Just a few weeks ago, many influential figures on the American right loved Vladimir Putin, they simply loved him. In fact, some still haven’t been able to give it up.
Tucker Carlson, for example, while he has grudgingly failed to express his full support for Putin, is still blaming America for the war and promoting Russian disinformation about alleged US-funded bio-weapons labs.
But most Putin aficionados in America are facing a moment of truth. It’s not so much that Putin has revealed himself as a tyrant bent on killing large numbers of innocent people — they already knew that, or should have known.
The problem is that the dictator they admired — who, just before Putin invaded Ukraine, Donald Trump lauded as being “smart” and “a genius — is proving surprisingly weak. And it’s not by chance. Russia is faced with disaster precisely because it is ruled by a man who does not accept criticism and does not tolerate dissent.
On the military side, a war that Russia evidently envisioned as a blitzkrieg that would sweep over Ukraine in a matter of days has yet to capture any of the country’s 10 largest cities — although long-range bombing is turning those cities to rubble.
On the economic side, Putin’s attempt to protect himself against potential Western sanctions is a debacle, and Russia is likely to suffer a brutal recession. To understand why this matters, one must understand the origins of the fascination the right has for a brutal dictator — a fascination that began even before Trump’s rise.
Part of that passion for the dictator reflected the idea that Putin was the big supporter of the “anti-woke” cause — someone who wouldn’t accuse you of being racist, who denounced cancel culture and “gay propaganda.”
Part of it reflected a somewhat disgusting fascination with Putin’s alleged virility — Sarah Palin declared that Putin wrestled bears while President Barack Obama wore “mommy-style jeans”—and the apparent strength of his followers. Last year, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz contrasted images of a Russian soldier with a shaved head with a US Army recruiting ad, mocking our “woke and neutered” military.
In conclusion, many people on the right simply like the idea of ​​authoritarian government. A few days ago Trump, who has been tempering his praise of Putin, chose instead to express admiration for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. He noted that Kim’s generals and aides “bow down” when the dictator speaks, commenting, “I want my people to do it this way.”
But we are relearning an old lesson: sometimes what appears to be strength is actually a source of weakness.
Whatever happens in the war, it’s clear that Russian forces are far less terrifying than they appear on paper. It appears that they are poorly trained and led, and it also appears that there are problems with Russian equipment, such as communication devices.
These weaknesses could have been spotted by Putin before the war if independent investigative journalists or inspectors within his government had been in a position to assess the country’s true military readiness. But such things are not possible in Putin’s Russia.
The invaders were clearly shocked by the Ukrainian resistance they faced, both for their determination and their competence. Realistic intelligence assessments could have alerted Russia that this could happen. But who would want to be the official who stands up to say “Mister President, unfortunately I think we may be underestimating the Ukrainians”?
On the economic side, I have to admit that the West’s willingness to impose sanctions and the effectiveness of those sanctions surprised virtually everyone, including me.
Even so, economic officials and independent experts in Russia should have warned Putin in advance that the idea of ​​a “Russia fortress” was deeply flawed. It shouldn’t have taken deep analysis to realize that Putin’s $630 billion in foreign exchange would become largely unusable if the world’s democracies cut off Russia’s access to the world’s banking system. Nor should it have taken an in-depth analysis to understand that the Russian economy is heavily dependent on imports of capital goods and other essential industrial inputs.
But, in this case too, who would want to be the diplomat telling Putin that the West is not as decadent as he thinks, the banker telling him that his much-vaunted “war chest” would be useless in a crisis, the economist telling him say that Russia needs imported?
The point here is that the arguments for an open society — a society that tolerates dissent and criticism — transcend truth and morality. Open societies are also generally more effective than closed autocracies.
That is, while you might imagine that there are great advantages to a government run by a dictator who can simply order people around, these advantages are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thinking. No one can tell the dictator he is wrong or ask him to think twice before making a disastrous decision.
And that brings me back to Putin’s former American admirers. I would like to imagine that they will take the Ukraine debacle as a practical lesson and review their hostility to democracy.
OK, actually I don’t foresee this happening. But we can always hope.
