Meanwhile in America

One of the big surprises to come out of the war in Ukraine is how effectively President Joe Biden has been able to unite NATO countries against Russia without resorting to heavy handed tactics.  He has walked a tightrope in getting Germany to cut off NordStream 2, keep Hungary quietly on the sideline, and tamp down the urge of Poland and Baltic states to more actively engage with Ukraine against Russia.  The credit belongs almost solely to his administration in keeping this war contained, while at the same time exerting a tremendous amount of pressure on Russia to rethink its position.  We see the value of 50 years of experience, as opposed to the impetuous actions of men far less capable.  I hazard to think what the situation would be right now if another man was in the White House.

My wife has asked me repeatedly why Putin didn't attack Ukraine while Trump was president?  He, like many world leaders, underestimated Biden.  Putin thought Biden was the doddering old fool portrayed by the conservative media and that he could undermine his administration by launching a war that would split NATO apart and leave the US powerless to do anything in Europe.  It seems that Putin had been watching too much Fox News.

Even as we see Biden's strong diplomacy in action, Fox News pundits continue to portray him as a weak man, out of step with public opinion.  Conservatives may not be willing to give Biden any credit, but at the same time they don't want to see Russia overrun Ukraine.  Yet, Tucker Carlson prattles on about how this war is driving up the cost of gasoline, and that Americans are the "real victim" here.  He doesn't bother to note that the price of gasoline has leveled off since its spike at the start of the war.  Markets have a tendency to adjust to wars.

Far more alarming in America is the fragmentation taking place.  We haven't seen such a badly fractured America since the Civil War.  At that time, it was the issue of slavery that literally tore the country apart.  Today it is a combination of existential threats resulting in highly emotional responses that are often self-defeating.

Texas decided to impose its own border control, bringing truck traffic to a stop at the Mexico border, and impeding the flow of essential goods into the country.  This inadvertent truckers convoy has grown as long as the Russian military convoys stuck on the border of Ukraine.  This is of far more harm to Americans in terms of prices on basic commodities than is Biden cutting off the meager supply of oil the US receives from Russia.  Yet, conservative pundits are OK with Governor Abbott's political stunt, which includes shipping the illegal immigrants they have rounded up to Washington.

Roughly half of  the 50 American states are run by Republican governors, who seem more interested in sticking it to Biden than they do effectively managing their states.  In Florida, the governor has made critical race theory and sexual identity taboo subjects in state schools, fearing the harm such liberal "indoctrination" has on young impressionable minds.  He is so angry that Disney would buck his new "don't say gay" policy that he called on a conservative boycott against Disney.  Other states now plan to follow suit.  

Many conservative states have imposed draconian measures against abortion, making it akin to murder, even if carried out in the first trimester, which is allowed by Roe v. Wade.  These states place more value on an unborn child's "life" than they do a girl who was brutally raped and is now forced to carry her unwanted pregnancy to full term.  Other conservative states are so obsessed with the idea that boys who identify themselves as girls will dominate girls' athletics at the high school and college level that they are passing laws banning such participation, even if such incidents are even less frequent than the voter fraud they are actively clamping down on with tighter voting regulations.  Most of these actions are out of step with public opinion, even in these conservative states, but Republican governors and legislatures proceed anyway because they firmly believe they have God on their side.  

There are quite a few books that have come out on authoritarian leaders in the past few years, most recently Gideon Rachman's The Age of the Strongman.  Rachman considers Putin the most effective role model of this generation.  He wrote the book before the war, so Putin's effectiveness has diminished somewhat in light of the heavy casualties his vaunted "Z" army has suffered, most recently a warship off the coast of Odessa.  However, Putin remains a favorite of "white nationalists." 

What is more disconcerting is how so many US governors see Putin's policies as a playbook for their own administrations. In the case of Florida, Governor De Santis had previously been a state representative.  As governor, he has personally written much of the harsh legislation against protests and gays, and pushed these bills through the Republican-dominated state legislature before signing them into law.  We see this all across conservative-led states in America.  These governors have also filed law suits against neighboring states, on the grounds that their liberal policies have a detrimental effect to their states.  This largely over the legalization of marijuana and less abortion restrictions.

Many of these governors openly praised Putin before the war.  Since then, they have been a little more circumspect, but they continue to follow his playbook anyway.  This means many Americans needlessly suffer under autocratic state leadership, forced to move to more liberal states if they want any measure of emotional and social security, which their home states no longer provide.  Of course, these conservative states aren't satisfied with their own authoritarian measures.  They want to impose such harsh laws on others, so they pack the US Congress with increasingly more conservative representatives and senators with the hope of nationalizing their draconian policies.  Essentially, they want to return the United States to a pre-Edmund Pettis Bridge, Stonewall, Roe v. Wade America, rolling back all the civil rights legislation that was enacted between the mid 1960s and mid 1970s.  This really isn't much different than what Putin is trying to do in Russia and Eastern Europe.

While Biden has done a great job in uniting Europe against the Kremlin, he watches his own country unravel.  Putin is betting on this year's mid-term elections in the United States to greatly handicap Biden's ability to lead.  Many are predicting Republicans will once again reclaim the House and Senate,  making Biden "irrelevant."  That may be true for domestic policy, but Biden would be little affected when it comes to foreign policy.  He would still be able to effectively command NATO, as he doesn't need Congressional approval for anything short of war, and even here has the ability to override Congress, as we have seen with past presidential administrations.

So, we see the world's two super powers once again engaged in a game of brinkmanship, seeing who can take the other one down first.  It is in Joe Biden's interest to end the Ukraine War as quickly as possible.  The longer this war drags out, the more it will turn in Putin's favor.  How far Biden is willing to go in that regard remains to be seen.