast majority of Americans — real Americans that is, not immigrants — are unilingual.)
Well, they thought, we’ll always have our Slavic brothers, the Ukrainians and Belorussians. Because they’re just as much of a drunken fuckup as us.
And, like a wart on the nose of Mother Russia, the Belorussians stayed true.
(Hell, they’re still Soviet.)
But the Ukrainians… well, that’s another story.
At first, they continued along the same path as the Russians: corrupt cops, squabbing politicians and an economy run by the mafia.
(The only part of Soviet society that worked.)
Worse maybe since they couldn’t even be bothered to hold on to their nukes. Gave them up to the Russians for a few bottles of vodka.
(Bet they regret that now. Then again, after Chernobyl, maybe it’s just as well. The last thing the world needs is Ukrainians playing with nuclear power.)
But then they looked over their shoulder, saw how well the Poles were doing — that German money again — and started to wonder if sitting on a bench drinking yourself to death really was the best use of your time on this planet.
(There are worse fates.)
Which really got the Russians’ goat. Being abandoned by the Bulgarians or Balts is one thing. But the Ukrainians? The little brother you always bullied?
That’s like your wingman suddenly getting religion and joining AA. Now he comes to you, tells you how great it is to be sober and begs you to clean up your act. How would you feel? Terrible, that’s how.
So naturally you’d do everything you could to knock him off the wagon. Spike his drink with acid, take him to a strip club and photograph him with a beer in his hand and his face buried in a stripper’s ass.
(Let’s see how his new Christian girlfriend likes that.)
And so they elected Putin, a pint-sized demagogue who promised to make Russia great again by killing his enemies, stripping people of their freedom and returning Russia to the glory days of the Soviet Union, when no one had anything of value and everyone was miserable.
But, to his surprise, the bribes and bullying didn’t work anymore. Ukraine had gotten a taste of western life: the freedom to say whatever you want, so long as it isn’t racist, sexist or homophobic, and vote in elections that are free and fair, for any party that doesn’t threaten the privileges of the rich.
So he started a civil war in eastern Ukraine and, when that didn’t work, sent in his little green men to seize Crimea.
But even that didn’t get their attention. So he invaded. Saw it as his last chance to prevent Ukraine from becoming a modern European country.
Which is the real reason we should continue supporting them. Not just to spike the Russian’s guns but because, for once, we can be the good guys. For decades, like an addict desperate to recreate the intensity of that first high, we’ve been trying to relive our greatest moment, the liberation of Europe in WWII, and, in the process, have supported some very bad dudes: Amin, Diem, Duvalier, Marcos, Mobuto, Noriega, Pinochet, Somoza and the Shah.
All in the name of fighting communism. Which some countries, believe it or not, actually saw as a good thing, a way to achieve independence.
(Vietnam, anyone? First the French, then the Japanese, then the French again and finally us. Got to give them credit: they’re determined little bastards. If we ever go to war with China, they’ll be useful allies to have.)
So don’t begrudge Biden his billions. You’ll be glad you didn’t. Because most of it is just a subsidy for American arms dealers anyway.
(Guns don’t just kill people. They also create jobs.)
A few hundred billion may sound like a lot but it’s peanuts compared to what it buys: the respect and admiration of oppressed people everywhere. Which is something we haven’t had for a very long time. Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Dale
Hi. If you’ve made it this far, you probably liked the story. So why not check out some others at my Medium page? https://medium.com/dear-dale
