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Right-Wing and Left-Wing Wars
For the greater part of the twentieth century, being "anti-war" was strongly associated with the left, to the point where even identifying as "anti-war" was enough in the eyes of most people to brand you as a left winger. Though every war fought by the US since the foundation of the country has seen an anti-war movement spring up in opposition (of varying size and significance), the anti-Vietnam movement has a special place in American national memory, and opposition to Vietnam was massively left-coded. A few years earlier, Korea did not similarly divide the nation, seeing as it was a much quicker war and one waged in a much less turbulent time, but even so what opposition there was to intervention in Korea was decidedly left-wing. The initiation of the GWoT seemed to confirm this partisan divide, with those who opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq being, again, overwhelmingly left-liberal. I would venture to say nothing defined an early 2000s leftist so much as, and nothing was more non-negotiable for one's participation in the American left of that time, than opposition to Iraq.
Lately, with Ukraine, there is a change. Ukraine is of course not a 1:1 analogue to Vietnam or Iraq, not in the least because no actual US troops are engaged on the ground and don't look likely to be. But while the great majority of Americans are at least sympathetic to Ukraine and want them to win, the emerging trend is that gung-ho support of Ukraine and support for military aid to Ukraine are increasingly left-Democratic coded, and opposition to such aid is increasingly right-Republican coded. While actual pro-Russia sentiment is extremely fringe in the US, to the extent that it does exist it is mostly right-wing.
This baffles some who the 20th century conditioned into a belief that the left is always "anti-war" and the right is always "pro-war" but a broader look should disabuse one of the notion. In fact the pattern does not hold before the 50s.
Opposition to intervention in European affairs in the 1930s and then to entry into WWII was distinctly conservative. This was not entirely the case, and it's certainly not true that most (not even close) isolations were fascists or fascist-sympathizers, and there were also noteworthy left-wing isolationists like socialist Norman Thomas and progressive Robert La Follette. But for the most part, the people who opposed American participation in WWII were the same people who opposed Roosevelt and the New Deal at home. America Firsters were constantly guarding their right flank against accusations of Nazi sympathies (which were sometimes merited), just like anti-Vietnam activists had to constantly fend off accusations of communist sympathies (which were sometimes merited).
Going back into the 19th century, both the left and the right again have a record of "anti-war" and "pro-war" sentiment. The Mexican-American War was a very popular war in the more conservative southern and western regions of the US. States like Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas filled their volunteer quotas several times over. The war was much less popular in the north. In New England, at the time the most 'left-wing' (not that the phrase was used too much in the US at the time, but it's probably a fair descriptor--in New England abolitionism, Unitarianism, transcendentalism, etc. were more popular than anywhere else in the nation) region of the country, it was downright unpopular, and the whole region managed to raise only a single (understrength) regiment. Thoreau was famously arrested for refusing to pay his taxes in protest of the war. Northerners sometimes saw the war (not wholly inaccurate) as a slaveholder conspiracy to carve new slave states out of Mexican territory, and one New England senator (I can't remember which one) even declared in front of congress that he was rooting for the Mexicans.
A few years later, the Civil War broke out, which was essentially a war between the half of the country that had supported war in Mexico and the half that had opposed it. While there was not much of an anti-war movement in the south, at least until late in the war, there was a significant anti-war movement in the Union states. That was the 'copperheads' who favored a peace with the Confederacy. This movement was distinctly conservative in character, being strongly skeptical of abolitionism and the supposed racial integrationism of the Lincoln administration. New England of course was the region of the Union most enthusiastic in the prosecution of the war, with Maine out of all the loyal states contributing the highest proportion of its male population as soldiers for the federal army.
What are the common factors here? At first blush it may appear simple, that the left opposes war when the enemy is leftist (Red China, USSR, North Vietnam) and the right opposes war when the enemy is rightist (Confederacy, Axis powers, Russia). But Ba'athist Iraq and certainly the Taliban were not leftist powers, and yet the opposition to those interventions was primarily left-wing. Neither was the Mexico of 1846. Another potential explanation is that left-wingers oppose wars where the enemy is viewed as an underdog, which Iraq, Afghanistan, and Mexico certainly were. Technically the Confederacy, the Axis, and modern Russia were/are all also weaker than the US, but it's less obvious and they gave/give at least the illusion of being formidable foes. So I'm actually not sure what the common thread is, or even if there is one. Maybe I'm trying to flatten too much nuance over a 200 year period. Either way, I find the question interesting.
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I think what flipped the switch on Ukraine is that Trump made “getting us out of foreign wars” a campaign accomplishment. He bragged about getting us out of Afghanistan, bragged about not starting wars etc. and Trump saying something tends to trigger something in the liberal world that makes opposing what Trump and conservatives do a major part of the branding. Had the polarity been reversed, I suspect that we’d be hearing a lot more of the anti-war stuff from the left, much like the similar first gulf war in the early 1990s.
On the face of it, I don’t see any strategic reason for NATO or the Allie’s to really invest in a free Ukraine. It’s nothing special. It’s basically Kansas or Nebraska in Eastern Europe mostly farming (Donbas has a lot of minerals and I think they have oil). To send several billion a month and all kinds of modern weapons (which are probably being reverse engineered in China after being captured in Ukraine) for Kansas of Eastern Europe isn’t a good decision in my opinion. Having a stable relationship with Russia (and prior to 2014 that’s what they had, it was colder than we wanted, but we got along well enough) is far more valuable than anything we could get from Ukraine. There’s just no way that realpolitik would lead anyone to the conclusion that being where we are now (propping up Ukraine even though the parts with the mineral wealth are under Russian control, countries beginning to dump the petrodollar and otherwise distance themselves from the Atlanticist alliance, and losing Nordstream), and probably too drained to protect Taiwan (which makes most f the world’s microchips) I don’t think it wise at all.
It wasn't actually stable. The interventionist wing of us foreign policy has wanted to oust Putin and take control of Russian & Ukrainian resources for a long time.
There were articles written in 2008 warning about how US foreign policy was going to lead to a Ukrainian civil war that would be followed by a Russian invasion. They State Department didn't stop, they pushed forward.
The 2022 Russian invasion was expected. What wasn't expected was the failure of the sanctions. They expected to crush the Russian economy and insight a revolt to oust Putin. It didn't work and now they're winging it.
So the state department is wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time, nor will it be the last.
I have a hard time buying that our Atlanticist side of things is getting anything of value out of this war. The only thing we can really do at this point is act tough and hope the Ukrainians can hold out long enough to make the Russians stop where they are. I don’t see (at least without NATO boots on the ground) Ukraine actually retaking either Donbas or Crimea. So the best case is a stalemate that requires us to spend vast amounts of our own treasure to maintain. And again, this is a fight for basically a rural farming country with a good sized corruption problem. They’re in it now because they can’t afford to lose face and show the world how weak we actually are. But at the same time, we cannot infinitely send billions a month in aid. It just doesn’t work because eventually we run out of money (or print ourselves into hyperinflation) and public patience probably isn’t going to last that long (I think we can probably only keep going for another year or two).
Worse, doing so now reduces those capabilities to use them later. Ukraine isn’t a prize on the global stage. Taiwan is. But after billions in aid to Ukraine, and our depleted weapons stocks and a public not interested in yet another military adventure to a place they don’t care about, they aren’t going to be able to do the same thing again. Which means that China gets a very valuable piece of industrial infrastructure, the entire computer chip industry, and all of the leverage that comes with it. We’re basically, without thinking it through deciding to fight tooth and nail for Nebraska and ceding New York. Any sober analysis would consider that colossally stupid.
Depleted weapons stocks go both ways. China has reduced capacity to invade Taiwan because they won't be able to count on Russian military aid. The same goes for China's other allies (North Korea, Iran) because their stockpiles are also being tapped by the Russian war effort.
I find this "give up Ukraine to secure Taiwan" sentiment unconvincing. Had the West floundered on Ukraine, China would likely have launched their invasion of Taiwan months ago.
I don't even get the "depleted weapons stocks" thing, really. The memes about the Military-Industrial Complex have me under the impression that they won't stay depleted for long. If firearms history is any suggestion (WRT when a big army has to shuffle off and surplus old shit), the MIC is about to have one hell of a good problem to have on their hands.
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