Ukraine Red Pill!

A puzzling factor in the generally flaccid US national debate on Ukraine is what advocates self-characterize as the Red Pill view. In general, it says that Zelensky is a tool of the globalists; we should not be risking World War III to defend Ukraine; Putin is after all reasonable in wanting Ukraine to stay out of NATO and the EU. There are numerous variations on this view. One of the more justifiable is from Don Surber:

NATO was formed to stop the Soviet Union from taking over Europe.

The Scandinavians stood on the sideline.

Now they want in?

No thanks. We already have too many countries to defend because NATO doubled its size since the USSR dissolved on December 25, 1991, collapsing under the weight of its own economic and social failure.

The United States should firmly tell Finland and Sweden to take a hike. In the face of evil, they stood on the sidelines while the Czechs, the Hungarians, the Poles and others trapped in the clutches of the USSR fought bravely from within.

We should have dissolved NATO by now. Presidents Bush and Clinton failed us. Bush kept it. Clinton expanded it. I want to discard it.

But elsewhere, less justifiably, he says:

Readers may wonder why I am not accepting the NATO narrative on the Russo-Ukraine War.

Let us review, shall we?

If you dare question global warming (recently renamed climate change), they say you are for pollution and corporate greed.

If you dare question Obamacare, they say you must want people to die.

If you dare question how Biden got so many mail-in votes, they say you are an insurrectionist.

. . . The pattern is clear. Any time you question them, they call you names instead of answering the question.

. . . Now if you dare question the West's sudden support for Ukraine, they say you are a puppet for Putin.

I don't call the red-pillers puppets for Putin. I do say that I'm puzzled. The first issue is that the collapse of the Soviet Union didn't stop Russian expansionism, which is what Europe and the US are both worried about, which of course was and continues to be the reason for the alliance, and for which we now have ample continuing evidence in Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The expansion of NATO wouldn't have happened if the former Warsaw Pact didn't realistically see the need to provide for their defense from potential Russian revanchism. The same applies now to former Russian republics like Ukraine, and indeed to neighboring neutrals like Sweden and Finland. Surber's prescription seems to say too bad, you had your chance. Enjoy your new overlords. This is inadequate.

Putin's action simply confirms Europeans in their views. Indeed, Surber points out that countries like Germany have been unwilling to pay the full cost of NATO membership, but it appears that Germany has now reversed this in the face of Putin's invasion. This is the sort of issue that Trump was addressing as president; given the opprtunity to continue, we might imagine that he could have resolved it. Eliminating NATO would only have encouraged Putin to act earlier and would have been harder to correct. And just because some people use name-calling to further their arguments doesn't mean that even a stopped clock isn't right twice a day.

The problem as well is that I think even Surber would agree that Ukraine is now a sovereign country, and Putin's invasion is a violation of international law. I may be entirely reasonable in wanting a new car, but that doesn't justify me stealing one. How does Surber expect to address this, except to say Zelensky is a fool to resist Putin; he should simply take the US offer and decamp with his family and putative boodle? Would Surber say the UN will fix the problem instead of NATO? Or would he advocate eliminating both NATO and the UN and just hope for the best in such a vacuum?

I think one cause of Ukraine red-pillism is the overall poor quality of reporting on the war in the US, combined with the US policy communication that led up to it. Zelensky himself has said that Biden's weakness prior to the invasion allowed it to take place. The current outcome suggests that on one hand, US intelligence was completely correct in predicting the invasion, while it certainly has failed to predict the Russian failure to achieve its objectives on the schedule US intelligence also predicted.

It also failed in its estimates of Zelensky or the character of Ukrainian resistance. I have the impression that Biden is being dragged slowly, kicking and screaming, into positions of supporting Ukraine via progressively more severe sanctions on Russia and incressing the level of indirect military assistance to Ukraine. None of this was Biden's choice, and it was not in his original scenario. Every indication is that what he wanted and expected was a quick Russian seizure of Kiev, a US sponsored bugout for the Zelensky clique, and a quiet acceptance of the new reality on the ground following brief token complaint from the usual suspects.

As far as I can see, the red-pill faction is the one that's been allied with a tacit Biden agenda that's simply been overtaken by events.