Just why is it that a certain type of conservative criticizes Ukraine and wants the United States to withdraw its support in the war effort? Many who support Ukraine remain puzzled. Say you have a friend who appears to have a little (or a lot) more sense than, say, Margorie Taylor Greene, yet constantly criticizes President Zelensky or blames the United States rather than Russia for Putin’s invasion. What sort of response can be made now more than a year into the war?
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, an anti-Trump Republican, offered an answer this week that centers primarily on the character of Vladimir Putin: he represents something the United States thought it might have with Trump, but didn’t quite.
In Putin’s cult of machismo, his suppression of political opposition, his “almost sublime contempt for truth” (Joseph Conrad’s memorable line about Russian officialdom), his opportunistic embrace of religious orthodoxy, his loathing of “decadent” Western culture, his sneering indifference to international law and, above all, his contempt for democratic and liberal principles, he represents a form of politics the Tuckerites glimpsed but never quite got in the presidency of Donald Trump.
We have here, in so many words, a more palatable form of Adorno’s old “authoritarian personality” thesis. Conservatives (but not the ones like me) just like dictators, Stephens seems to say. Which is, when one thinks about it, a rather odd thing to believe. The same people who so radically distrust authority in almost every other situation—e.g., calling required mask wearing during a deadly pandemic totalitarian—want a dictator?
While one can indeed find examples of conservatives who want a powerful personality in the Oval Office, another, perhaps more disturbing possibility leaves fewer puzzle pieces in the box. In fact, it comes clear as soon as you put it on paper: Putin is the enemy of their enemy. He has taken a clear side in the ever-more-international culture war against American and Western progressives. And he claims that Ukraine is on the side of the evil sexual and gender revolutionaries. Ergo, the white hats—the committed Christians, the real Americans—should be on the side of Russia.
Conservatives know that the Kremlin and big business in Russia have spent the thirty years since the fall of the USSR pushing an ultranationalist agenda that puts Russian Orthodox Christianity at the center of the nation’s identity. Nostalgia for the tsars and empire, archeofuturism, militarism, and intense resentment of the United States all get baptized by the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Putin is seen taking pilgrimages to holy sites on national television. American conservatives may not want exactly what Putin’s selling, but they feel they found an ally and a kindred spirit. Whatever the FSB does under the radar can be safely relegated to hearsay or, more likely, a price that must be paid for winning the culture war in Russia.
Which brings me to my thesis. Putin love on the American and Western right isn’t really about Putin. It’s about fear and hatred of progressive elites. Progressives support same-sex marriage, gender ideologies, abortion, and other political causes many traditional Christians find abhorrent, and those progressives hold the reins of power in most Western institutions, particularly the universities. Conservatives, including and especially Christians, feel that the West is becoming increasingly unhospitable for people like them, and that soon they may find themselves enduring open persecution.
So they push back. They fight legal battles for religious liberty causes. They vote for whomever might give them a leg up in this multigenerational battle, even the thrice-married, foul-mouthed, wildly egotistical Trump. They express sympathy for Jack Texiera (the Air National Guardsman who leaked military secrets on Discord) not just because he is young and seems not to have intended harm, but because he is a Christian and a conservative.
And increasingly the anti-Ukraine conservative fights what he or she views as American ideological imperialism. Perhaps this is because until Dobbs conservatives had lost battle after culture war battle, and they felt conservatives in other countries had more of a grip on political power. This is where Russia comes in. Because Russia still has significant international power and has moved dramatically rightward in recent years, Putin becomes an important player in shoring up conservative values on the international stage.
Then came the invasion. After initial confusion and tepid support, anti-Ukraine conservatives popped up on Twitter and, of course, in congress. Some assumed Trump’s legacy or a resistance to spreading ourselves too thin motivated this opposition. Trump had threatened to abandon NATO and wanted Europe to spend more for the alliance; figures like Josh Hawley say China deserves more attention militarily. And indeed those concerns do play into some anti-Ukraine opposition. But American conservatives can walk and chew gum at the same time. China’s rise does not make Russian imperialism disappear, and they find themselves perfectly willing to spend on the military in other circumstances. Most importantly, it doesn’t explain the anti-Zelensky rhetoric.
All that is explained, however, if one realizes that these conservatives see NATO expansion in Eastern Europe and the recent color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and other countries as a surreptitious expansion of the LGBT movement and progressive dogmas. George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, American money, the CIA, and paid actors supposedly pulled off these revolutions against Russia hegemony—or, rather, for American hegemony. The populace wanted what they had. They prefer traditional conservative rather than Western values, and Russian power alone can ensure their preservation. The Russian invasion wasn’t an imperialist adventure or a move to rebuild the old empire, or not just that anyway. It was Russia’s way of telling the West to back off and get out of their sphere of influence—militarily, yes, but also culturally.
Sometimes Meirsheimerian great power politics is invoked to give the Russian invasion a patina of rationality, almost a moral backing. But it should be added that the American anti-Ukraine conservative rarely thinks in these terms. He or she fears progressive power at home, sees the inroads Western progressives have made in non-Western countries, and fears the culture war game is nearing a conclusion.
They fear Ukraine may be part of that conclusion. The belief that the United States blew up the Nord Stream pipe line offers an example of what, if true, would be illegal military intervention in the region. More US imperialism, they think. (And they might be right about who did the deed.) And then there’s the wide-ranging, five-hour interview with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who seemed to claim that his attempt to broker a cease-fire was torpedoed by the United States. In that light, the West seems to want war with Russia—perhaps even regime change in Moscow—and to those already concerned about the creep of progressivism, that means knocking a traditionalist Christian power out of the game.
Now for the problems with this conservative thesis. Just how the US could have “blocked” cease-fire negotiations between two countries was never clear, and Bennett later walked back his claim, saying that the interview, which was done in Hebrew, was mistranslated at a critical point. Instead, the United States had little confidence in the outcome, less than Bennett himself, and Ukraine backed out of talks when war crimes were committed against civilians in Bucha.
But let’s say US hawks did somehow get Ukraine to continue the war, as improbable as that is. Bigger problems remain for the anti-Ukraine crowd. NATO, the EU, and American hegemony haven’t kept Poland and Hungary from electing far-right, Christian nationalist-like governments, and one can safely assume that number of people who support gay marriage and the trans movement in Ukraine is very small indeed. For all these conservatives know, Ukraine could become another Hungary. That’s more likely than them becoming a Western-style progressive society. The Euromaidan color revolutionaries weren’t worried that their trans kids would encounter an opposing viewpoint. They just wanted to speak their minds and have more say in how they’re governed. The thesis of progressive power-creep in Eastern Europe is fundamentally flawed because more or less all the evidence contradicts it.
But more important still are the basic facts about the invasion and what Putin himself said about it beforehand. Unprovoked, Russia invaded a sovereign country twice, first in 2014 and then last year. Putin made these decisions, not, to use his preferred term, “the Anglosaxons.” He invaded Ukraine both times because of Russia’s identity post-1991, not because he feared a NATO-invasion of Russia. The invasion, in other words, is about culture, not about preparing for an American attack.
One can see this in Putin’s own speech the day of the invasion. He spent a large portion of it ranting about the trans movement. What does that have to do with the invasion, you ask? Nothing in reality. But Putin knows very well what Western conservatives fear, and he knew even then that their support—or even confusion about the facts—is his best chance at fracturing the united front that keeps him from remaking the Russian empire and solidifying his legacy.