Standing Our Ground

I want to say something about Ukraine, but to get there I have to talk about this amazing apartment I had years back on 13th and U Street in Washington. Eighth floor, with a wraparound terrace that was almost as big as the apartment itself. Excellent for parties. It wasn’t technically a penthouse because the brilliant capitalist architect had put another floor on top of mine, but with Romeo-and-Juliet windows instead of the big terrace.

A very bro-y young Senate staffer lived up there who worked for a lady Democrat from the Upper Midwest. I’m not being cagey, I just forget which lady Democrat. Anyway, you could tell he was bro-y because he referred to me exclusively as “bro” during our chats as I watered my tomatoes and he stood twelve feet above me smoking American Spirits.

I got a big discount on the rent, as they were in the middle of building an even bigger apartment building across the street that would close off the view clear to the Washington Monument and in the interim be very noisy. I had it in my head that I would keep the apartment to impress dates until I met my future wife. And reader, it worked!

But before I gave up the pad for a gradual southerly and westward movement into middle age and suburbia, there was an incident at the local liquor store. Part of the price of the apartment, literally and figuratively, was that it was on a very lively block. The liquor store was especially sketchy — across the street from a social-services building, with all the itinerancy that that entails — and the cashier sat in the kind of plexiglass pillbox that wasn’t built to keep out the coronavirus.

One night I was there buying cigarettes back when I still smoked or bourbon back when I still drank. And as I waited in line an altercation broke out between a man and a woman who seemed to know each other. She was shouting at him in Spanish, though I could make out only every fifth word, and he was threatening her very vividly in English. Specifically, he threatened to knock her out where she stood, and to kill her.

By instinct, I stepped between the two of them, facing the gentleman. I told him I thought it would be better if he left.

Before you call me a hero, note that my arms and legs froze in paralysis when he very calmly stepped to within six inches of my nose, looked me in the eyes, and said (to paraphrase): “Motherlover, I’ll kill you first and then I’ll kill her.”

For what felt like ten minutes I considered my next move. I should have done the considering before I acted, of course. He was wearing a big winter coat and his hands went suspiciously into his pockets before he stepped toward me. I kind of wanted to run, or to tell him to enjoy the rest of his day. But I was able to slowly gather myself and speak in a mostly flat and even tone without breaking eye contact. I told him that I didn’t want to see anybody get hurt, and that we should all just calm down.

To my absolute shock and astounding good luck, he broke first, half turning and getting back in his place in line as I shooed the woman toward the door. He kept muttering threats to me, but only out of the side of his eyes, as he paid for his cold beverage and I paid for mine.

So, Ukraine. I’m a hawk on it, and anyone who follows me on Twitter knows I’ve been shouting into that void that NATO and the U.S. should be doing more to ensure Putin’s defeat there. Arms, intelligence, special operatives and “volunteers,” sabotage and intrigue, harassing Russian interests near to and far from the theater. I’m not much more than a layman, my highest qualification in national security being that I once dropped out of a graduate program in it a month before it started. So, obviously, take what I say with a grain of salt.

But I came here to write that being hawkish, recommending a more aggressive posture on Russia and Ukraine, doesn’t mean you want all-out war, much less the thermonuclear kind. In my case at least, it’s quite the opposite. I like the Western post-war order, its relative calm and its unprecedented prosperity, as much as I liked my sweet, sweet pad. I view Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the way I did that gentleman with his hands in his pockets, as a critical threat to my way of life. And maybe both NATO and I should have minded our business, not gotten involved, and allowed our bloody-minded adversaries their “sphere of influence.” They were probably all talk anyway, right? Probably wouldn’t have done anything if I’d never stepped in. Cooler heads would have prevailed and all that.

I don’t think that’s right in either case, but even supposing it is: We’re here now, nose to nose with the lady-killer in the winter coat.

Standing our ground carries its own risks. But it’s not so risky, I wager(ed), as slinking away.