Critics of U.S. support for Ukraine can be found on both the left and the right, but, despite their opposing perspectives, most of them agree on one thing: The war in Ukraine, in their view, has become a proxy war between Russia and America. In this symmetrical conflict, they hold, there is also a moral symmetry. Neither side is right, and, therefore, neither side is entitled to win. We should stop supplying Ukraine and arrange a peace that would preserve the status quo.
I believe this symmetrical view is mistaken — not only because it is Russia, not America, that has invaded Ukraine, but because the nature of American dominance is fundamentally different than Russia’s.
Critics on the left argue that America is an empire no less than Russia. In the 19th century, they remind us, U.S. territorial expansion nearly wiped out the Native Americans and took about half of Mexico’s territory. Americans engineered a coup to annex the Kingdom of Hawai’i and recolonized lands that we seized from Spain. Over the past century, we have engaged in subversion throughout Latin America and waged wars in the Middle East. America, these critics allege, is building a new kind of empire — not territorial, but military, economic, and cultural. This view is shared in many countries of the global South.
Critics on the right argue that the U.S. simply has no justification for extending its influence in Ukraine, a country that is lacking substantial mineral resources and holds no strategic value for us. To them, Russia is just another geopolitical player, whose control over its neighbor would be perfectly natural and, in any case, no worse than ours. The only threat we should worry about is China, and Russia could be a valuable ally in that confrontation. Moreover, conservatives admire Russia’s resistance to Western decadence and her purported championing of Christian values. Defenders of African as well as East European religious and cultural traditions share their opposition to Euro-American secularism. (READ MORE: Ignoring Russian History Is Costly)
Many on both left and right agree that we should not seek global hegemony but instead favor a multipolar world in which countries like Russia, India, and Brazil balance out our power. Yet they ignore an essential difference between the American “empire” and the Russian one that is rooted in their sharply opposed political traditions. One need not revert to the rhetoric of “evil empire” to demonstrate this. It is a matter of historical record.
To a significant degree, American colonization has been reformable, sometimes even reversible. There have been powerful movements to restore Native American cultural practices as well as land titles and mineral rights. Hispanic culture thrives in the West and Southwest, where bilingualism is common. The Hawaiian language and culture have made a comeback. The Philippines have been independent since World War II. After 1961, Cuba was left to pursue its communist course. Our efforts to thwart leftist influences in Central and South America by supporting right-wing dictatorships came under persistent domestic criticism, expressed by our free press and effected through the democratic process. Consequently, anti-U.S. governments periodically take power on that continent. We have reconsidered our military adventurism in the Middle East. For all its flaws, the American political system is self-correcting and constantly being reformed. That affects our “imperialist” foreign policies, too.
Modern Russia was born, like us, in the 18th century, but as an autocracy, not a democracy. It was an empire from the start, built upon Muscovite despotism. Every nation and ethnic group that was swallowed up by this empire lost its autonomy and, in some cases, its very identity. Reforms that might have led to national rebirths were followed by reaction. For Ukrainians, their institutions of self-government, their economy, their church, their language, their very sense of their own history were nearly eradicated. In the 20th century, Russia’s successor state, the USSR, starved several million Ukrainian farmers into submission. In the wake of World War II, it extended its control over half of Europe. (RELATED: The Horrors of the Holodomor Must Not Be Forgotten)
Having lost its empire in 1989–91, a revanchist Russia is now determined to regain control over all of Ukraine — and, most likely, Belarus, Moldova, and beyond. Much as in the USSR, there is simply no mechanism for domestic opposition to policies aimed at crushing peoples like the Chechens, or those Ukrainians now in Russian-occupied territories. There is, indeed, very little domestic opposition at all for centuries of autocracy have practically erased the very notion of dissent. There is, moreover, precious little remorse about Russia’s imperial past. On the contrary, today’s Russia sees the loss of empire after World War I, and after 1991, as catastrophes.
Opponents of U.S. aid to Ukraine may posit a theoretical symmetry between Russian and American involvement. But the reality is different. Quite apart from the fact that it is Russia, not America, that has invaded Ukraine, there is no equivalence between Russian and American influence. Americans seek to atone for the sins of empire; Russians celebrate them. Ukrainians know the difference.
