War Fever is Spreading
In the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week, small, roving bands of Pat Buchanan-esque conservatives flitted around Twitter mocking neo-cons like David Frum and referencing George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The United States might teeter off some geopolitical precipice into war with Russia, they said, and we want to know what’s in it for us. America is not what it was it. Wokeness has captured our institutions and even our military. And if old W. proved untrustworthy in taking America to war after 9/11, how much less our current far-left overlords?
To quote Rod Dreher, these very online culture warriors hated the idea of “risking the lives of boys from Louisiana and Alabama to make the Donbass safe for genderqueers and migrants.”
No surprise, they quickly got pinned as unpatriotic. That many in these roving bands flirt with Trump-support also meant they were tainted by the former president’s interview in which he called Putin a “genius” and “very saavy” for the way his “peacekeepers” invaded Ukraine.
But the main problem with the new right’s anti-war arguments appeared to be neither disloyalty nor selfishness. Their problem was that no one was talking about going to war.
President Biden, after all, had said repeatedly that American troops will not fight in Ukraine. NATO clearly put all their eggs in the “sanctions” basket. Then there is the well-documented matter of Biden’s growing resistance to American interventionism. And after America’s exit from Afghanistan, few have the stomach for any war, let alone one with Russia.
What, I began to wonder, is the point of being anti-war if war is not on the table? Who exactly were Dreher and company talking about? Perhaps this anti-war stance was really veiled pro-Russian sentiment, support for Putin’s archeofuturist cultural projects or an otherwise weird outgrowth of Christian nationalism.
Then on Saturday morning as America woke up to reports of Ukrainian President Zelensky’s heroic refusal of evacuation (“I need ammunition, not a ride”), I got gobsmacked.
CNN’s Michael Smerconish did too. In a poll of more than 36,000 CNN viewers, 77% of the network’s typically left-of-center audience wanted NATO to “go to war for Ukraine.” Was this a shift from the AP poll three days earlier that found only 26% of Americans supported a major U.S. intervention? It felt like it. In that earlier poll, 52% had indeed called for playing a “minor role.” But CNN’s survey may well indicate movement in public opinion, not just serve to clarify it.
It turns out the right was, well, right. However one reads these polls, war fever appears to be spreading. And history tells us it is a virulent contagion. If it fully infects the media and other public opinion-makers, elected officials might involve us in even a catastrophic war to avoid being thought a coward or being trounced in November. War is a great way to rally constituents to your cause, whether you are the president or a first-term congresswoman. Voting against a popular war can be the end of your career.
Perhaps some reading this suspect war could be good for the country. Men will have to act like men again, and the nation will have heroes again like we did during the World Wars. Or, if your politics are less John Wayne and more John Kerry, you might think fighting for the preservation of democracy is just the right thing to do, and it could have the added benefit of bringing the country together.
If you subscribe to either of these viewpoints, you are hardly alone. Many have done so before you. But this is feverish thinking for two reasons. First, we have to remember what war is. Second, we have to think about what this war would be.
The ancient belief that it is “sweet and fitting to die for one’s country” (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori), what the World War I-era poet Wilfred Owen called “the old lie,” is still alive and, I dare say, it is still a lie. The chemical weapons Owen wrote about may be banned today, but dying in a firefight half a world away from home cannot be “sweet” no matter how painless it is. A life cut short is a tragedy.
And very many Americans would die in a war with Russia. Despite what the War on Terror may have taught recent generations of Americans, war is not equivalent to police action. Even if in terms of military strength we still see the U.S. as the lone superpower, the Russians are not Al-Qaeda. Our war with Iraq or even Vietnam would be no comparison whatsoever. Contra the beliefs of the majority of CNN’s viewership, no “minor role” in this conflict is possible. Militarily speaking, we are either all the way in or all the way out.
Further, in case anyone has forgotten, the Russians have nuclear weapons. The philosopher Hannah Arendt was optimistic about a world with multiple states possessing nukes for a reason. She thought no one would be stupid enough to attack a nuclear power with conventional weapons.
But let us put nuclear arms aside for a moment. Say, hypothetically, that we could involve ourselves without trading nuclear strikes that killed millions. We have to ask if our military involvement is really likely to benefit the people Ukraine.
The answer is a clear no. Ukraine would become the site of a war between major powers with no predicable denouement. If you think the loss of life and destruction of major Ukrainian cities is bad now, just think how bad it would be then. The Ukrainian people can only exercise their democratic freedoms if they are alive to enjoy them. In the wake of such a conflict, even if both America and Russia continued to exist in some form, it is hard to imagine Ukraine emerging as a stable, functioning democracy.
The war between Russia and Ukraine may be just getting started. If so, war fever in America and the West is likely to surge. We may, in fact, be far from the peak.
So remind yourself and others of the foolhardiness of beating the war drums just now. And remind yourself and others of the likely results of such a war—and the likely result of prolonged, intense, targeted sanctions. These remedies might just stop the spread.