Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was, first and foremost, a crime — in fact, war crimes continue as you read this. But it was also a big mistake. In less than five weeks, Putin has destroyed Russia’s military reputation, damaged his country’s economy and strengthened the democratic alliances he intended to undermine. How could he make such a catastrophic mistake?
Part of the answer, of course, is the strongman syndrome: Putin has surrounded himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear. All indications are that he entered this debacle believing his own propaganda about the military prowess of his army and the enthusiasm of Ukrainians to submit to Russian rule.
But there is also reason to think that Putin, like many of his admirers in the West, believed that modern democracies were too decaying to offer effective resistance.
And here’s the thing: When I look at the United States, I worry that the West is, in fact, getting weaker with decay — but not the kind that obsesses Putin and like-minded people. Our vulnerability comes not from the decline of traditional family values, but from the decline of traditional democratic values, such as a belief in the rule of law and a willingness to accept election results that you don’t like.
Of course, the idea that loose morals destroy great powers goes back centuries. In the Hollywood version of the story, the Roman Empire fell because its elites were too busy with orgies to take care of the matter of defeating the barbarians. In fact, the timing is all wrong in this story, but I’ll get back to that in a minute.
Today’s rightists seem to be less bothered by the weakness of sexual permissiveness than the weakness of gender equality: Tucker Carlson warned that the Chinese military was becoming “more masculine” while ours were getting “more feminine, whatever what feminine means today, since there are no more men and women”. Senator Ted Cruz retweeted a video comparing a US Army recruitment video to a recording of a Russian paratrooper with a shaved head and declared that an “emasculated military man with a social conscience” might not be a good idea.
It would be interesting to know what happened to that paratrooper after Putin invaded Ukraine. In any case, the heavy casualties suffered by Russia’s anti-conscience military while failing to defeat the vastly inferior Ukrainian forces confirmed what anyone who has studied history knows: modern wars are not won with machismo and bravado. Courage and persistence, physical and moral, are as essential as ever; but also more mundane things like logistics, vehicle maintenance and communications systems that actually work.
Incidentally, I cannot fail to mention that recent events have also confirmed the truism that many, perhaps most men who pose as tough… are not. Putin’s response to the failure in Ukraine has been extremely Trumpian: insisting that his invasion goes entirely “according to plan”, refusing to admit he made any mistakes and whining about cancel culture. I’m almost expecting him to release crudely pen-modified battle maps.
But let’s get back to the kind of decay that really matters.
As I said, the Hollywood version of Rome’s decline and fall does not stand up to scrutiny. True, the spoils of the empire made it possible for some people to live in great luxury, possibly including the occasional orgy; the closest modern counterpart to this elite would be… the Russian oligarchs. But Rome maintained its territorial integrity and military efficiency for centuries after the emergence of that spoiled and libertine elite.
So what went wrong? Historians have many theories, but certainly a big factor was the erosion of norms that had helped establish political legitimacy, and the increasing willingness of some Romans, especially after AD 180, to use violence against one another.
Obviously, what is happening in the United States today bears no detailed resemblance to the problems of the ancient world. But nowadays not a month goes by without new revelations that a large part of the American political body, certainly including members of the political elite, flout democratic principles and will do whatever it takes to win.
It’s amazing how quickly we normalized the fact that the last president tried to maintain power despite losing the election and that a mob incited by him invaded the Capitol. Many people participated in the attempt to overthrow the election – among them, as we learned recently, the wife of a Supreme Court judge, who did not even declare herself barred from participating in proceedings over the attempted coup.
While Donald Trump’s effort to stay in office failed, most of his party actually retroactively supported this attempt.
Why is this relevant for Ukraine? Putin effectively gambled that a weakened West would watch as he accomplished his conquest. Instead, President Biden effectively mobilized a democratic alliance that rushed to help Ukraine and humiliate the aggressor.
But the next time something like this happens, the United States may not lead an effective alliance of democracies, because we ourselves will have abandoned democratic values.
And that, if you want to know, is the true face of decay.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
