Why Does Ukraine Matter?
History hinges on such critical moments
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Thanks to a mixture of ordinary human stupidity and persistent Russian propaganda, hundreds of thousands of Europeans regularly turn out for street protests against Western support of Ukraine and in favor of “negotiated peace” which in reality means simply appeasing Putin today in order to permit Russian forces to regroup and rebuild for their next invasion. Meanwhile, in the USA, Republican politicians and the gullible saps who vote reliably vote for them at every opportunity are agitating for a cessation of aid to Ukraine, largely because the creature Trump hates the Zelensky administration for failing to fabricate evidence against Hunter Biden during the last US presidential election.
For a great many people, the war in Ukraine is at best vaguely understood and of far less interest than energy prices, sporting events, celebrity gossip, and the whatever happens to be on TikTok this morning. So it’s worth asking: why does Ukraine matter?
There’s no doubt that Ukraine as a nation, prior to Putin’s unprovoked multiple invasions, was as corrupt as Greece and Italy and even slightly more corrupt than the USA. Its politics were less dysfunctional than those of Greece, Italy, and the USA but were far from the Nordic ideal of truth-based transparency, being closer to the kinds of absurd toxic nonsense seen too frequently in the UK and France. And although Ukraine is as large as France, its economy is modest compared to the top ten OECD economies. Although Ukraine borders the European Union and would seem to be a valuable addition, Western European politicians have repeatedly prevaricated over the question of membership because unlike Greece and Italy and the Baltic nations, there’s little historical precedent for regarding Ukraine as part of Western Europe and because a great many European voters would be alarmed at the prospect of hard-working educated Ukrainians appearing in the job market.
In consequence, Ukraine for the last twenty years has occupied a kind of political no-man’s-land in which its people increasingly identify as European but the country remains locked out of most European institutions because flabby complancent self-centered Westerners want nothing more than to preserve their inalienable right to be like US citizens: slumped…
