From Elon Musk to Republican politicians and pundits, many have warned that too much support in Ukraine will unnecessarily escalate the conflict.  In addition to those Putin pandering groups, I would include certain liberal isolationists.  You know the types.  They criticize their fellow liberals, accusing them of wanting war with Russia.  They hate NATO and blame that defense alliance for provoking the Russian bear.

This leads to my question: are liberals now pro-war? 

It’s an odd question for me.  Allow me to contextualize.  

I had just started high school when the United States invaded Iraq.  I remember being very in favor of the war at the time.  Many Americans were.  Those weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) threatened us all, right?  In the wake of 9/11, it seemed reasonable to think that a “threat” anywhere was a threat to freedom everywhere.

Boy were we wrong.  I don’t know if it was Colin Powell’s charts showing Congress precisely where they thought the WMDs were located, or George Bush confusing Saudia Arabia (where most of the 9/11 hijackers came from) for Iraq, but America never should have started that war.

Notice I said started.  Yes, America invaded a country based on “evidence” that its dictator was harboring WMDs.  You be the judge whether this was simply a pretext.  My money is on Dick Cheney’s incentive to enrich Halliburton and therefore himself.

Do you know who I just named?  Three Republicans.  Four if you include my high school brain at the time. 

Sure, there were many Democrats who voted in favor of the war in Iraq.  But there were many who voted against it too.  And there was a future president who hadn’t entered federal office yet but was an Illinois state senator and vocal opponent of the Iraq war.  Obama’s anti-war position helped him win the Democratic ticket in 2008.    

So if any party has a recent history of warmongering, it’s certainly not Democrats relative to Republicans.  At least before 2016 when Trump took a party of hawks and mavericks like John McCain and injected them with “America First” nationalism.  The party that had started the War on Terror was now more concerned with culture wars and high school reading lists.

What would Ronald Reagan think?  The man who demanded that Gorbachev tear down his wall has been replaced by advocates for appeasing Russian aggression.  This new breed of Republicans has been joined by liberals who want peace at all costs.  It has created an unusual blend of American nationalism and extreme pacifism.   

Both groups blame NATO.  Both groups hate how much the United States is spending on Ukraine.  Both groups want America to focus more on domestic challenges.  Both groups think that hawkish liberals are escalating the conflict by providing too much additional support to Ukraine.

I’ve heard multiple liberals of the extreme pacifist variety claim that Biden is inching us closer to World War III and nuclear annihilation.  I’ve heard shock and dismay that liberals want war with Russia.  

I completely disagree with that premise.

Liberals want peace.  Just not on Putin’s extremist terms.   

In the weeks leading up to the invasion when Putin was making demands about NATO and the like, U.S. intelligence was declassified suggesting that Putin was going to make a move on Ukraine regardless of concessions by the West.  The world witnessed this when Putin didn’t direct all of his forces on regions like the Donbas.  He tried to take Kyiv.  He wanted to topple the Zelensky government.  He wanted regime change.

So much of Putin’s behavior (unfortunately) reminds me of Hitler in the years leading up to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939.  How Hitler was furious that Neville Chamberlain actually made a deal to cede the Sudetenland to him in 1938, temporarily preventing Hitler from gloriously marching through the streets of Prague.

What did Hitler do?  He broke the Munich Agreement that was supposed to limit him to the Sudetenland and marched on Prague anyways. 

Putin is from the same fascist breed.  Anyone who has read his thoughts on the shared identity that Ukrainians have with Russians would know that he has no respect for Ukraine’s unique cultural, ethnic, and historical identity. 

Hitler made numerous grievances for years about the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, just as Putin has done about Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, and NATO.  When in fact, NATO’s recent expansion did not provoke an immediate response from Putin.  But Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution where it tried to realize its own right to self-government certainly did.   

When it became clear to Putin that Zelensky’s government would not bend the knee like Belarus’s Lukashenko and many others, he knew he had a problem.  As a 21st-century autocrat, the problem for Putin is not NATO.  It’s an aspiring democracy on Russia’s border.

Fighting for a democratic world order

This brings me back to what liberals want.  They want America to champion a liberal world order that promotes the rule of law and respects civil liberties.  While America itself is certainly not perfect in either department, Russia doesn’t even try.  If Donald Trump had actually locked up Hillary Clinton like he chanted many times, then we might have more of a comparison.  

Ideally, America is able to champion the liberal world order through diplomacy.  But often, as we have seen throughout history, diplomacy doesn’t always work.  When a strongman is determined to take what he deems as belonging to him, no reasonable negotiation stands a chance of succeeding.

The only language autocrats like Putin and Hitler understand is brute force.  Power politics.  Only when placed in a weakened position are they able to negotiate reasonably.  Do you think Hitler was ready to be reasonable when he had Britain and France on their heels?  Roll the tape to 1940 if you need a reminder.  

The liberal world order is in an unfortunate situation.  There is a strongman who once again is trying to attack it.  Someone who wants to revisit the battles that many died fighting some 80 years ago.

Liberals do not want to escalate the war in Ukraine, despite what America First Republicans and extreme pacifists might say.  They want Putin to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and right to self-government.  The focus here is on democracy; a system of government that has prevailed over all others to date in terms of elevating more people out of the shackles of oppressive regimes.

When someone who has a dark history of disrespecting democratic principles responds with violence to perceived grievances, far more is on the line than simply the country that madman has invaded.  You see, Putin thought this would be a repeat of Georgia in 2008.  Or Crimea in 2014.  Where the international community basically slapped him on the wrist and let him go about his business.

Putin was wrong.  Liberals and protectors of democracy globally understand that democracy and the right to self-government are worth fighting for.  While all efforts should be made not to escalate any conflict, no strongman like Putin or Hitler should be trusted in any form of peace treaty or agreement.  History is littered with dark truths about those forms of “peace”: the strongman inevitably breaks them.

Liberals are not suddenly a political movement of hawkish warmongers.  Any other liberal who says as much should question the America First Republican company they keep.  Do you in good conscience want to associate yourself with those who have chosen to martyr the Ashli Babbitts of the world? 

Regardless, you can trace a consistent arc from Obama in 2002 to Biden in 2023.  It’s an arc that stands for democratic principles above all else.  It’s one that distrusts autocrats and authoritarians.  It’s one that has hope that giving everyone the freedom to exercise their right to self-government will make this world a better and more peaceful place.

The ugly truth is that at times you have to fight for it.