The Empire of Lies Strikes Back
Euro Edition!
Twenty days. That’s how much time it has taken to change the world, to shake the foundation of alliances, global understanding, and political meaning inside America and around the world.
I was browsing a book store in Lisbon yesterday—more on that later—and was struck by how instantly out-of-date many book titles now seem. Whether in Portuguese or English, the shelves groaned under the weight of denunciations. Political correctness! Neoconservatives! Neoliberals! Capitalism! Socialism! A book called “The Pursuit of Power” actually came with a suggested end-date of “1914.” Leading European authors denounced big systems (“Capital is Dead”). Leading Americans (Hello, Steven Pinker) defended “reason, science, humanism, and progress” by suggesting a libertarian withdrawl into private prosperity.
But then Russia invaded Ukraine— a very old-fashioned European land war. You don’t defend Karkhiv, or a muddy highway in the Ukrainian plains, with libertarianism. You don’t defend against Russian tanks with witty takedowns of big capitalism.
Whenever I returned from reporting in so many troubled lands, I was amazed at how lightly Americans took our own success. I myself assumed that our democracy was unassailable, but it has been obvious for decades that we frittered away that inheritance. While actual, violent authoritarian movements emerged worldwide, Americans yelled “fascist” at school board meetings, and screamed “tyranny” when a governor asked us to wear a surgical mask.
How outdated the words of a month ago seem now. Lisbon is 2,000 miles from Kyiv, but last night a hard-drinking man on the street boasted to me that Portugal—little Portugal—had already flown anti-tank weapons to Kyiv. Solidarity requires something very different of us now.
The invasion has exposed the deep affection for Russia on the global right. Steve Bannon admitted the bigotry that underlies this (“Putin ain’t woke—he’s anti-woke.”). Money and power play a large role. Paul Manafort, who took some $10 million from Russian oligarchs, rewrote the Republican Party platform in 2016 to exclude help for Ukraine. Gen. Mike Flynn, who conspired to overthrow the 2020 election, was paid $45,000 by Russia Today to sit with Putin at a 2015 dinner, alongside Jill Stein. Tucker Carlson (“Did Putin call me racist?”) denied there would be an invasion, and today repeats Kremlin talking points so faithfully that state media have been ordered to replay his Fox segments.
Here in Europe, Nigel Farage, the Brexit leader, was paid 548,000 pounds from Russia Today, just in 2018. In France, Marine Le Pen took a huge loan from Russia and now has to pulp one million campaign fliers showing her shaking Putin’s hand. Her rival Eric Zemmour recently admired Putin for restoring “an empire in decline” but, like Italians Berlusconi and Salvini, suddenly can’t remember Putin’s name. Right wing populists have “run for the hills,” as the Wall Street Journal put it.
But no one can outsleaze Donald Trump, whose descriptions of Putin—genius, smart, savvy, trustworthy, a friend, believable—now stink like near treason.“He’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” Trump said two days before the invasion. “He’s taking over a country—really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.” This is the agenda laid bare: Power without democracy, violence without restraint.
As even the despicable John Bolton noted, Trump constantly threatened to withdraw US troops from Germany and abandon NATO, and probably would have in a second term. He withheld Javelin anti-tank missiles (“Do us a favor, though”) unless Ukraine investigated Hunter Biden (who really was getting $50,000 a month for sitting on the board of Ukraine’s largest gas company). The Russians didn’t invade back then, Bolton noted, because under Trump they thought they would get Ukraine for free.
As to what Putin wants, what he needs, I’ve heard many Great Power theories, and historical, psychological, and cultural explanations. But few mention straight up self-preservation.
Putin himself blamed NATO for “surrounding” Russia. But it’s not NATO that Putin is afraid of. It’s the European Union.
The EU does not have an army, or tanks, or missiles. What the EU has is rule of law. It has elections, and courts to investigate corruption, and a free press. That’s what Putin fears.
His system of oligarchic corrruption, his empire of lies, is what is being surrounded. Poland, Georgia, Ukraine, Hungary, the three Baltic states—all have moved toward or consolidated real democracy since 1990, with mostly transparent banking systems, and legal equality. Lies cannot long survive that kind of scrutiny.
His greatest fear—and our greatest hope—is a peaceful “Color revolution” inside Russia. Ukraine had one, as did Georgia, and similar democratic revolutions were attempted in the ‘stans, and even in Syria in 2011. A corrupt dictator on the Putin model was kicked out of power in Ukraine, where the 2014 Maidan revolution—even with fascist elements—was specifically about moving to a European model. Ukrainians wanted a future of growth, jobs, and education, not to serve as a corrupt buffer state for Russia, as Belarus does.
As Timothy Snyder argued presciently in his 2018 book, “The Road to Unfreedom,” Ukraine was always the frontline in this conflict, because of the example it provided to other states. Snyder estimates that Putin himself probably stole US$100 billion. Today we can watch live on the internet as the Russian oligarchs send their yachts and airplanes scurrying around the Mediterranean in search of some dictator’s harbor. If Ukraine survives, Putin eventually falls. That’s it.
Our own problems have not gone away. Our capitalism is still flawed, our democracy still contested. But this is no longer a left-right fight. Europe and America are united. Taiwan and Kenya are united. The Portuguese man I quoted was feeling a flush of something other than alcohol—identification with others, and hope, and belief that a common good can and must prevail.
After Sept. 11, 2001, a psychiatrist friend told me that she quickly learned which of her patients were never going to get better. Half of them responded to the tragedy by saying, roughly, this really puts my problems in perspective. The other half said, Yes, that’s terrible what happened, but me my mine.
Like the psychiatrist’s patients, today’s authoritarian leaders and propagandists have long chosen their own beliefs over reality. That’s the definition of insanity.
Next time, I’ll give a personal note on what it is like to be in Europe right now. War seems so very far away from this charming old city, amid the cobblestones and colorful tiles. But Portugal has a lot to teach us about how authoritarian ideas become disastrous dictatorships.
May we all be drunk and Portuguese.