One Year of Ukraine War | American Far-Right, Woke Left ‘Unite’ to Question US Intervention

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine a year ago on February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin expected Russian forces would be regarded as saviours and welcomed into Ukraine. The Ukrainian forces did not capitulate. Ukrainian forces were aware that their neighbours have vastly more manpower. Within a matter of a few days, Ukraine’s comedian-turned-president Volodymyr Zelensky did what he could do best – appeal for weapons.

His plea was Ukraine wants and needs more weapons – and his country received that.

In 2022 itself, the United States Congress has approved more than $113 billion of aid and military assistance to support the Ukrainian government and allied nations, according to a report by nonpartisan, non-profit organisation Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

The CRFB report pointed out that Ukraine received $67.1 billion defence aid, of which roughly $26 billion was military aid. The eastern European ally also received $46 billion in non-defence aid.

A separate report by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) says the US sent $76.8 billion to Ukraine between January 24, 2022, and January 15, 2023. Out of this $76.8 billion, $46.6 billion was in the form of security assistance, weapons and grants and loans for weapons and equipment i.e. defence spending, the CFR report said citing the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

These expenditures made by the US government came at a time when its own citizens were facing skyrocketing inflation.

In June 2022, as the Biden administration’s economic support for the Ukraine war increased, the inflation rate in the US also rose to 9.1% – according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics – and this led to some anti-war sentiment among the American people.

The American right sought to cash in on this sentiment and emerged successful as they gained a slim majority in the US Congress and wrested control of the US House of Representatives following the November 2022 midterm elections.

Far-Right, Far-Left Fuel Anti-war Sentiment in US

The political scenario in the United States after the Trump-era is a highly polarised one. The far-right and the ultra-left continuously try to dominate the political scenario and clash over Covid vaccines, LGBTQIA+ issues and ‘wokeness’.

However, the Ukraine war created strange bedfellows – on the right, former US president Donald Trump, Ohio senator JD Vance, Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, Florida Republican Matt Gaetz and Fox News host Tucker Carlson have blamed Ukraine for the war – indirectly – and questioned why Kyiv was receiving billions in aid, alleging that the Zelensky administration is corrupt.

“President Joe Biden must have forgotten his prediction from March 2022, suggesting that arming Ukraine with military equipment will escalate the conflict to ‘World War III’,” Gaetz said. “America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to haemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war,” he further added, according to the Guardian.

They may not be pro-Moscow (at the expense of the United States) but they have an admiration for Putin’s anti-woke attitude. The MAGA-wing of the GOP is considered an admirer of Putin’s attitude towards LGBTQIA+ Russians, whose lives have become difficult under Putin’s administration, according to an analysis piece penned by Jan Dutkiewicz and Dominik Stecuła for Foreign Policy.

They point out on the progressive left the main notion was the United States is a bad international actor, citing examples of US involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam

On the left, Democrats were quick to denounce progressives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley and force representative Pramila Jayapal to withdraw a letter calling for more diplomacy and avoiding direct US involvement on the ground. By attacking their own, the centre-left dominated over the Congressional Progressive Caucus-led by Jayapal

Even thinkers like linguist Noam Chomsky – the leader of America’s intellectual left – said Donald Trump may have emerged as a model of level-headed geopolitical statesmanship since he opposed arming Ukraine.

The left also took refuge in Professor John Mearsheimer’s theory that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was directly caused by NATO’s expansion into Russia’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

Horseshoe Theory in Play

Dutkiewicz and Stecuła say that we could be witnessing “a modern-day version of the horseshoe theory of politics”.

The horseshoe theory of politics, introduced by French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye, who believed that the political ideological spectrum was “something like a horseshoe, with the extremes bending almost magnetically in conjunction with each other”, Dutkiewicz and Stecuła explain.

They also point out that it is “quite something” to see the “leftists conceding that Kissinger has a point and Republicans handing it to Chomsky” while ignoring the speech Russian President gave before announcing his so-called military operation to ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine:

“I have already said, Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can be rightfully called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.’ He was its creator and architect”.

He even said Kyiv’s regimes were parasitic in nature. “Kiev tried to use dialogue with Russia as a bargaining chip in its relations with the West, using the threat of closer ties with Russia for blackmailing the West to secure preferences by claiming that otherwise Russia would have a bigger influence in Ukraine,” Putin said a year ago, challenging notions prevalent among the far-left and the far-right.

According to a report by Cleveland.com’s Jeremy Pelzer, a Trump rally in Ohio saw supporters of the former president sport t-shirts with the slogan “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat” – showing how far-right supporters felt they’d rather be close to Putin rather than the liberal centre or moderate right.

What American Citizens Think

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center among 10,588 Americans showed that in September 2022, only 38% American adults were extremely or very concerned about a Ukrainian defeat compared to 55% in May 2022.

Also 26% respondents were not too concerned or not at all concerned about Russia defeating Ukraine in September 2022, compared to 16% in May 2022.

A fresh survey conducted by Pew Research Centre conducted January showed that among 5,152 respondents, 26% of respondents feel the US is providing too much aid to Ukraine, registering an increase of 6 percentage points since last September and 19 points since shortly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year.

This shift in opinion, according to Pew Research Centre, is attributed to a growing share of Republicans who feel that the Biden administration’s support to Kyiv is too much. This also could be a signal that the MAGA-wing’s stance on the war appears to be more appealing to a section of Republicans.

But the numbers are also rising among Democrats as well, as 15% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents currently feel the Biden administration has supported the Zelensky-regime more than they should have.

(with additional inputs from Financial Times and Intelligencer)

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