This is a favorite one of the conservative leftists, who are following in the footsteps of their progressive leftists of the past in playing the “blame America first” game. If we would just not have been so threatening to Russia, if we would have realized their legitimate sensitivity of external threats since they’ve been historically invaded so many times, then Ukraine wouldn’t have happened. Unfortunately to properly counter this idea we’d have to live through the counterfactual, which life does not allow. But I think more careful reflection will show this to be an unreasonable conclusion.

My basic argument (one shared by many people) is that Russia has always been, and continues to be, an imperialist nation. Spend a few minutes looking through wikipedia’s summary of Russian imperialism, and it alone should effectively rebut the idea that Russia just wants to not be threatened, and if not threatened, would be a peaceful neighbor. Most people are at least aware of what the Soviets did to claim territories, both before (e.g., Crimea, Georgia) and after WWII (e.g., East Germany, Poland, etc) to become a hegemon to a series of vassal states that they could effectively rule from afar. But this picture (Russia originally in green in 1533 with subsequent czarist expansions through the 19th century) shows some of the magnitude of their imperialism prior to that.

But this is not just a thing of the past, with the Czars and the Soviets. It is who the Russian people aspire to be, and Vladimir Putin is their champion. One only need to actually listen to what he says, and watch what he does, and then there is no doubt that Russian imperialism is alive and well today. This article from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is particularly helpful in understanding this claim.

Russia has been actively involved in Moldova and in Georgia with military forces prior to its invasions of Ukraine beginning in 2014. Further, under Vladimir Putin, Russian adventurism and military bullying go well beyond its near neighbors, with Putin’s forces killing tens of thousands in Syria in propping up Assad before his recent fall from power. Through the Wagner group (Putin’s private army), Russia is involved in propping up dictators and committing innumerable butcheries (including killing woman, including pregnant women) in the Sudan, the Central African Republic, in Libya, in Mozambique, in Mali and more.* And Russia is active much closer to home, with military forces engaging in various ways in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and of course, Cuba.

Mr. Putin is very clear of his intent (and those following him will be worse given the ideology that is now in every Russian school): the dissolution of the Soviet state was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” He is intent on revising that empire as a modern czarist, NATO or not. He continues to threaten many of other neighbor nations (such as Finland). He has a much bigger agenda than just “getting a deal done.” And this doesn’t mention the cyber attacks, the malicious attacks on underground sea cables, or his energy blackmail.

There was a term for those that weren’t actively on board with the soviet agenda but nonetheless were instrumental in supporting their ambitions. They were called “useful idiots.” After winning the cold war, let us not cede the victory into loss by Making Russia Great Again and becoming useful idiots ourselves.

* And this leads us to a slight detour. Part of what we hear about Ukraine and Russia is that we need to turn our attention to China as the bigger threat. But here is the reality–China does have big ambitions, but so far outside the South China Sea area they are only trying to buy their way into relationships with their belt and roads initiative (which is achieving, shall we say, less than stellar returns!). They aren’t killing people across Africa. Russia is a much more malign actor across the world than China ever thinks about.