On Appeasement in Ukraine with Reference to Exceptionalism

[stuper1]

To properly discuss the idea of avoiding appeasement as it relates to the Ukraine war from an American perspective, we first need to rightly understand the idea of American exceptionalism, which if understood incorrectly can easily lead to hubris and narcissism and thus to folly. It should be uncontroversial to say that God doesn’t love Americans more than he loves Ukrainians or Russians. And, I hope we can agree that Americans do not have more right to live and thrive on this planet than say Chinese or Indians. American exceptionalism, understood rightly, essentially boils down to the fact that Americans were the among the first to be blessed with the recognition that all people are created equal, and were the first to start a stable, prosperous nation based on that principle. Obviously, “all people are created equal” covers everybody on earth including Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, and every other nationality. The bottom line is that American interests are not preeminent on the earth; every nation has equally legitimate interests that should be recognized and respected, at least if we don’t want to be in a state of perpetual war.

Moving now to the idea of avoiding appeasement, this idea seems to be an important one to those who believe the USA was and is correct to support Ukraine’s desire to join NATO and to provide massive support in dollars and armaments to Ukraine to defend against Russia’s invasion. Many people have explained in great detail elsewhere that Russia sees the threat of Ukraine joining NATO and possibly hosting US nuclear-tipped missiles as a great provocation, which is the main reason why Russia invaded Ukraine (along with perceived substantial mistreatment, including much killing, of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine). I and others have asked many times why NATO couldn’t be satisfied with a neutral Ukraine (much like Switzerland has been militarily neutral for hundreds of years and enjoys great prosperity) and with having NATO’s missiles stop a few hundred miles farther to the west? One of the main answers given is that if NATO would have conceded on this issue to Russia that it would have amounted to “appeasement”, which apparently is the worst mortal sin of diplomacy. I suspect the idea of appeasement as a diplomatic sin is greatly overplayed by those who suffer from a militaristic bent (or perhaps I should say by those who profit from such a bent), much as say the “slippery slope” argument is greatly overused by shoddy logicians. Yes, in certain instances (probably rare), avoiding appeasement is a useful diplomatic stance, just as the slippery slope argument is useful on rare occasions but not nearly as often as people claim. It is important also to remember that military technology is much deadlier with much longer range than in the days of Chamberlain and Hitler when thermonuclear bombs and accurate long-range missiles did not even exist, so the concept of appeasement today likely needs concomitant modification. My argument as it pertains to the Ukraine war is laid out below.

Here we get to the place where avoiding appeasement intertwines with the first paragraph on American exceptionalism. Because, you see, if avoiding appeasement is a legitimate concern, then it applies to both nations that are opposing each other, for after all the people in both nations are created equal. On one side in the current conflict, the American people think it would be appeasement to not push for Ukraine to be added to NATO, because then the US would be giving in to Russia’s demands for Ukraine to stay neutral. On the other side, the Russian people think it would be appeasement to not push back against Ukraine joining NATO and becoming a viable host for US missiles, especially considering that Ukraine had promised not to seek NATO membership and US representatives had promised not to push NATO farther eastward than Germany – whether or not these promises were affirmed in writing, the Russian people viewed them as promises, and it’s the Russian view that is contemplated in this sentence and is equally protected by the proper understanding of American exceptionalism. Thus, we have a problem, because we have a symmetry of claims, where each side seems to have a valid use for the idea of avoiding appeasement. How do we resolve a situation where claims are symmetrical?

In my training to become a physicist, I learned of mathematical techniques to solve physical problems using the ideas of symmetry and asymmetry. Eventually after a year of graduate study, I decided to pursue a different career path, and many years have elapsed, so my memory is pretty foggy by now. But one concept I seem to remember is that when a problem involves symmetry, if you can find an asymmetry in the system, then you may be able to leverage that asymmetry to find the solution to the problem. Or something like that – it has been 35 years so don’t quote me if you’re taking a physics exam, but the concept is useful for the current analysis.

Here is the asymmetry at play in Ukraine. The asymmetry is that the US is the party threatening to move its missiles right up to the border of Russia and 5,000 miles from the US border. Russia is not threatening to move its missiles into Canada or Mexico or Cuba. This means, from a great power perspective, the US is the initial aggressor in this situation. This also means that in this situation Russia is the country with the more legitimate concern for its national security and sovereignty and thus with the more legitimate claim that it needs to avoid appeasement

Do you seriously think the US would not act quickly and severely if Canada were threatening to join an unfriendly military alliance which would clear the path for nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at the US to be hosted in Canada? I’m not a geopolitical expert. I don’t even know whether the Monroe Doctrine is still invoked. If not, I’m pretty sure the US would quickly come up with a rationale for strongly pushing back against Canada in the scenario described. After all, we “pushed back” pretty strongly with shock and awe against Saddam Hussein in 2003 when he supposedly had Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and the US’s pushing-back actions resulted in several hundred thousand Iraqis dying over the next decade and an untold number of suffering refugees. Nuclear-tipped missiles are WMDs. If we were willing to push back against alleged WMDs located 7,000 miles away in Iraq, how much more would we push back against WMDs on our very border in Canada? And if it is okay for the US to do that, then the proper understanding of the idea of American exceptionalism means that it is okay for Russia to have the same concern when WMDs are being proposed for installation on its border. If the Monroe Doctrine or similar is legitimate for the US, then some such doctrine must apply for other major world powers, unless I’m wrong and God does love Americans more than other peoples. Also, much of the world recognizes the simple fact that the USA has no moral authority to tell Russia not to invade Ukraine given what the USA did to Iraq, and especially given that the alleged WMDs didn’t even exist in Iraq.

I think the answer is very clear on which nation has the much more solid claim of needing to avoid appeasement in the Ukraine situation, meaning Russia. If you don’t see the same answer, I plead with you to reconsider and make sure you’re not using the idea of American exceptionalism in a wrong and unhealthy way. This stuff is too important to play around with cavalierly. It never should have been played around with to the point where it has gotten already, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead and hundreds of thousands more are wounded, many shattered and broken for the rest of their lives, and millions are refugees throughout Europe. The US, NATO, and Ukrainian leaders who engineered this disaster have a lot of blood on their hands.

At this point, many might say that Russia should have first tried negotiations before invading Ukraine. The simple fact is that they did try to negotiate many times, and they made it clear that Ukraine not being neutral was a red line not to be crossed, much as the US would not stand by meekly if a foreign power was trying to recruit Canada to an unfriendly military alliance. There is not space here to describe all the attempts at negotiation that Russia tried, but this is discussed by many people smarter than me in many places. Much blood has been spilled in Ukraine that easily could have been avoided without any harm to legitimate US interests.

[vnatale]

A lot to respond to .... but confining to our taking over other countries and geography.

Wasn't the Spanish-American War the last war that was fought wherein we gained geography as a nation?

The usual in wars is for the various victorious countries to take over geography that had belonged to other countries.

I don't believe this was the case for us in World War II though it was for Russia.

And, in all our wars fought since World War II what geography have we added to our country that formerly belonged to other countries? As misguided as the Iraq War was .... we did not end up taking any part of Iraq as an adjunct to our country.

Russia in its invasion of Ukraine is behaving in "old" war fashion wherein you invade a country to add some of that other country's geography to your own (with the other country correspondingly losing some of its geography).

[stuper1]

Thank you, Vinny. That's actually an interesting objection you bring up. I'd say there wasn't a whole lot more of value that the US could take over after it took Texas to California from Mexico. Of course, then there was Hawaii, and I believe we had a large influence in the Phillipines and Puerto Rico for a while (I don't know much about these).

As I've mentioned many times, Putin may be brutal, but he's not dumb. He knows that he has plenty of land. If there's anything Russia has plenty of its land. He has no reason to invade other countries in order to take their land, because he knows he would just have to deal with a large insurgency headache for decades to come. Any ruler with half a brain would avoid that if possible, and Putin certainly has 20 times more brains than I ever will.

I suspect in Ukraine, he will take over the ethnic Russian portions, which were part of Russia for hundreds of years before the Soviets arbitrarily divided things up into administrative units. Putin won't touch the Ukrainian portions that are populated by non-majority ethnic Russians, because again like I said he won't want the insurgency headache. According to what he stated before the war, he would have been happy to leave Ukraine as-is, if they would just declare military neutrality rather than indicating an intention to sign up with a foreign military alliance.

I'll be posting an improved version of my essay momentarily in a separate thread.

[boglerdude]

Putin may be smart and a swell guy, but politicians with no term limits are inexorably corrupted through blackmail and bribery. Includes US senators. No one actually likes Biden. Lee Kuan Yew may be the rare benevolent dictator, but even he had to pass power to his son.

[stuper1]

Agreed on all points. The only ones though who can force a change in Russian government are the Russian people themselves. If the USA acts like jerks to them, they won't want to follow us. If we mind our own business and model a thriving, prosperous nation, they may decide that a real democracy looks like a good thing worth fighting for.

Actually I do know a few people who like Biden: my parents and sister. I was finally allowed to visit my parents recently (they didn't want to be visited earlier by those with leprosy, i.e., people who had enough sense not to take a barely tested, experimental Covid vaccine). My mom actually has a picture of Biden with my sister, who ran into him at an airport, in her living room. I just about vomited when I saw it. They are single issue voters though: abortion rights. They couldn't care less whether the country goes to hell in a hand basket as long as the right of a woman to choose an abortion up to 30 seconds before the baby is born is not abridged. Needless to say, I talk about everything but politics with them, because that subject just causes problems between us.