More neocon garbage in Persuasion. I shouldn't be disappointed at this point but nonetheless I am.
"Their central proposition is that great powers, for the sake of peace, should be allowed to maintain spheres of influence, often amounting to political control, beyond their borders."
Wrong. The central realist proposition is that great powers *have* spheres of influence, whether anyone thinks they should or not. Your gross misunderstanding of this essential point renders the rest of your article void.
"It was transformed by a popular uprising in 2014 against a corrupt and pro-Russian government."
Wow. The US supported a violent coup against the democratically elected government because we didn't like its policies toward Russia. A coup that would not have succeeded without the organized violence of literal Nazis. That vile ghoul Victoria Nuland even got caught on mic picking the next Ukrainian president. I enjoyed your soliloquies about our holy commitment to democracy though. As Carl Schmitt astutely observed, “sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception." And the next Ukrainian government that isn't corrupt will be the first.
"Even massive military aid does not entitle the United States to make life and death decisions for the embattled Ukrainians."
What I find disappointing is to see that you drank the left-labelled Kool-aid about Ukraine -- I usually have to face those who drank the right-labelled kind. Calling Walzer neocon is like calling Orwell a communist. The language and blind certainty is the same always in the positions of those stuck in the Cold War mind frame, on either end of the spectrum. Anti-Americanism as a religion is how Chomsky turned into a tin-hat man... and it is the exact same ideological obtusity that on the other side sees Communist conspiracies everywhere.
No wonder that your country is today on the highway to civil war hell.
I have no idea if he is a necon in all respects but this essay is pure necon rubbish. And if you would like to contest anything I've written go ahead, otherwise you are wasting my time. I am a patriot and not the slightest bit anti-American. It's the necon foreign policy blob I hate, and the way they continually damage our country with their arrogance and stupidity.
Dear friend, you write apodictic statements without supporting them with any reasoned evidence, and I have no time or inclination to rebut them. You use insults and aspersions against those you consider in the wrong, in the glorious tradition of Communist propaganda. Your statements are the opinions expressed by that part of the American Left that finds fault with all actions of the US abroad... and tends to justify and support the enemies of what they call "American imperialism" no matter what. I do not like American imperialism, but I do not think that it is the only imperialist power or country, nor do I think that every action or inaction of the US on the international theatre is part of its imperialistic vocation.
In the specific on Ukraine, you say things that lack any true evidence. and exaggerate the presence of some elements (like nationalist and far right tendencies in Ukraine -- as if the Russian nationalists were on the left) to decry the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government and inevitably to preach neutrality over the imperialist Russian invasion of the country. Ukraine belongs to the Russian sphere of influence, how dare you!
No serious political researcher believes that the US were behind the rebellion of 2014 -- it is the fable of minds on the far lefts obsessed with imperialist conspiracy and playing into Russian propaganda. A rebellion is not a coup. Indeed, democratic Ukraine includes a number (very minoritarian) of far right movements, and a larger number of Ukrainian nationalists that the Russian invasion multiplies by day. So what? Democracy is the system that accepts the risk to allow representation also to anti-democratic forces.
And yes, the motives of the US in supporting the Ukrainian push for democracy are not purely altruistic and disinterested. But the interests of the US are no matter here, for in international relations all countries strive to also accrue influence. The matter is how and to what outcome. The outcome in Ukraine was a change of leadership towards a more democratic and less corrupt system, obtained through democratic means (which include protests) and confirmed through democratic elections.
The leaked partial phone call between the then US Assistant Secretary of State and Ambassador is an amazing red herring, which aside from showing that high state officials talk among themselves just like ordinary people, reveals no hint of actual financial or military support to the Maidan groups, nor any sense that the Ukrainian politicians they mention are in the pay of the US.
The issue at hand is not whether Ukraine is a perfect democracy of immaculate goodness that exists in a vacuum impermeable to outside influences. The issue is that Ukraine chose democratically its path, and has been invaded by a much bigger country. And the question is whether to support its defence, politically and militarily. The answer of democratic liberals and democratic socialists is and should be a strong YES. A different answer can only come from the exclusive care for immediate national interests (which has a long tradition for example in American Isolationism, but also in other countries), or from an ideological position that privileges a type of economic/social system over democracy.
I find it ironic to quote Marx in defense of democratic liberalism as Marxist theories were used for decades and are still used to suppress democracy.
Studying history does not give us a clear view of the future, but it is the only method that we have to predict the future. History, especially 20th century history, would seem to indicate that abandoning the Ukraine will just move the bloodshed further west.
Marx died in 1883. He is not responsible for the use of his theories and for the school of thought that carries his name (part of which is not at all anti-democratic, just as most socialist thought, as I seem to have to constantly repeat, is not at all illiberal or anti-democratic, and that since before Marx).
Political Marxism, inasmuch as it preaches the dictatorship of the proletariat, is either dead -- as the industrial working class went the way of the dinosaurs -- or a recitation of enchantments void of sense used in the liturgies of totalitarian bureaucracies.
But Marx's philosophy, which spans much wider than just political economy, is a well of compelling ideas most of which are not at all incompatible or opposed to democracy and liberalism.
The Christian churches of every denomination have frequently acted and strived to suppress democracy. Should we then abstain from quoting the Christian principles that support democracy? Seems an idle exercise in purity of the woke kind.
The ‘Republicans’ in Spain included many factions. Of course, they got support from the USSR. Some of the ‘Republican’ factions in Spain were conducting massacres that were being commemorated as late as 2000. The Nationalists were, of course, supported by Germany. Franco rewarded them by making Spain neutral in WWII. Note that Spain contributed to the German war effort by allowing German bases in Spain. Spain traded with Switzerland during the war, while allowing Allen Dulles to run the European OSS our of Bern.
My sense of it, is that Franco somehow knew that Germany would lose WWII and that he and Spain needed to avoid future enemies. Just a guess.
I do not think that Franco was such a far-sighted individual or so savvy in international politics to know that Germany would lose, when it came to WWII. While Franco knew that his regime was a fascist dictatorship that would not be welcomed in the European group of democracies if the Allies won. But Franco was shrewd enough to remain formally neutral (German bases aside) and bide his time, which ensured the long life of his regime.
I find fault with the rosy view of the Spanish Republicans that Walzer seems to entertain -- songs and stories do not make politics more moral, just more passionate. The Spanish Republic was possibly doomed since its start -- the 1931 Constitution contained articles that hit the Catholic Church as much as Revolutionary France had done 140 years earlier. Yes, the Catholic Church exercised enormous and nefarious power in Spain; but on a country so deeply Catholic, blunt anti-clericalism was destined to create unsustainable divisions. Moreover, the Republicans contained, as you rightly point out, many factions: and a number of them, while being surely republican, were not strong supporters of democracy and hoped for a proletarian revolution that was not envisioned as a peaceful change but implied a rapid elimination of opponents and transformation of society according to the paths laid out by the Russian Revolution, or the destruction of functional power structures in case of the anarchists.
Since the beginning the Republican side was divided, both ideologically and in action. Violence was astonishingly high, and political murders and executions shockingly common in the years leading to the Civil War, both under the Republican coalition and under the CEDA coalition, in the times that either was in democratically elected government. In these years, divisions allowed extralegal executions and plain murders to go unpunished and increased the polarization of the country. And while the Republicans remained divided well into the Civil War (a conspicuous number of murders were perpetrated on allies not toeing the right line, like Orwell's testimony makes clear and historians have ascertained), the Nationalists only became more united and efficient.
Yes, Franco's coup of 1936 was a rebellion against a democratic elected government -- a government elected by a majority of barely 1% and which, instead of recognising that in such a divided country policies of conciliation would be necessary, stiffened its anti-clerical positions; a government that had just failed to prosecute police officers who had executed a democratically elected member of parliament who was a monarchist. A government who could not even decide to arm its population, when Franco's troops came from Morocco.
This is not to say that the Spanish Republic brought civil war on itself... but it helped. And it was 1936: when Fascism, Nazism and Communism were victorious in Europe, hatred and fear were at an all time high, and most people could only think in terms of the complete annihilation of opponents.
The few democratic countries that survived were in a hard spot. It may be that they could have saved Spain's democracy by military supporting the Republicans -- but with no great results unless they had also been able to impose actual democratic practice. Illiberal revolutionary factions were later contained and turned democratic within the national liberation armies allied with the Allies, for example in Italy and France: but they were fighting a foreign invader, which unites people. In Spain, Spaniards were fighting other Spaniards and I suspect that to establish and maintain actual democracy only an occupation of the country by a foreign democratic power would have been successful: which is in itself negating the premise of democracy, as the USA has amply demonstrated in its several attempts at it.
So in my very modest opinion, the decision of France, Britain, the USA et al. not to directly send military support to the Spanish Republic may be judged a mistake depending on the evaluation of the situation. But a crime? I do not think so.
I did some research in response to your comments and the original Walzer article. US neutrality in the Spanish Civil war was inevitable. Of course, FDR was president and enjoyed massive majorities. However, the Democratic party (back then) was the “Catholic” party. Given that American Catholics were very pro-Franco, US neutrality was inevitable. To put this is perspective, the first Republican to get a majority of the Catholic votes was Eisenhower.
Say (very hypothetically) American Protestants made killing Catholic priests a priority. A very violent reaction from American Catholics could be quite reasonably be expected. Fortunately, American history does not include that particular misery. The Ursuline convent was burned (by Protestants) in 1834. No deaths resulted. Much later, JFK won the West Virginia primary in 1960. His victory (de facto) ended the Protestant/Catholic schism in American life.
The US Republicans (back then) had little or no influence (this was the 1930s) and might have supported Franco. However, because of the Depression they were very much out of office.
To put this in perspective. I am not Catholic, but have lived most of my life in very Catholic parts of the US. I tried to marry some number of Catholic girls, they (wisely) turned me down. I have a funny story along these lines. Until I moved to a southern state, a had never met a single US Protestant. This in a country with more Protestants than Catholics
I very much agree with this, as it shines more light for me on ulterior specific reasons for US neutrality in the Spanish Civil War, which make a lot of sense. Beyond the general reasons that I think were the main /moral/ reasons for the neutrality of the democratic European states (aside from the practical reasons, which were manyfold and included both self interest, fear of the socialist/communist elements among the Republicans, fear of igniting a larger conflict, and unsolved contradictions -- like Catholic Poland that sold arms to the Republicans for lots of gold, while the Polish population, following the Pope, sided with the Nationalists).
The moral reasons were that the violence on both sides was very shocking and, even where the desire to defend democracy might have been high, the inability of the Spanish government to prevent murderous violence by members of the parties that supported it and its own militarised organisations, including the police, and especially to prevent this before the coup, put democratic liberals in a conundrum.
Members of the Republican forces (mostly without direct organisation on the part of the central command) committed atrocities. The Nationalists committed two times as much and on a deliberate program of cleansing out of all socialist-communist-anarchist-liberal elements.
This is the tragedy of a civil war exacerbated by the interference of the USSR on one side and Nazi Germany and the Vatican (for somewhat different reasons) on the other. It has been hard for me, after having studied the research of other historians on the conflict, to see the Spanish Civil War in black and white and to consider the neutrality of the European democracies and the US a crime. Maybe there were ways in which actual democracy in Spain could have been saved. But is hard to take assessments of 'what ifs".
My guess is that FDR had little sympathy for the Nationalists. However, he also did want to start a war in the Democratic party. Some history here is quite relevant. Wilson allied with the UK in WWI. Irish Democrats and German Democrats never forgave him. In the subsequent elections, Republicans easily won, in part because of profound disunity in the Democratic party (the Great Depression sent the Republicans into the wilderness later). Were there other reasons for Republican ascendancy in the 1920s? Of course, there were.
Back then, upscale urban liberals were only a small force in the Democratic party (for example, Elanor Roosevelt). Of course, they would have supported the Republicans to the hilt. Conversely, relatively downscale Catholics were a huge force and they had an opposite view.
Another factor was that the US was still quite isolationist. US isolationism was strongly reinforced by the debacle of WWI (political and economic debacle, not military). No less that FDR held off on getting the US involved before Pearl Harbor. Even after Pearl Harbor, FDR called for declaration of war only against Japan (not Japan and Germany). Germany solved that problem by declaring war on the US.
More neocon garbage in Persuasion. I shouldn't be disappointed at this point but nonetheless I am.
"Their central proposition is that great powers, for the sake of peace, should be allowed to maintain spheres of influence, often amounting to political control, beyond their borders."
Wrong. The central realist proposition is that great powers *have* spheres of influence, whether anyone thinks they should or not. Your gross misunderstanding of this essential point renders the rest of your article void.
"It was transformed by a popular uprising in 2014 against a corrupt and pro-Russian government."
Wow. The US supported a violent coup against the democratically elected government because we didn't like its policies toward Russia. A coup that would not have succeeded without the organized violence of literal Nazis. That vile ghoul Victoria Nuland even got caught on mic picking the next Ukrainian president. I enjoyed your soliloquies about our holy commitment to democracy though. As Carl Schmitt astutely observed, “sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception." And the next Ukrainian government that isn't corrupt will be the first.
"Even massive military aid does not entitle the United States to make life and death decisions for the embattled Ukrainians."
Utter nonsense, to put it politely.
What I find disappointing is to see that you drank the left-labelled Kool-aid about Ukraine -- I usually have to face those who drank the right-labelled kind. Calling Walzer neocon is like calling Orwell a communist. The language and blind certainty is the same always in the positions of those stuck in the Cold War mind frame, on either end of the spectrum. Anti-Americanism as a religion is how Chomsky turned into a tin-hat man... and it is the exact same ideological obtusity that on the other side sees Communist conspiracies everywhere.
No wonder that your country is today on the highway to civil war hell.
I have no idea if he is a necon in all respects but this essay is pure necon rubbish. And if you would like to contest anything I've written go ahead, otherwise you are wasting my time. I am a patriot and not the slightest bit anti-American. It's the necon foreign policy blob I hate, and the way they continually damage our country with their arrogance and stupidity.
Dear friend, you write apodictic statements without supporting them with any reasoned evidence, and I have no time or inclination to rebut them. You use insults and aspersions against those you consider in the wrong, in the glorious tradition of Communist propaganda. Your statements are the opinions expressed by that part of the American Left that finds fault with all actions of the US abroad... and tends to justify and support the enemies of what they call "American imperialism" no matter what. I do not like American imperialism, but I do not think that it is the only imperialist power or country, nor do I think that every action or inaction of the US on the international theatre is part of its imperialistic vocation.
In the specific on Ukraine, you say things that lack any true evidence. and exaggerate the presence of some elements (like nationalist and far right tendencies in Ukraine -- as if the Russian nationalists were on the left) to decry the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government and inevitably to preach neutrality over the imperialist Russian invasion of the country. Ukraine belongs to the Russian sphere of influence, how dare you!
I think you take too many of your ideas from the Jacobin (a very telling name, is it not?), as in https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea.
Most other sources disagree, including the most reliable centre of studies on disinformation in the EU: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/maidan-protests-in-ukraine-were-staged-neo-nazis-and-nationalists-were-behind-them
No serious political researcher believes that the US were behind the rebellion of 2014 -- it is the fable of minds on the far lefts obsessed with imperialist conspiracy and playing into Russian propaganda. A rebellion is not a coup. Indeed, democratic Ukraine includes a number (very minoritarian) of far right movements, and a larger number of Ukrainian nationalists that the Russian invasion multiplies by day. So what? Democracy is the system that accepts the risk to allow representation also to anti-democratic forces.
And yes, the motives of the US in supporting the Ukrainian push for democracy are not purely altruistic and disinterested. But the interests of the US are no matter here, for in international relations all countries strive to also accrue influence. The matter is how and to what outcome. The outcome in Ukraine was a change of leadership towards a more democratic and less corrupt system, obtained through democratic means (which include protests) and confirmed through democratic elections.
The leaked partial phone call between the then US Assistant Secretary of State and Ambassador is an amazing red herring, which aside from showing that high state officials talk among themselves just like ordinary people, reveals no hint of actual financial or military support to the Maidan groups, nor any sense that the Ukrainian politicians they mention are in the pay of the US.
The issue at hand is not whether Ukraine is a perfect democracy of immaculate goodness that exists in a vacuum impermeable to outside influences. The issue is that Ukraine chose democratically its path, and has been invaded by a much bigger country. And the question is whether to support its defence, politically and militarily. The answer of democratic liberals and democratic socialists is and should be a strong YES. A different answer can only come from the exclusive care for immediate national interests (which has a long tradition for example in American Isolationism, but also in other countries), or from an ideological position that privileges a type of economic/social system over democracy.
I find it ironic to quote Marx in defense of democratic liberalism as Marxist theories were used for decades and are still used to suppress democracy.
Studying history does not give us a clear view of the future, but it is the only method that we have to predict the future. History, especially 20th century history, would seem to indicate that abandoning the Ukraine will just move the bloodshed further west.
Marx died in 1883. He is not responsible for the use of his theories and for the school of thought that carries his name (part of which is not at all anti-democratic, just as most socialist thought, as I seem to have to constantly repeat, is not at all illiberal or anti-democratic, and that since before Marx).
Political Marxism, inasmuch as it preaches the dictatorship of the proletariat, is either dead -- as the industrial working class went the way of the dinosaurs -- or a recitation of enchantments void of sense used in the liturgies of totalitarian bureaucracies.
But Marx's philosophy, which spans much wider than just political economy, is a well of compelling ideas most of which are not at all incompatible or opposed to democracy and liberalism.
The Christian churches of every denomination have frequently acted and strived to suppress democracy. Should we then abstain from quoting the Christian principles that support democracy? Seems an idle exercise in purity of the woke kind.
On Ukraine, I agree in full with you.
The ‘Republicans’ in Spain included many factions. Of course, they got support from the USSR. Some of the ‘Republican’ factions in Spain were conducting massacres that were being commemorated as late as 2000. The Nationalists were, of course, supported by Germany. Franco rewarded them by making Spain neutral in WWII. Note that Spain contributed to the German war effort by allowing German bases in Spain. Spain traded with Switzerland during the war, while allowing Allen Dulles to run the European OSS our of Bern.
My sense of it, is that Franco somehow knew that Germany would lose WWII and that he and Spain needed to avoid future enemies. Just a guess.
I do not think that Franco was such a far-sighted individual or so savvy in international politics to know that Germany would lose, when it came to WWII. While Franco knew that his regime was a fascist dictatorship that would not be welcomed in the European group of democracies if the Allies won. But Franco was shrewd enough to remain formally neutral (German bases aside) and bide his time, which ensured the long life of his regime.
I find fault with the rosy view of the Spanish Republicans that Walzer seems to entertain -- songs and stories do not make politics more moral, just more passionate. The Spanish Republic was possibly doomed since its start -- the 1931 Constitution contained articles that hit the Catholic Church as much as Revolutionary France had done 140 years earlier. Yes, the Catholic Church exercised enormous and nefarious power in Spain; but on a country so deeply Catholic, blunt anti-clericalism was destined to create unsustainable divisions. Moreover, the Republicans contained, as you rightly point out, many factions: and a number of them, while being surely republican, were not strong supporters of democracy and hoped for a proletarian revolution that was not envisioned as a peaceful change but implied a rapid elimination of opponents and transformation of society according to the paths laid out by the Russian Revolution, or the destruction of functional power structures in case of the anarchists.
Since the beginning the Republican side was divided, both ideologically and in action. Violence was astonishingly high, and political murders and executions shockingly common in the years leading to the Civil War, both under the Republican coalition and under the CEDA coalition, in the times that either was in democratically elected government. In these years, divisions allowed extralegal executions and plain murders to go unpunished and increased the polarization of the country. And while the Republicans remained divided well into the Civil War (a conspicuous number of murders were perpetrated on allies not toeing the right line, like Orwell's testimony makes clear and historians have ascertained), the Nationalists only became more united and efficient.
Yes, Franco's coup of 1936 was a rebellion against a democratic elected government -- a government elected by a majority of barely 1% and which, instead of recognising that in such a divided country policies of conciliation would be necessary, stiffened its anti-clerical positions; a government that had just failed to prosecute police officers who had executed a democratically elected member of parliament who was a monarchist. A government who could not even decide to arm its population, when Franco's troops came from Morocco.
This is not to say that the Spanish Republic brought civil war on itself... but it helped. And it was 1936: when Fascism, Nazism and Communism were victorious in Europe, hatred and fear were at an all time high, and most people could only think in terms of the complete annihilation of opponents.
The few democratic countries that survived were in a hard spot. It may be that they could have saved Spain's democracy by military supporting the Republicans -- but with no great results unless they had also been able to impose actual democratic practice. Illiberal revolutionary factions were later contained and turned democratic within the national liberation armies allied with the Allies, for example in Italy and France: but they were fighting a foreign invader, which unites people. In Spain, Spaniards were fighting other Spaniards and I suspect that to establish and maintain actual democracy only an occupation of the country by a foreign democratic power would have been successful: which is in itself negating the premise of democracy, as the USA has amply demonstrated in its several attempts at it.
So in my very modest opinion, the decision of France, Britain, the USA et al. not to directly send military support to the Spanish Republic may be judged a mistake depending on the evaluation of the situation. But a crime? I do not think so.
I did some research in response to your comments and the original Walzer article. US neutrality in the Spanish Civil war was inevitable. Of course, FDR was president and enjoyed massive majorities. However, the Democratic party (back then) was the “Catholic” party. Given that American Catholics were very pro-Franco, US neutrality was inevitable. To put this is perspective, the first Republican to get a majority of the Catholic votes was Eisenhower.
Say (very hypothetically) American Protestants made killing Catholic priests a priority. A very violent reaction from American Catholics could be quite reasonably be expected. Fortunately, American history does not include that particular misery. The Ursuline convent was burned (by Protestants) in 1834. No deaths resulted. Much later, JFK won the West Virginia primary in 1960. His victory (de facto) ended the Protestant/Catholic schism in American life.
The US Republicans (back then) had little or no influence (this was the 1930s) and might have supported Franco. However, because of the Depression they were very much out of office.
To put this in perspective. I am not Catholic, but have lived most of my life in very Catholic parts of the US. I tried to marry some number of Catholic girls, they (wisely) turned me down. I have a funny story along these lines. Until I moved to a southern state, a had never met a single US Protestant. This in a country with more Protestants than Catholics
I very much agree with this, as it shines more light for me on ulterior specific reasons for US neutrality in the Spanish Civil War, which make a lot of sense. Beyond the general reasons that I think were the main /moral/ reasons for the neutrality of the democratic European states (aside from the practical reasons, which were manyfold and included both self interest, fear of the socialist/communist elements among the Republicans, fear of igniting a larger conflict, and unsolved contradictions -- like Catholic Poland that sold arms to the Republicans for lots of gold, while the Polish population, following the Pope, sided with the Nationalists).
The moral reasons were that the violence on both sides was very shocking and, even where the desire to defend democracy might have been high, the inability of the Spanish government to prevent murderous violence by members of the parties that supported it and its own militarised organisations, including the police, and especially to prevent this before the coup, put democratic liberals in a conundrum.
Members of the Republican forces (mostly without direct organisation on the part of the central command) committed atrocities. The Nationalists committed two times as much and on a deliberate program of cleansing out of all socialist-communist-anarchist-liberal elements.
This is the tragedy of a civil war exacerbated by the interference of the USSR on one side and Nazi Germany and the Vatican (for somewhat different reasons) on the other. It has been hard for me, after having studied the research of other historians on the conflict, to see the Spanish Civil War in black and white and to consider the neutrality of the European democracies and the US a crime. Maybe there were ways in which actual democracy in Spain could have been saved. But is hard to take assessments of 'what ifs".
My guess is that FDR had little sympathy for the Nationalists. However, he also did want to start a war in the Democratic party. Some history here is quite relevant. Wilson allied with the UK in WWI. Irish Democrats and German Democrats never forgave him. In the subsequent elections, Republicans easily won, in part because of profound disunity in the Democratic party (the Great Depression sent the Republicans into the wilderness later). Were there other reasons for Republican ascendancy in the 1920s? Of course, there were.
Back then, upscale urban liberals were only a small force in the Democratic party (for example, Elanor Roosevelt). Of course, they would have supported the Republicans to the hilt. Conversely, relatively downscale Catholics were a huge force and they had an opposite view.
Another factor was that the US was still quite isolationist. US isolationism was strongly reinforced by the debacle of WWI (political and economic debacle, not military). No less that FDR held off on getting the US involved before Pearl Harbor. Even after Pearl Harbor, FDR called for declaration of war only against Japan (not Japan and Germany). Germany solved that problem by declaring war on the US.
Being well aware of the US position and FDR's dilemmas at the start of WWII, your take on the previous situation makes a lot of sense to me.