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Not sure if this belongs here or in SQS, but it could either be a small question I don't understand or a discussion depending on whether or not people disagree about the answer.
Why did support for Ukraine split along the left/right the way it did (at least in the U.S.), when typically one would expect it to go the other way. That is, the right is usually more pro-military, pro-military intervention, and patriotic defending of one's homeland. Even though the right tends to be more focused on domestic issues and oppose foreign aid, military support tends to be the exeption. Although there was bipartisan support of the Iraq war (at least in the aftermath of 9/11) the Republicans were more strongly in favor of it and stayed in favor of it for longer. If Russia had threatened to invade the U.S. the Republicans would have been not only gung-ho about repelling them but also about retaliating and obliterating them in revenge so that none would dare try ever again. So you would think they would sympathize with Ukrainians as similarly patriotic defenders of their home turf, while the left would be all peace and let's try to get along and diplomatically convince the invaders to stop without violence, or something like that.
But that's not what happened. Why?
Is it just because the left has been harping on about Putin for years so hopped on the anti-Russia train too quickly and the right felt compelled to instinctively oppose them? If China had invaded Ukraine (for some mysterious reason) would the right be pro-Ukraine and the left opposing intervention because they don't want to piss off China (and accusing Ukraine of being nazis as an excuse)? That is, is there something specific to Ukraine/Russia that caused this divide here specifically, or am I misunderstanding the position of each side regarding military intervention in general (or has it changed in the past few decades and my beliefs used to be accurate but no longer are)?
Some of the people replying here seem completely out of touch with the right wing. I have no idea where they are getting some of these ideas.
The right doesn't like the war in Ukraine because they don't feel like it serves the vital national security interests of The United States. They suspect that it is a handout to the defense industry. As far as why they don't support this when they did support the war in Iraq/etc.: they talk pretty extensively about how the Cheneys lied us into this war, and how Ruper Murdoch (and fox news) helped. They feel betrayed by this.
They talk about it all the time.
Tucker Carlson, who was previously one of the (if not the) most popular host on cable news talked about this extensively.
I don't think it's complicated.
I am not on the left, so can't comment on why they seem to support it so strongly. My suspicion is that 4 years martingaling[1] the claims about Russian interference in our elections have built Russia and Putin into something resembling a Marvel comic villain and/or the nazis.
[1]Martingale betting strategy is just that every time you lose, you double down. Eventually you win and you win big. This applies to compulsive lying in: every time you get caught in a lie, you just double down and make the claims even more fantastic. Conspiracy theorists do this. It's basically how you get qanon.
Most charitable themotte.org explanation ever! It can't be that people on the left genuinely don't agree with the idea of a war to annex territory or conquer another sovereign nation, it must be that they have a childish and wrong view of Russia.
Only wars to impose a way of life/ideology? It's incredibly arbitrary. If Russia said 'oh no we're not conquering anything we're just conducting a regime-change operation to get rid of the Zelensky govt and install a puppet state' or would that be OK with the left? Obviously not. If you wage war to overthrow a govt and then integrate the new occupation govt into your economic/political institutions, exercising informal veto power over their activities then it's not significantly different to annexing. The Soviet Union didn't annex Poland in 1945 but that didn't make too much difference in the real world. We all know who was in charge.
Anyway, we have an easy test for this theory. Is the US (leftists or otherwise) leaping out of the bushes to shower democratic Armenia in arms, so they can defend Nagorno-Karabakh against authoritarian Azerbaijan? War of conquest - check. Grand battle between democracy and authoritarianism - check. In reality they do nothing, since it is not in US interests. Azerbaijan has close connections to Israel and Turkey plus they are an enemy of Iran. Azerbaijan has oil/gas and Armenia does not. Most importantly, the upper echelons of the left are not angry with Azerbaijan, they do not mobilize the media against Azerbaijan, they're happy to work with Azerbaijan to achieve shared goals.
This case is far more complex. For start Nagorno-Karabakh is part of internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan, Armenia controlling it is result of war of conquest they won some time ago and entire region has multisided ethic-based wars and pogroms for quite long time.
And there are many additional complexities.
This is another abstraction that is again, pretty arbitrary. International recognized borders are basically what was reached by 1945, plus whatever random border adjustments Soviet leaders decided to make in SSRs, plus some odds and ends. What are the 'internationally recognized' borders of Israel? Who knows! Annexing land (the Golan Heights for example) is absolutely fine since it's beneficial to US interests. The US certainly isn't going to complain about it in a meaningful way, like withholding some of the billions in aid they send over annually.
If China says 'oh only six or seven countries recognize Taiwan as an independent country, that means it's not internationally recognized and we can invade this rebellious province' that's not going to work. 'Internationally recognized borders' is another fig leaf.
Yes, nevertheless quite useful.
For better or worse, it is useful demarcation for various things.
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Sure, there's some incoherence when one is reacting practically to the world instead of having a fleshed-out theory of war. But I suspect most people on the left would agree that a war is only acceptable if it met Just Case.
Are we talking about left-wingers in power or left-wingers in general? Go and talk to left-wingers and tell me how many even know that those two countries are fighting in the first place.
Surprisingly, people don't act on things until they are aware of them.
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Well, you said it yourself, Armenia is a close ally of Iran and Russia. They made their bed and are now upset that Russia inevitably screwed them over. Also, Nagorno-Karabakh wasn’t within Armenia’s recognized borders, it was an occupied territory.
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For what it's worth, in 2008 Russia also waged a war to annex territory and conquer another sovereign nation, and there (although reactions on both sides were muted compared to now) the Republicans played the hawks and the Democrats the doves. Of course, reactions can change, and the emotions on both sides then and now were entirely genuine. But something happened in the intervening decade, and it's worth trying to explain what happened and why it swapped the sides.
A Democrat being president probably also helped.
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Yeah man it was meant to be a teeny bit tongue in cheek since, like I said, I’m not a leftist.
Here’s my actual opinion: most people don’t have a coherent political philosophy, and their support or lack of support for Zelenskys war isn’t based on anything except the latest headline they read.
Why do they need it? A great deal of philosophy gets ground into what Scott Alexander called crystalized heuristics. So the philosophical debates over just war and what not don't need to occupy every person's mind, you just condense that down into "It's immoral to invade a sovereign nation unless they are committing crimes against humanity like genocide and whatnot".
The debate isn’t wether it was unethical for Russia to invade, it is wether or not the United States has to pay for the war.
Do we pay for the defense of every country who wants to prolong their territorial disputes?
Of course we don’t.
We don't pay for those who are invaded because the invader meets Just Cause, no. Russia doesn't meet that requirement and the US has a moral, ideological, and strategic interest in making the Bear bleed.
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Sure, but it's a nice bonus we're wearing down an enemy, it's helpful to our larger geopolitical goals, and it's by actual standards, pretty cheap since most of our "spending" is writing off 1980's and 1990's military equipment.
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It actually can't be, because they observably didn't give a shit about any of this during the Obama years! This was unironically one of the things that disillusioned me a lot about the left at the time. Where was this principled objection when Libya was destroyed? While you could claim that the Libyan intervention wasn't technically a war to conquer or annex the country, that still leaves the left in the unfortunate position of supporting the bombing of a nation until it regresses to the point of having open air slave markets.
If the Libyan intervention had worked, it would have involved providing air support to one side in a civil war, such that nobody would have needed to invade Libya. The desired end-state was rapid consolidation of control by a local anti-Gadaffi faction that appeared to be pro-American but was actually lousy with jihadis.
The lesson the American pro-establishment left learned from Afghanistan (which still looked like a partial success at the time) and Iraq (aready fairly obviously a disaster) was that America should rely on proxies to control territory rather than invading countries with US troops. Libya was the first big test of this idea. It failed the test.
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I didn't say the left were avid geopolitics followers. I just said they didn't agree that nations could invade others without damn good reason.
My understanding of the Libyan intervention was that Gaddafi was attacking civilians, which is very much Not Okay under the morality and rules of war that have developed for a century now. If you want to claim the left was duped, that's one thing, but I think they would 100% agree that you can invade a nation if it is doing something like that.
Then, of course, there is the question of putting US personnel on the ground to handle post-intervention Libya, something people would probably be wary of given how long the US had been in the Middle East by that point.
Except they greenlit the Saudi invasion of Yemen too. My point is that they don't actually give a shit about nations invading others and are motivated by more local concerns, because otherwise their actions don't make sense. They aren't insisting that we invade China over their actions in Xinjiang, they aren't even proposing military action against France due to their active maintenance of a colonial empire in Africa (this includes multiple military interventions!). One of the reasons I became disillusioned with the left was their sudden reversal on the forever wars and overseas adventurism once Obama took power.
And what does Libya look like now? I'm not going to say that Gaddafi was a saint, but I feel very confident in saying that he was better than the open air slave markets and violent unrest that is still plaguing the region. Military intervention in Libya was a terrible idea and made the world a worse place, and I steadfastly disagree that something being "not okay" is enough to justify an invasion, especially when we can see the ruinous outcomes that actually resulted in the real world.
???
What's the source on the broad left doing that?
Xianjing may be a just cause, but a just cause doesn't compel people to go to war. War with China would have severe second-order effects and US or US + Allies victory isn't guaranteed either. Also, what is this French empire you're talking about?
That's a separate criticism. Failure to consider "and then what?" isn't the same as having a Marvel-esque view of heroes and villains as the original comment implied.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-war-choice-supporting-saudi-led-air-war-yemen
I haven't seen the left disavowing Barack Obama, and I treat them like adults who are responsible for the choices they make. The left wanted Obama, Obama supported a ten-fold increase in the number of drone strikes and greenlit support for the war in Yemen. If Obama has been repudiated by the broader left since then, I'll retract my claim - but this seems like the sort of thing I would have noticed.
It is my contention that the exact same principles apply to Ukraine - it might suck for the Ukrainians, but that just cause doesn't compel people to go to war. Furthermore, this war is going to have severe second-order effects to boot, and it isn't like the US victory is guaranteed either. Hell, from where I'm sitting, it looks like Ukraine is actually losing the conflict right now.
I am indeed talking about Françafrique. I highly recommend that you learn a bit about it - there are a lot of interesting stories coming out of that part of the world these days.
Even if it isn't an exact match, failure to consider "and then what?" is absolutely a sign of an underdeveloped and immature view of the world. "They don't view the world as a Marvel movie with heroes and villains, they just view it as a small child does, with no understanding of the fact that actions have consequences" is not exactly an amazing defence!
Hold on just one second. That's not the correct comparison. You would not use the events of 2014 to judge whether the left supported him for it in 2012. You would need to point to his foreign policy statements in the 2012 election or even the 2008 election.
Except the US isn't at war with Russia. We're donating equipment and training Ukranians. So I don't see what your point is. In fact, the vast majority of Americans don't support US forces acting militarily in Ukraine at all.
I am indeed ignorant of Francafrique. I suspect the broader "left" even moreso. Ignorance isn't hypocrisy.
It is, nonetheless, a defense. If you're going to criticize someone, you should at least be correct in what you're criticizing them for.
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Much of former French Colonial African is still de facto even if not de jure under French influence with the exception of the successful* "Coup Belt" countries. France is the poster child for the definition of neocolonialism.
You're talking about Francafrique? I don't know much about that, it seems like they're trying to reduce their footprint there. You got a source?
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The US pretty consistently urged restraint on Yemen, it was Saudi that went all-in because MBS (and, to be fair, the entire security establishment and royal family) got very mad that the Houthis were routinely droning parts of Saudi Arabia (which is a hard-to-defend territory at the best of times). Obviously Israel was also happy to help because creating a money pit for the IRGC in Yemen means less money for Hamas and Hezbollah.
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It's not that it can't be, but anyone observing politics long enough saw these supposed ideas flip depending on what's convenient at the time, so it's hard to take these at face value.
How did the left flip on these ideas? What invasion were they okay with?
North Korea, North Vietnam, Falkland Islands...
I need evidence on these things. Where are the people on the left saying these invasions were okay?
Regarding Falkland Islands, I suspect people defending the British in the Falklands War saw the islands at rightfully British. Not a war of expansion.
You never heard of the anti Vietnam-war protests?! And you're getting the Falkland invasion backwards, a fashy military dictatorship of Argentina was invading, and the UK was moving against the invasion. The left at the time was taking the piss about the whole thing, because they didn't like Thatcher.
A contemporary source on Korea might be harder for me to find, but a film and TV show like M*A*S*H* didn't write itself either.
Oh, you're not talking about the US decision to go to war, you're talking about NV's decision to invade SV. That is, you think the left was pro-invasion because it didn't support helping South Vietnam.
...You know what? Fair. I'll give this one to you.
Let's be clear about which "left" we're talking about. Liberals? Center-left individuals? Radical Leftists? Marxists/Socialists/Communists? Once we clarify that, we can talk about whether they were against the idea of the British sending an army to the Falklands.
MASH was produced towards the end of the Vietnam War and into the years after. You have to separate out Vietnam weariness and disapproval with what attitudes MASH actually captured of the Korean era.
That said, your ultimate point strikes me as misguided. I agree that there was a left which opposed US involvement in Vietnam for a variety of reasons. But there was a big ideological shift - the socialists and communists fell out of favor and continued losing power. The character of that left has changed.
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What kind of left supported Argentinian invasion of Falklands and North Korea invading South?
Tankies, who you’ll notice are now ok with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a few general nuts who have varied opinions.
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We're not talking about "supported", just "being ok with". Tatcher defending the Falklands was the butt end of many jokes, and maybe I'm mixing things up with Vietnam, but I thought the lefty consensus on Korea was also "what are we doing here anyway?"
After Truman relieved MacArthur (who among other things was advocating for invading China) his approval rating hit 23%. The lowest recorded by Gallup in their entire history of polling Presidential approval. The forgotten war was not particularly unpopular at the time.
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?
Foot supported the Falklands war, Attlee and Truman initiated their respective countries involvment in Korea and the discrepancy with Vietnam can simply be explained by specific differences; chiefly, there the US was propping up an unpopular authoritarian regime rather than a functioning and genuine, if flawed, democracy.
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