The EU Culture: The Ukrainian Crises: The European Unity

                                                                                                    

Only when the American South banded together under the preservation of bondage after 1850 did the North establish its own identity in opposition to enslavement. Similarly, in the aftermath of Russian President Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine and the astonishingly, thrillingly coordinated response by major vote-based democracies, we may conclude, "There is a West."

We don't know exactly what it means, who it includes, or how constrained that sense of normal reason will wind up being. In any event, we are aware of how significant and unavoidable the response to Putin's violation of global laws and norms has been: Germany has agreed to increase protection spending to 2% of GDP after previously opposing that goal; Japan has promised to acknowledge Ukrainian displaced people despite its traditional difficulty with untouchables of various types; Britain has finally acted to subject the ostracised fortunes of Russian oligarchs to the genuine investigation, and the United States and the European Union have worked together to force increased protection spending.

The sense that the majority rule system is in jeopardy is nothing new. I addressed top officials in numerous European capitals the previous summer, in the run-up to US President Joe Biden's Summit for Democracy, and found them far more receptive than I expected to Biden's demand to safeguard a majority-rules system against totalitarian challenges. Almost all were wary of being dragged into an alliance against China or maybe a restored version of George W. Bramble's aggressive Freedom Agenda. All else being equal, and seemingly out of nowhere, the provocation came from Russia, a maverick state stalking its area with an atomic equipped switchblade rather than a financial giant. In addition, Putin launched an enormous attack on a peaceful neighbor in Europe.

No other act or demonstration could have effectively electrified the West. Putin has defined himself in opposition to the standards and foundations of the post-World War II request against NATO; against the United Nations, whose contract is based on power; against Europe, whose borders he seeks to redraw; and in opposition to law and order, which he refers to when it meets his needs and stomps on when it does not.

No other act or rally could have electrified the West in the same way. Putin has defined himself in opposition to the post-World War II request against NATO, the United Nations, whose contract is built on power, Europe, whose boundaries he aims to rewrite, and law and order, which he alludes to when it serves his purposes and stomps on when it does not.

He defends Biden's outline of a vote-based system vs totalitarianism, which Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has to benefit from global demand while modifying its standards, has not done. It's instructive that other outlier nations like Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria joined Russia in voting against the U.N. General Assembly's purpose of censuring the incursion.

This has been or should be an explanation second for many commentators of Biden's majority rule government policy. Pragmatists have blamed the West for Putin's anger, claiming that NATO expansion infringed on what Russia correctly regards as its range of authority. In any case, setting aside the veracity of this nineteenth-century notion that reduces small nations to satrapies of great ones, Putin has revealed that he isn't the pragmatism that pragmatists assumed he was. Assuming he was, he would have pressured Ukraine into withdrawing from NATO, which he very likely would have done, and then gone home. Regardless, he is not his goals are ultimately civilizational rather than international.

Left-wing pundits find Biden's ethical rhetoric amusing. (See Noam Chomsky's discussion of the Russia crisis.) What gives the United States, the perpetrator of atrocities in Iraq and the murderer of ordinary persons in drone warfare, the moral right to demand a popularity-based campaign against Russian hostility? This kind of moral equivalence has a long history, dating back to the moderate "doughfaces," as historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. dubbed them, who defended Joseph Stalin, and to the left-wingers who George Orwell chastised for demanding the sameness of private industry and Nazism.

However, one does not need to minimize any of the dreadfulness to reject the ethical proportionality argument. Americans have been paralyzed by a sense of shame over their country's wrongdoings, whether in Vietnam or Iraq, and have since grabbed their method for directing more attention to their qualities, as evidenced by the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War and the philanthropic mediations, but late, in the Balkans. Putin may also aid the popularity-based world here: It will be quite impossible to argue for moral comparison once he has finished slaughtering Ukrainian ordinary folks. So let us go over our lack of action.

Allow us to recognize a West and a (not entirely Western) liberal request worth defending. What happened next? Beyond tightening the screws on Russia, what are we required to do? To begin with, we want to see Ukraine as a victim of Russian enmity as well as an individual majority rules system. Ukraine is a destroyed nation, but the Ukrainian people chose their leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a free and fair political contest, and they have demonstrated to the world the dignity that can be found in free people. Zelensky has urged that Ukraine be admitted to the EU.

Ukraine's Association Agreement with the EU, which entered into force in 2017, currently allows Ukrainians to benefit from enhanced access to the EU's single market, and citizens have been able to travel without a visa across the Schengen Area since approximately 2017. In any event, it may be a long time before the country meets the EU's stringent requirements. However, Europe may make an impact on Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world by promptly accepting Ukraine as a candidate for membership if, or at least if, it can function as an autonomous state. Ukraine may only exist as a distant government, exiled for good, or as a backwater state isolated to the country's western outskirts while Russia dominates on Kyiv's rules apply.

The United States and major European nations should provide that element with discretionary, monetary, and military assistance. The focus of the emergency will then shift from Ukraine to the Baltic nations, Poland, and other countries that will form the new Western border. It's tough to think that Putin would attack, rather than weaken, a NATO member state, but it wasn't long ago that Putin would attack Ukraine. The United States and its NATO allies should send more troops and heavier equipment to these frontier states.

In any event, Biden will have to do something more difficult: he will have to explain to the American people why the US should be willing to fight for a little country like Lithuania, which few of them have heard of. What difference does Lithuania make that US officers should be willing to fight and die to protect its independence? For what reason should the United States risk the kind of confrontation with Russia that it avoided throughout the Cold War?

This will not be easy, and it is unlikely to be well recognized. Most voters who pay only a passing thought to foreign issues would be unmoved by demands to safeguard the liberal world. Furthermore, Americans are not in the mood to fight anyone but among selves. However, Biden should find a vocabulary that conveys what Putin has risked.

He should speak not about settlement promises or NATO's Article 5, but about America's role in protecting free people from persecution. Furthermore, Putin needs to hear him do it to cope with the cost of going after a NATO member state. Biden certainly made a good start by declaring in his State of the Union address that the US would not give up a "single inch" of NATO territory. The United States is the failing point in the majority rule request.

Among the main Western majority rule systems, only the United States picked a pioneer openly challenging liberal majority rule governance; it may do so again in 2024. Biden needs to talk to his constituents about the majority rule system both at home and abroad. It is far from a well-known topic. Surveys reveal that voters would prefer not to learn about the problems with the United States' majority rule system, and sages have pleaded with Biden to stop bothering the matter.

Maybe they're right. Biden is not a very compelling speaker, but he has a talent for conveying harsh truths. He wants to find the words so that Americans may recall the principles they have always held dear. In 2022, he may realize that no such language exists. He must, nevertheless, attempt.