History has a way of making uncertain events seem to have been inevitable. The Union won the Civil War, but what if the Confederacy had gotten European support, which almost materialized? The Watergate scandal upended our politics, but what if the burglars at the Democratic headquarters hadn’t been busted? What if World War II hadn’t turned into an Allied victory?
We’re thinking those thoughts now because we are one year into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and there’s still no clear path to the end of this war, and no sign that anybody is going to yield. Russia is clearly targeting civilians and committing what Vice President Harris has called out as crimes against humanity. Where will we be a year from now, or two? What will be the history of this time?
The last big war in Europe lasted for six years. It killed perhaps 80 million people, including combatants, civilians and those lost to famine and disease. Americans sacrificed comfort, food, fuel and financial prosperity. Some 400,000 of our countrymen died in combat.
In such a broad conflict today, lethal and impersonal weapons that are now deployed would surely yield an even higher death toll. The impact on our society would be even greater. What would six years of war starting in Ukraine look like? Are we strong enough to bear that?
Unlike the beginning of World War II, America is not weak today in the sense of military preparedness and industrial production. Now, though, we’re limited by something harder to solve: namely, the fundamental question of who we are and what we want. That uncertainty calls into question our ability to stand up to authoritarianism, both here and abroad, and to defend the principles that have guided the nation and motivated our foreign policy for the last two and a half centuries.
But of course we’re uncertain, and it’s unsurprising that we’re divided. We’re a nation whose diverse religious heritage and rhetorical identity speaks of peace, and whose political landscape encourages diversity of opinion. But there are questions today of whether we can find a national consensus on anything — and perhaps even whether we are still governable by our historic democratic process.
Many of us who remember Vietnam are deeply troubled by all of this. We never thought we would face the sort of choice that the so-called Greatest Generation did: whether to fight for the fundamental human right to self-government or surrender to totalitarianism in the interest of avoiding human brutality. Which is the more moral alternative?
Even now, a year after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, we’re not sure about our answer. We were pretty much all in for Ukraine a year ago – but now, the emerging stance of the far-right claque that has taken over the Republican Party seems to be that it’s time for America to drop its defense of Ukraine.
Yet if America is to stand united for anything, shouldn’t it be for freedom? We can’t just quit when our patience wears thin.
Of course, we are an impatient people – look at all the fast food joints, and consider the limits of our attention span, and how we react when a light turns green. We get impatient with what was a hot political topic a month or a year ago – police reform, say, or gun control – and so we want to move on. Ukraine was so 2022. Now? Well, now, impatience could sound the death knell for America’s defense of Europe.
Patience was the topic of research a few years back at Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers used magnetic imaging to look at the brains of people who were waiting for a reward. They found that in people who were more patient, there was more activity in the part of the brain that helps you think about the future. It’s called the anterior prefrontal cortex. That is, patient people have more imagination, and practicing patience enables the imagination to flourish. An impatient person can’t even envision the possibilities that come to the mind of somebody more practiced in patience.
And what does that have to do with the war in Europe? I’d say it’s this: Aiding the brave Ukrainian people was our first response to the invasion – and it was the right thing to do then; now our task must be to stay the course, and resist the voices we’re hearing – especially on the far right – saying that this isn’t our fight, and that we’ve spent too much on Ukraine already. No, we can’t grow weary of this fight. We need patience.
Patience with such realities as higher prices due to the war’s impact on trade. Patience with the political difficulty of convincing voters that we need to send even more billions of dollars to Ukraine. Patience as we work to hold the national consensus, and the international force, to save Ukraine.
One year into this conflict, it’s important for us to accept that the battle for Ukraine’s freedom isn’t the Ukrainians’ alone. As we were reminded by Martin Luther King Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
That is the reality of this time, just as it was decades ago, during another European war – one that, like today’s, couldn’t be Europe’s alone, nor yield to our impatience.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.