On Jeane Kirkpatrick, today’s Russia debate, Edward Snowden, Ukraine’s right to exist, and more
Before there was “America First,” there was “blame America first.” Well, true, “America First” came first. I’d better explain.
The America First movement developed at the beginning of World War II. It was basically isolationist, though the movement contained many fascist sympathizers, too. Some America Firsters wanted the U.S. to stay out of the war, plain and simple. Others wanted the same — but they also wanted the Axis to win. They admired these countries. They also thought them the wave of the future.
Obviously, the concept of “America First” was in bad odor for many years. But Pat Buchanan revived it in the 1990s, and of course Donald Trump went to town with it 20 years later. (As Buchanan said, “The ideas made it, but I didn’t.”) Now “America First” is a bedrock Republican concept.
Last year, a bunch of prominent Trump people started the America First Policy Institute. Republican politicians — and Republicans in the media — speak regularly of an “America First agenda.” You will recall what Senator Lindsey Graham told Sean Hannity on Fox News last month: “I am not going to vote for anybody for leader of the Senate, as a Republican, unless they can prove to me that they can advocate an America First agenda and have a working relationship with Donald Trump.”
So, that’s “America First.” But what about “blame America first”? It’s a phrase that we Reaganites used in the 1980s, and a bit after. It was introduced by Jeane Kirkpatrick, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in her speech to the 1984 Republican convention. She was still a Democrat at the time. (She would not switch her party affiliation until she left the Reagan administration.) And she began,
Thank you for inviting me. This is the first Republican convention I have ever attended. I am grateful that you should invite me, a lifelong Democrat. On the other hand, I realize that you are inviting many lifelong Democrats to join this common cause.
She said that some of her fellow Democrats — not of the Truman school that she represented — had a tendency to “blame America first.” I’ll give you a sampling:
They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do. They didn’t blame Cuba or the Communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians. They blamed the United States instead.
But then, somehow, they always blame America first.
When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the blame-America-first crowd didn’t blame the terrorists who had murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first.
Some of us thought of this speech during the Trump years — particularly where U.S.–Russia relations were concerned. On the day of his June 2018 summit with Vladimir Putin, President Trump wrote, “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!” The Russian foreign ministry answered, “We agree.”
In the old days, Republicans would have exploded in rage. But these were the new days.
According to some of us, the U.S.–Russia relationship was bad because of the Kremlin’s behavior: violating borders, murdering critics, interfering in foreign elections, and so on.
At Trump and Putin’s joint press conference, Jeff Mason of Reuters asked President Trump about his statement earlier in the day: that “many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity” and so on were responsible for bad relations between the United States and Russia. “Do you hold Russia at all accountable, for anything in particular?” Mason asked.
Trump answered, “Yes, I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think the United States has been foolish. I think we have all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago, a long time, frankly, before I got to office. I think we’re all to blame.”
That was better than placing the entire onus on the United States. But it was, as we said in the old days, “moral equivalence” — an assertion of moral equivalence between Putin’s dictatorship and our liberal democracy. Coming from an American president, standing alongside the Russian dictator, it was . . . something.
I have thought about all this in recent days because of what I read about Russia and Ukraine. I hear Americans say, “It’s America’s fault, you know. It’s NATO’s fault. We’ve encircled them. We’ve provoked Putin. We’ve poked the bear. We engineered a coup in Ukraine, forcing Putin to annex Crimea and launch a war. We interfered in Ukraine, so who are we to say that Russia shouldn’t interfere? Isn’t Ukraine basically a western province of Russia anyway? Also, we let these itty-bitty semi-Russian countries into NATO. That made Putin mad. We have thrown our weight around, and now he is retaliating.”
And so on and so forth.
I hope Americans will not allow themselves to be gaslit. The crisis in and around Ukraine is entirely of Putin’s making. He is a dictator who is hungry for other people’s land. He has dreams of reconstituting the USSR or the Russian Empire. He is scared to death of neighboring democracies, for the example they set. Russian people might get ideas. They might get uppity, like the Ukrainians.
Ukrainians, Balts, and others want to live unmolested. They want to get on with their life in their own countries within their own borders. Putin threatens them and the peace of Europe. He is a belligerent, expansionist, lawless dictator, determined to stay in power for as long as he can and wreak as much havoc as possible on the democratic world, which he hates.
Do not be gaslit. Do not fall for either “moral equivalence” or “blame America first.”
• Toomas Hendrik Ilves was the president of Estonia from 2006 until 2016. The year after he left office, I podcasted with him, here. Highly interesting fellow.
Yesterday, he tweeted,
For some thirty years I have been waiting for this piece. @Anneapplebaum finally wrote it.
East Europeans have been saying this for thirty years. Just that Western Europeans, chastening us, “knew better”.
So, here we are.
And yes, read this. Now.
The Applebaum piece in question is here: “Why the West’s Diplomacy With Russia Keeps Failing.” The subheading of that piece is, “American and European leaders’ profound lack of imagination has brought the world to the brink of war.”
I would recommend this Applebaum piece too: “The Reason Putin Would Risk War.” Anne Applebaum has been studying Russia and Ukraine virtually her entire life, and it shows. This piece is superbly explanatory.
• Edward Snowden, from Russia, tweeted, “There is nothing more grotesque than a media pushing for war.” Actually, it is his government — the Putin dictatorship — that is threatening war. Others of us would like to see it deterred.
• During World War II, Paris and London hosted many governments-in-exile. When Paris fell, London hosted yet more. If the hour comes, who will host a Ukrainian government-in-exile? Also, what countries, and what people, will support Free Ukraine, as others bend the knee, as they inevitably will, to the subjugators of Ukraine?
• Last week, I podcasted with Kateryna Yushchenko, here. She is a former First Lady of Ukraine. Her husband is Viktor Yushchenko, who in 2004 was nearly murdered in a poison attack — the kind for which Putin’s agents have become infamous. Kateryna Yushchenko was born in Chicago, to émigré parents. Her parents had been through one horror after another (and so had her grandparents). Kateryna worked in the U.S. State Department, in the Reagan years. She worked on issues of human rights. Then she worked in the White House itself. She moved to Ukraine in June 1991, two months before the country became independent. She spent half her life in the United States, as a Ukrainian American; she has spent the other half in Ukraine, as a Ukrainian.
She has many interesting things to say: about her life, her family, Ukraine, and so on.
• Well, I have a thousand more items for you. But I’ve gone on long enough. I will do a more “normal” Impromptus — with a greater variety of items — soon. Perhaps tomorrow. Maybe I could say one or two more things, before I go.
I think that, when people take a stand on Ukraine and Russia, they really tell you who they are. They reveal themselves. I’m not talking about the question of U.S. involvement — what the United States, or the West, should do, or not do, to deter aggression from Putin. I’m talking about the basic right and wrong of the situation.
Does Ukraine have a right to exist? To exist as a free, independent, and sovereign nation? Putin and the Kremlin say no. (Putin goes as far as to say, “There is no Ukraine.”) Shockingly, so do their apologists in America and elsewhere. But this should not be so shocking — because we saw the same thing in Soviet days. Apologists, mouthpieces, fellow travelers.
There’s an old phrase! “Fellow traveler.” But these old phrases are new again, somehow.
Thanks for joining me.
If you would like to receive Impromptus by e-mail — links to new columns — write to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com.