Last Thursday, Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered his military to carry out a full on invasion of the country of Ukraine. This unprovoked attack on a country that has been democratic since 1991 is a barbaric act that could result in the death of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides. Putin's stated motivations are absurdly false, from claiming that the Ukraine is run by "neo-Nazis" to saying that NATO is threatening to destroy Russia. His real motivation seems to be rooted in his anger at the breaking apart of the Soviet Union during the 90's.
The good news is that Putin has only strengthened the alliances of the NATO countries, and he may be in for a tougher fight than he expected because a strong majority of Ukrainians are opposed to the invasion. He also may discover that occupying Ukraine after invading could prove to be difficult, just like the US found out in Iraq. Even installing a puppet dictator would be met with strong resistance by the Ukrainian people. And the war may not be popular with the Russian people, even with government propaganda running the media, as thousands of Russians have already taken to the streets to protest the invasion, a bold move given the country's often brutal crackdowns on such protests.
Putin's act of aggression shows the danger of one country being run entirely on the whims of one leader; he can lie about his reasons, or over how popular the attack is with the Russian people, but at the end of the day this is Putin's war for him and him alone. Democracy may be messy system, and it often makes it difficult to get things done, but it still requires more than one leader's decision to go to war. There's a reason why there has never been a democracy that invaded another democracy.
President Joe Biden has responded to the attacks by arming the Ukrainians and slapping sanctions against Russia, while also gathering together American allies to do the same. The Republican response has been mixed, to say the least. Many of them have both agreed with Biden's actions while trying to say that his response has been "weak".
The right wing media has been even crazier: just after the invasion, Tucker Carlson, the number one rated talk show host on Fox News, asked a series of odd questions that implied that he was angrier at American liberals and China (“Has Putin ever called me a racist?", "Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia?”) than at Putin. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on his right wing podcast said that it was“not our fight” and praised Putin for being "anti-woke."
And then there's Trump himself, who has always had an admiration for Putin. Recently he said in a speech at Mara Lago that Putin was "pretty smart" and “He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions, taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people — and just walking right in.” Yes, the former president is describing a military attack that could leave thousands of innocent people dead as "just walking right in". It's obvious why Trump can't bring himself to criticize Putin, and it's not just that the Russian government helped him in the 2016 election. Clearly Trump responds to strongman dictators who rule their countries with an iron hand, because he wishes that he could have run our country the same way. Although a sociopath like Trump cannot truly care about any other person, he does respect power, and he sees the fear that Putin and North Korean leader Kim-Jong Un have over their underlings and wants that to. The fact that Trump praises a leader who carries out an unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country is reason enough to hope that he never occupies the White House again. But who knows? The sanctions against Russia will more than likely wind up hurting the American economy, which would help Trump if he runs again in 2024. As horrifying as it might sound, Putin might once again help Trump win the presidency.
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