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I’m trying to imagine how this statement would look if you applied half this scrutiny to the Russians.
What’s their excuse for failing to deal with “contingency plans” like the amount of money flowing into Ukraine? Was it not predictable that America would throw unreasonable amounts of capital at a problem as long as it didn’t spend American lives? That’s been our MO since at least 2001, if not earlier.
The counterpart to questioning the rationality of “be the good guys” is asking why being the bad guys is supposed to work any better. And the answer is the same for us as it is for them: no one frames it that way. We (and they) come up with some plan to achieve a goal. Then it gets labeled after the fact by commentators looking to score political points.
It’s not that I think “Boeing the bad guy” works better. I don’t think the morality of a country and its fate are nearly as intertwined as commonly believed. I put the concept in the same continuum as the idea that eclipses are signs from the gods. What works is smarts and tactics, and a large dose of willingness to take power. What I fear is that large swaths of people in the halls of western democracies tend to believe that the righteousness of a cause means it will eventually win. I think that’s a dangerous way to think because it creates a false sense of security. We’re defending Ukraine so we will eventually win (by the way, they’re short enough on fighters that they’re recruiting teens to fight) no matter what Russia has or does. We think it right that Ukraine get Donbas back along with Crimea. Except those are now considered under the Russian nuclear umbrella. Right has nothing to do with reality because we don’t exist in a Hollywood movie.
But the Russian strategy is every bit as out of touch with reality. It’s as if their people (or at least their deciders) failed to consider contingencies, other actors, and so on. Doesn’t that sound unlikely?
I think you’re skipping over the mundane reasons for the West to end up in this situation in favor of a grand narrative about moralism and hubris. And you do so while assuming that Russia is always rational, always determined, avoiding all these pitfalls.
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