It's a Good Life

One of the consequences of having a superhuman capacity for remembering the names and dates of events that occurred before I was born while simultaneously being cursed with a short term memory more akin to a colander or perhaps a wet paper bag is that I have absolutely no recollection of what I’ve told you in the past. For all I know, you, dear reader, may conceive of me as a four-foot tall woman from that periscope strip of land that Idaho uses to peer into Canada, or a teenaged boy with a trust fund and a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ that I’m not allowed to drive yet. It seems unlikely to me that I have visited any topics that would have sown such conjectures, but who knows what kind of vacuums I have left to be filled in by my detractors and those with highly active imaginations?

I know for a fact that those in my immediate orbit, due to their proximity, hear all the gory details of my life and various interests daily if not hourly. This explains why my wife often appears to be silently mouthing my words as I say them,¹ but I have to periodically remind myself that my voice doesn’t automatically carry outside the walls of my house.

In conversation recently with a good friend, I was surprised to discover that I had never assaulted him with my detailed and deeply felt thoughts about Ukraine. It was a revelatory moment for me, though the staff here at Red Clay Bestiary Headquarters have more than once noted that as many times as I’ve written the word “Ukraine,” I’ve never really tackled the topic head-on, opting instead to approach it obliquely through soliloquies on just war or reflections on the heart-rending loneliness of the Internet-enabled battlefield. It may be too late; though it’s more likely that even the best words I can put forward, delivered at exactly the right moment, would not enough to add even the slightest tingle of flavor to a single soldier’s MRE or melt a single hardened opinion—I have no illusions about my influence over the trajectory of bullets and missiles.

The thing is, writing doesn’t always have to be persuasive. Not everything has to be an argument, or indeed a fight. Pliny didn’t write his famous letters to try to persuade Vesuvius not to erupt. It was just his version of Red Clay Bestiary. Can I get a witness?

Admittedly, Atlanta, Georgia is a strange place to witness a war happening 5,700 miles away. But it’s a strange war and a strange time. Its intimacy is shocking, and yet the medium of that intimacy—the Internet generally, but the handheld smartphone in particular—even as it brings us the faces of haunted men and women, torn apart on the outside or the inside—or both—flattens the war in its smooth glass surface and separates it from us, rendering it one “channel” among an almost limitless number of competitors. It’s a tap away, but one can always swipe left.

This is unfortunate, because Ukraine is a serious problem for the world and for America, and we ignore it to our peril. Unfortunately it’s hard to know how convince anyone that a distant, grinding war of attrition is worthy of their attention. It’s not the horror of it that turns people off—Ukraine has largely disappeared behind the penumbra of Israel and Palestine after all. Israel looms larger in American politics than Ukraine; Israel’s grotesquely violent campaign draws ire not only for its own sake but for the involvement of American tax dollars and the investment funds of various high-profile universities. It’s a conflict tailor made for a sort of Vietnam protest cosplay, but the reductive thirst for moral clarity and the corresponding lack of interest in the nuances of an absurdly complex situation result in a toxic stew that doesn’t help anyone and threatens to make things worse simply out of spite. Even that milquetoast dismissal automatically makes me the enemy of some group or other; probably several.

Israel is a bit of a tarpit. The conflict with Palestine and other Arabs has been going on longer than I have graced this earth, and if you think they’re currently headed to a grand final conflict in which right will triumph—whatever you think “right” is, I’m sorry: you’re deluded. It’s been over 20 years since the US almost brokered a two-state agreement. It was a failure and we certainly have far less influence over any side now than we had then. This is not to say what’s happening isn’t horrific; it’s to say that for America it’s a sad distraction from something we can readily affect and should.

Yes, I know. The grinding stasis in Ukraine renders it as unpopular to the casual observer as an 18-inning scoreless baseball game. The drama under the surface is invisible if you haven’t read the program; if you aren’t keeping track of the benches, if the bullpens are just a crowd of indistinguishable faces to you. And as for the war, you really have to go searching for that program—national news reports arrive as an arbitrary dribble of unconnected events, largely told at the tactical level or through the often infantilizing lens of “human interest.” Here’s a 50 year old guy living in a trench on the outskirts of a town nobody has ever heard of. Here’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy touring an ammunition plant. Here’s a bunch of Ukrainian cats. The resultant picture conveys at most the sense of a sad, relentless meat grinder that we’re lubricating with our tax dollars.

What I see is different. I see a creative, defiant people, suffering immeasurable pain at the hands of a flabby, shambolic autocracy bent on restoring the empire it believes to be its historic right, and willing to visit as much horror on Ukraine as it takes to achieve its ends. I have heard it said we shouldn’t be so impressed by Ukraine’s claim to independence given that it’s basically historically Russian. Aside from being utterly untrue (although Ukraine’s history is deeply intertwined with that of Russia, it was not forcibly hoovered into the Russian Empire until the late 17th century), the struggle of a people to free themselves from an autocratic yoke is literally the the founding story of the United States. Any American who believes in the promise of their own history should not fail to offer a full-throated support of a country that has amply demonstrated it simply wants the same.

What constitutes “a full-throated support” in an institutional sense is a commitment to a quick and just end to the war, and that absolutely does not mean selling the Ukrainians out—leveraging our contribution to their defense to force them into negotiations at a disadvantage—as a certain purveyor of steaks and allegedly collectible coins would undoubtedly attempt. It means giving the Ukrainians what they need to, at an absolute bare minimum, enter negotiations with the upper hand. This, in turn, means not only weaponry but a rock-solid assurance that our support will be steady and predictable. Prior to the passage of April’s Ukraine package (the $60B allocated was in fact split three ways, between Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan), a frequent demand from GOP lawmakers was that Ukraine first provide a strategic plan, but they never explained how Ukraine could produce a strategy without knowing whether or how much support it would be receiving. This is absurd. The Russian army is fighting with motorcycles and 1950s-era tanks. Their victory is not only not inevitable; well- and consistently-armed, the Ukrainians could drive them out off their soil like leaves before the wind.

But put aside Ukraine for the moment. Why should we antagonize Russia? The answer to this is simple: Russia is a clear and present danger to world order. I know the common reaction to this assertion is that the current world order isn’t that great to begin with, and this is true. American hegemony is deeply flawed. But even if it only pays lip service to democratic ideals, it can be freely evaluated, criticized, and possibly, with luck and effort, improved on exactly those terms. One thing is for sure: it’s shortcomings cannot be addressed by allowing it to be dismantled by violent autocratic powers. There is no doubt that the Pax Americana has often come up short on human rights, climate change, and wealth inequality, as well as a host of other issues. Would these hurts find salve in a world in which international action is definitionally ad hoc and liable to be railroaded by the whims of roving gangs of grossly self-interested and degenerate oligarchs? Who could argue that a flawed system answerable, however obliquely, to democratic processes could ever be worse than total chaos?

So no, I don’t believe that American hegemony should be replaced with some utter unknown fueled by a victorious and probably shirtless Vladimir Putin. Likewise I don’t believe that any peace agreement which does not include NATO membership or some equivalent security guarantee for Ukraine would be worth an overripe turnip. The litany of destruction Putin has scribed is impressive. Although he wasn’t responsible for the first war in Chechnya, the second war is his—a war that featured the utter and total destruction of the Chechen capital of Grozny. Georgia can attest as well to Putin’s hostility, which continues at a low simmer much the way the occupation of eastern Ukraine persisted from 2014 until the full scale invasion. Russian has deployed over 60,000 troops in Syria, driving out an American presence there fighting against an ISIS enclave in the civil-war torn country. And perhaps most damning, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was in violation of the agreement that Russia itself imposed in 2014 after seizing control of the Donbas. Why would any of this aggressive behavior spontaneously change now? Why would granting Putin what he seeks chasten him?

Historically Russia has shown an almost intrinsic need for conquest, going back at least to Catherine the Great. I don’t know that one can lean on that fact and say that it’s proof the Russians are currently bent on conquest, but there are two matters to be reckoned with: First, there is a powerful national myth around the defeat of the French in 1812 and the Germans in 1941 in which the vast space of Russia—space made possible by policies of conquest—was the decisive weapon.² The second is that, lest we have forgotten in the last couple paragraphs, they are bent on conquest right now.

The U.S. went after this guy twice. That’s some Cartheginian Wars shit right there.

For the party that chose to spend not only American dollars but American blood to defend a tiny monarchy against a former favorite dictator in 1991, the failure to provide sufficient material support to a democracy holding an autocratic enemy at bay on the very flank of our most important military alliance is a mind-blowing lapse. For how many decades have GOP leaders loudly reminded us of the ways they resembled Winston Churchill? The only mention we have of old Winston now is from a “historian” on a right-wing podcast asserting that the brandy-swilling, cigar-chomping hero of Britain was in fact the instigator of the Second World War.

It’s enough to make a man stop drinking.

Aside from all the grand geopolitical stuff, and despite protestations of fraud from the head of our national hair-spray lobby, Russia meddles in our elections with an industriousness that ought to win attention from the election security troll party (see above) but instead elicits only shrugs or smirks. There are legions of people laboring, at this very moment, in dank, windowless office buildings all over Russia, chipping in 24/7 on the so-called U.S. national debate—weirdly held on privately owned networks open anonymously to every human on earth—under names like @SuperPatriot29110 and @MAGADude21. They’re not even hard to find.

Do they matter? Maybe not, but the scale of the operation³ suggests Russia believes it does. And is not that thought alone upsetting to anyone? Russia is actively striving to undercut our national will. Does failure acquit them?

The fact is, we might not think we’re in conflict with Russia, but Russia knows it’s in conflict with us, and has for a long while. So no, I don’t think the answer to this problem is to develop more friendly relations with Russia.

Ok, but what about nukes? Are we not risking World War III? Should we not avoid escalation in Ukraine?

Personally, I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the only value nukes serve for Putin is precisely to get us asking those questions of ourselves. The frequency with which his mouthpieces—Medvedev in particular—bring up the nuclear threat in connection with this move or that suggests that the threat is their value. The fact that Ukraine and its western backers have eventually pushed through whatever red lines Moscow has established reveals the bluff.

It’s worth asking what would happen if Putin launched a tactical nuclear strike on a Ukrainian position—the most likely scenario when it comes to opening the seventh seal. There’s a non-zero chance the weapon would simply fail,⁴ and a much higher chance it would be shot down. If it did reach its target and detonated, it would leave a portion of the territory Russia purports to covet uninhabitable for potentially hundreds of years. The weapon probably wouldn’t have a meaningful operational effect, since it would produce a region as impassable as any held by Ukrainian troops, and would likely wind up dumping radiation on Russians to the north and east of Ukraine, and in due time basically the rest of the northern hemisphere. It’s hard to imagine that the western response would be anything short of cataclysmic for Russia, and could well lead to World War III—in the sense of an out of control exchange of civilization-destroying strategic weapons.

So firing a nuke means at best a humiliating failure and at worst the end of not only the war, but of Russia, and possibly everything. Not firing a nuke means Russia gets to continue threatening to use nukes. It’s easy to say “he’s crazy” of an autocratic leader, but autocrats are very rational when it comes to their continued survival.

Of course that’s just one man’s inexpert opinion, but one thing is clear: the longer the war drags on, the more chances there are for escalation. And nobody has been more escalatory than Russia. Blowing up the Kakhovka Dam was an illegal and escalatory act. Kidnapping Ukrainian children, also illegal and escalatory. Tear-gassing Ukrainian troops—illegal and escalatory. And now we learn that North Korea is sending 12,000 of its troops to Ukraine to fight alongside the Russians. One can make fun of North Korea for being backward, but in Ukraine all you need to be an effective part of Russia’s war machine is a body capable of absorbing a Ukrainian bullet or shell, and North Korea, which boasts of seven and a half million people under arms—twice as many as Russia—can absorb a lot of shells. North Korea is, I suppose, legally permitted to participate, but it’s hard to conceive of anything more escalatory.

In 2023 Ukraine’s western supporters very publicly shipped a large number of main battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, anti-aircraft systems, artillery, and miscellaneous equipment to Ukraine in anticipation of a massive summer offensive. The equipment was accompanied by a few weeks’ training in NATO methods of combat.

The resulting offensive was a failure. The Ukrainians barely dented the deep Russian defenses, which consisted of thick, dense fields of mines outlined in dragons’ teeth⁵ designed to funnel Ukrainians into narrow killing fields, and supported with multiple lines of zigzagging trench systems. Make no mistake, Russians are good at this style of warfare, but Ukrainians were not helped by outsized western expectations, and they weren’t helped by the heterogeneity of the equipment they were given, and above all, even as their NATO donors preached the virtues of and sought out evidence of the execution of combined warfare, in which a variety of capabilities are coordinated to accomplish quick, deep thrusts, they were not helped by the fact that that they weren’t given the equipment to do what their backers wished them to do—the Ukrainian air force is still, despite their recent acquisition of a handful of F-16s, incapable of controlling the skies.

Lacking sufficient air cover, the Ukrainians courageously attempted what they had been taught, but there’s no way to drive quickly through a minefield and there’s no way to engineer a path through while you’re being freely observed and targeted from above. The first NATO-style advance was a memorable failure, and the offensive, left with no realistic way to deal with its shortcomings, simply broke against the Russian defenses like the tide.

One failure does not a war make. Anzio was a mess, Pelelui was superfluous, Market Garden was a disaster, but none of these failures set the tone for the rest of the war, and today we mainly remember D-Day and the raising of the flag atop Mount Suribachi. It’s not fair to give Ukraine one shot, expecting them to do with far less what NATO countries claim they would have done in Ukraine’s place, and then to simply conclude that the whole thing is a boondoggle. To the contrary, Ukraine’s successes have been numerous, and they have been a product mostly of imagination and grit. They have often succeeded in spite of their backers—witness the brilliant use of sea drones to render Crimea untenable as a naval base for Russia; witness their determined defense in the east and south, which has recalibrated our sense of the war to the point that the relatively small territorial gains toward Pokrovsk begin to look like Operation Barbarossa. And whatever you think of the purpose or prudence of the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk, it was a breathtaking operation nobody expected.

These all show what the Ukrainians can do by themselves. Imagine what they could do if we really threw our support behind them.

Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin thinks you’re bad.

In the old Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life,” six-year-old Anthony Fremont possesses godlike powers, which he uses as you would expect a first-grader to do: unpredictably and harmfully. All of the adults live in fear of Anthony and must guard even their thoughts, lest he notice and turn them into a kitchen implement or a radish or some such. Absent any discipline, Anthony runs amok and isn’t even aware of the harm he’s perpetrating. Putin is our Anthony, but we have advantages: he can’t read our minds and he’s not all-powerful. His power to destroy is neither absolute nor one-way, and he knows this. We cannot simply appease him merely to avoid the possibility that he might fly off the handle. A Putin given free rein to destroy everything in his reach is no more desirable than accepting the risk that strong international discipline entails—it pits a certain horror against a very unlikely one. But the longer we allow him to believe that his threats will stop us, the farther he will go. And stopping him later will cost much, much more, with correspondingly increased risks.

The Ukraine war has received very little attention on the U.S. campaign trail, but scores of countries, Ukraine and Russia foremost, await the outcome of our November elections with hope and trepidation. In my reading of German and British papers it’s clear that the election is an almost obsessive concern in Europe and beyond. It’s hard to say precisely what either result would portend, but it’s reasonable to assume that a Harris administration would carry on something like Biden’s policy. Which is frankly not enough, but it’s a far cry from Trump’s absurd promises to end the war in 24 hours. There’s only one way to accomplish anything like that, and it would mean perforce sacrificing Ukraine on the altar of Putin’s ambition. We’ve seen that movie before, in 1938 when Neville Chamberlain returned from selling out Czechoslovakia to declare “peace in our time.” It was another in a long list of weak responses to an acquisitive dictator, and the results of that weakness occupy a significant percentage of the W volume of any set of encyclopedias.

To avoid making that volume any heftier, a line must be drawn, and soon.

As virtually anyone can tell you, I’m not an expert on this war or any other. Neither am I an authority on international politics or really anything except a few software systems that are about as meaningful in this context as being an expert on plows would have been vis the Crusades. I do, however, read, listen, and watch more or less obsessively on this topic, and although I spread my net as widely as I can, the keystone of my knowledge comes from the brilliant journalism of the Ukraine the Latest podcast from The Telegraph. Founded by David Knowles and featuring regular commentary from Francis Dearnley and Dominic Nicholls, among others, UtL goes out of its way to seek out input from a huge range of voices—journalists in and out of Ukraine, military experts and political figures from the U.S. and many European nations, representatives of international aid agencies working on a variety of issues related to the war, and even the occasional Ukrainian soldier. Their work is thorough, balanced, and wonderfully informative.

It was a shock to me therefore to recently learn of the sudden and unexpected death of David Knowles. Knowles was only 32 years old but he towered over the journalistic coverage of the Ukraine War. There aren’t many people younger than me I can point to as personal heroes but David is undoubtedly one of them. His willingness to put himself forward, to say what he believed about one of the critical issues of our time, was what finally drove me to withdraw my tiny light from beneath its customary bushel. I owe David Knowles a debt of gratitude and I will carry forever the regret that I never said so when I still could have done.

1. Not really, but she has finished a story for me on occasion.

2. Perhaps not a myth, as those endless steppes were the key to both Russian victories, but there is a notion that Russia’s enormous buffer and brutal winter is a kind of magic that renders the country invulnerable.

3. Russia is deeply invested in attempts to subvert foreign elections and subjects many European nations to the same shenanigans.

4. Given the poor condition and high failure rate, brought on largely by corruption and neglect, of conventional Russian weapons and ammunition.

5. Every mention of dragons’ teeth in western media is followed by a lengthy parenthetical explaining that these are concrete pyramids laid out in long rows to hinder the advance of tanks and other vehicles, but this has been said enough times already and I refuse to add to the logorrhea.