Yes, back in 2003, I joined with peaceniks to protest the Iraq War. I concluded from the very start that the younger George Bush was untrustworthy, that he was lying about WMDs in Iraq and that he was exaggerating the human rights abuses that Saddam Hussein was engaged in. But when I was a tween/young teen, nonfiction paperbacks on World War II were popular and I read a number of them.
One of the big lessons I learned was “Don’t think that this war is going to be just like the last one.” The British and French thought that the 1940 battlefield would be just like the 1914-1918 one, with slow, cumbersome infantry divisions doing most of the fighting. Nope, it was dominated by fast, flexible panzer divisions that quickly drove the allies into the sea at Dunkirk. The Soviets figured out by the Battle of Kursk in 1943 how to defeat the German Blitzkrieg tactic, but they suffered some serious setbacks and incurred serious casualties long before that.
Further readings in the 80s showed me that the Vietnam War was essentially a political war and not, as US leaders had assumed, a matter of applying enough soldiers and guns and planes and tanks.
So no, this war between Russia and Ukraine is not necessarily a replay of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I don’t assume that Joe Biden is just like G.W. Bush and that it’s the US leadership that needs to be lobbied and convinced here.
One of the major issues that my fellow peace supporters regularly bring up is the expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Let’s think in terms of I’m a Ukraine bureaucrat and my president has asked me to draw up a list of reasons for and against joining Russia versus joining the West.
I’d point out that Ukraine was under the authority of Moscow in 1932-1933. Ukraine suffered a man-made famine, the “Holodomo,” a famine that began with the attempted “collectivization” of agriculture and ended with 3.9 million Ukrainian dead.
In Hungary in 1956, Hungarians demanded democracy. “Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country.”
Czechoslovakia in 1968, the “Prague Spring” was ended by Warsaw Pact forces led by Moscow, crushing that revolution.
In 1980, the Polish trade union movement Solidarnosc was successful for awhile, but “The government imposed martial law, a state that continued until 1983, and dramatically restricted civil liberties. Some 10,000 dissidents were detained, and dozens were killed. Solidarnosc had to go underground and was not allowed to register again until 1989.”
In 1994, Moscow fought its first post-communist war against Chechnya. About a million Chechens (Out of a Russian population of some 150 million), tried to carve an independent state out of a landlocked province. The freedoms granted by Russian leader Boris Yeltsin were withdrawn and two wars later, Chechnya was brought under control by Vladimir Putin.
This is not an exhaustive list, but the fact is that Western Europe and NATO simply don’t have this sort of history of having to use armed force to keep their alliance together.
What about Putin’s energy policies? In 2019, Russia produced roughly twice as much in energy resources as it consumed, which means that it exported the rest. Of that total, coal, dry natural gas, petroleum and other fossil fuels made up the vast majority. Nuclear and renewables made up a small fraction. Specifically, the OECD counts hydro, biofuels plus waste burning and geothermal, solar and wind power as constituting less than 4% of Russia’s energy resources. The rest is made up of various fossil fuels. Clearly, Russia is not leading the way to renewable energy!
The American Heritage Foundation uses an “Economic Freedom” index that liberals generally ignore as it makes lots of value judgments that we don’t necessarily share, but it dings Russia on many areas. Property Rights, Judicial Effectiveness, Government Integrity, Business Freedom and Trade Freedom are all given poor marks.
So if I, as a Ukrainian bureaucrat, had to produce a report on whether or not to move more closely to Russia and away from Europe, I think I’d run screaming away from the chance to recommend a closer relationship with Russia! To me, there simply isn’t any mystery as to why NATO has expanded into Eastern Europe over the past 30 years. Nations like to align themselves with successful countries that enjoy a high degree of prosperity, that respect human rights and that are working hard to move away from fossil fuels and towards renewables.
Update (18 May): Piece that essentially agrees with the above, with the idea that people and countries have "agency." The countries of Eastern Europe didn't remain attached to Russia because they didn't think it was in their interest to do so.