Two Conversations, Two Narratives About Ukraine

It's Much Worse Than Just Talking Past Each Other

Recently I realized something that in retrospect is obvious and that I wish I’d been able to articulate sooner. But as Orwell pointed out, sometimes “to see what’s in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Regarding the war in Ukraine, there are two conversations in play: one focusing on what should be; the other focusing on what is. The first is about fairness, principles, and aspirations; the second is about the actual costs and risks of this war.

Without consciously intending to, I’ve been focusing mostly on the latter. Yes, it would be nice if all nations could exercise full autonomy to do whatever they want to do and join whatever military alliances they want to join (a matter of should). But as my The System character Montie Cranston has observed, “the humans are mostly just monkeys who’ve learned how to talk.” Meaning among other things that nations, like people, have to be mindful of how other powerful actors might react to their behavior, reasonable or unreasonable, fair or unfair. We all engage in such implicit, unconscious calculations every day, and nonetheless manage to live full lives. As a friend of mine likes to point out, you may have the legal right to cross the street at a crosswalk. But when a truck is barreling down, you wait and let it pass. The exercise of your right would be too costly.

Recognizing that there are trucks out there, I tend to focus more on what will happen, less on what should be.

But that’s just me, and many people approach Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as something that should not be happening and should not be allowed. And when I make a point about what is happening—“Ukraine is losing and it’s going to get even worse”—many people respond with arguments about what should be happening—“We cannot reward land-grab aggression,” “Rules-Based International Order (RuBIO),” etc.

And so we wind up talking past each other.

I’m going to try to keep this dichotomy in mind I as engage on this topic, and hope my awareness will improve the conversational heat-to-light ratio. But the truth is, the conversational dichotomy isn’t terribly important, because one way or another reality will eventually assert itself, albeit at additional horrific cost and waste. If it were otherwise, there’d be no need for an expression like Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

No, what’s more important than the two competing conversations is the existence of two competing narratives.

The first narrative attributes Russia’s 2022 invasion to Putin’s Hitlerian lebensraum lust, hatred and fear of democracy, delusions of being the reincarnation of Peter the Great, dream of reconstituting the Soviet Union, etc. The second narrative attributes the invasion to 30 years of NATO metastasis, culminating in an ever-increasing de facto (and promised de jure) NATO incorporation of Ukraine—the “brightest of all red lines” not just to Putin but to the entire Russian establishment, as warned by Bill Burns, then America’s ambassador to Russia and later director of the CIA.

People who adhere to the first narrative believe Russia can be defeated. People who adhere to the second believe that if Russia ever begins to lose, the Russian government will escalate, up to and including resort to nuclear weapons.

To put it another way: adherents to the first narrative believe the Russian government looks at this war as a nice-to-have—a simple cost/benefit equation Russia will abandon if NATO sufficiently increases the pain. A similar dynamic to America in Vietnam or Russia in Afghanistan.

Adherents to the second narrative recognize that from the standpoint of the Russian government, this is an existential war forced on Russia by a west determined to destroy Russia. It doesn’t matter if that belief on the part of the Russian government is wrong, paranoid, insane, delusional, or whatever. What matters is whether it is genuinely held. If it is, and Russia ever starts to lose, far more than just Ukraine will be destroyed. Because as Obama noted in 2016, “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.”

Obviously I believe the second narrative is correct, and that adherents to the first one are therefore pushing the world to the edge of the abyss. Which is why I spend a fair amount of time on this topic.

I would urge adherents to the first narrative to examine it with exceptional care. Are you sure Putin is the New New Hitler? Are you sure the war was unprovoked? Are you sure the only way, or even the best way forward is continued western escalation? How do you know these things, what history are you drawing on (please try to make it more than just Chamberlain Hitler Munich Appeasement, CHiMA, as other things have happened in history besides WW2), what patterns, what observations about human nature are your conclusions based on?

Because if you’re wrong, whatever principles you might be defending might be like the principle of entering the crosswalk with the truck—but unimaginably worse.