Putinite Republicans are disgracing America
Dan Hannan
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Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was a victim of Russian propaganda. Not directly, of course. The Kremlin has more immediate things to worry about than who is the speaker of the House of Representatives. But the vote to oust him was the culmination of years of dezinformatsiya aimed at discrediting news sources, unsettling political structures, and disorienting voters.
It is important to understand how hybrid warfare works. When Russian propagandists make obviously ludicrous claims — that Ukraine’s Jewish president is a Nazi, for example, or that Ukrainians are harvesting children’s organs — their purpose is not to convince but to sow doubt. You are not supposed to come away thinking, “Wow, those Ukrainians are fascists.” You are supposed to come away thinking, “It’s all nonsense: CNN, RT, Fox, Jazeera, they’re all as bad as each other.”
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Former President Donald Trump is not a Russian agent, and the MAGA cheerleaders are not Kremlin dupes. But they are products of an atmosphere in which truth is unmoored, facts are foggy, and different media dispute basic data.
The profusion of news sources and the explosion of social media was a gift to foreign propagandists, and as the Senate Intelligence Committee laid out in detail, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s agents seized it. Conservatives who criticized Trump were piranha-shoaled. In 2016, the piranhas were anonymous accounts with bad English. By 2020, thanks largely to artificial intelligence, they had become plausible, and politicians quailed before them.
Why were the Russians so keen on promoting Trump? Did they have kompromat on him? Some commentators believe this would explain his warm words about Putin, but it seems likelier that the Russians saw him as a means to disrupt and delegitimize the U.S. political system.
If so, they succeeded spectacularly. Not only have they helped foster a paranoid and febrile mood, but that mood has pushed a chunk of the Right into their corner. I don’t want to overstate things. Most GOP politicians, and most conservative commentators, remain Reaganite in foreign policy, understanding that when Ukraine handed over its nuclear weapons, it did so in exchange for a promise that its independence would be respected within its boundaries — a promise guaranteed by the United States, Britain, and (never forget) Russia.
But part of the MAGA fringe sees things differently. “Every member of Conservative Inc. that backs this Ukraine war is a simp,” Steve Bannon opines. “I think we should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine,” Tucker Carlson declares. “Putin — unlike someone else we know — LOVES his country & FIGHTS for its interests,” Dinesh D’Souza tweets.
True, these are outliers, but a much wider group opposes giving any aid to Ukraine, the matter that brought McCarthy down. Some claim it is all about the money, pointing to the supposed $40 billion of military aid given to Ukraine. That figure is a ludicrous overstatement, reached by costing each donated 1960s armored vehicle at the price of the modern Bradley that would have replaced it anyway. But even if we take it at face value, it is surely the cheapest victory the U.S. has ever won, wiping out the military capacity of a hostile power for peanuts and without risking one American life.
Others try to argue that Russia is a distraction from China. Vivek Ramaswamy, whom I otherwise admire, ties himself in knots trying to appease the anti-Ukraine base on this topic. In fact, the best way to contain China is to degrade its chief ally, freeing up capacity in the event of any Pacific conflict. Just as the Korean War was partly fought to defend Berlin, so the Ukrainian war is helping defend Taiwan.
Now, as then, some Republicans reflexively oppose a Democratic president. The difference is that this time, they tie it directly into domestic policy.
“Sorry, this needs to be said,” says Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), not sounding sorry. “A lot of the anti-Russia obsession on the Left has nothing to do with Ukraine. It’s a revenge fantasy over 2016. They blame Russia for Donald Trump’s election and they’ll bleed Ukraine dry for payback.”
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In fact, the opposite is true. Most Republicans, like most Democrats, recognize an obligation to defend an ally. But some MAGA obsessives can’t forgive Ukraine for its cameo role in Trump’s impeachment. And some of their supporters, while congratulating themselves on being more skeptical than the gullible sheeple, guzzle Kremlin propaganda undiluted.
If you had told me 10 years ago that a Russian tyrant would be basing his hope for victory in an aggressive war on the election of a Republican administration, I’d have laughed. How far my favorite party has fallen.