Trump's recent ultimatum to Ukraine to accept a Russia-friendly "peace" deal before Thanksgiving amounts to a pretty obvious case of appeasement. But people on both the left and the right have tried to muddy the moral clarity of the issue by portraying the Ukrainian government as just as flawed as Putin.
Everyone knows that Putin is a dictator. But the "America First" brigade can also point to Ukraine's lack of wartime elections (permitted under the Ukrainian Constitution) to say: "but see, Zelensky is an unelected dictator too."
(The Putin-friendly "isolationists" in the MAGA coalition have been pushing this line for some time now—and Trump echoed it earlier this year, calling Zelensky a "dictator" who hadn't held a recent election.)
Likewise, everyone knows that Putin has abducted children from Ukraine, instigated a brutal unprovoked war of aggression against a sovereign nation, and otherwise caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
But the "American Firsters" of the right and left can point to the recent corruption scandal plaguing Zelensky's government to say: but see, the Ukrainians aren't so innocent either.
Of course, these arguments are non sequiturs.
No one ever said that the Ukrainian government was a flawless liberal democracy. But what is pointing out these imperfections in Zelensky's government meant to prove? That just because their government is imperfect, therefore the Ukrainian people deserve to be bombed, brutalized, kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured?
Still, though, even though none of these arguments operate logically—it can't be denied that the current corruption scandal in Zelensky's ranks has given all too much aid and comfort to the pro-Putin team. It hands a ready-made tool for distraction, for those on both the left and right who want to say, whenever Putin's crimes come up, "But what about this?"
I'm reminded of a passage from Arthur Koestler's memoir of wartime France, Scum of the Earth. He was describing the mental contortions that Communist Party activists and fellow-travelers had to subject themselves to, in the wake of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact in 1939.
The day before this Hitler-Stalin agreement was signed, after all—the Communist Party activists were still portraying themselves as the most anti-fascist of all the left-wing elements.
The day after it was signed, though—suddenly all the Stalin-friendly fellow travelers had to find a way to justify their sudden indifference to Hitler's aggression.
The easy way to make this flip-flop seem principled was to attack the integrity of the Polish government and to suggest that they were unworthy of anyone's sympathy in their defensive struggle.
And—unfortunately—there was a lot of material to work with there.
After all, the CP activists could say: the Polish government is reactionary and autocratic too. Indeed, they are antisemitic too. Why should we be helping them, if we are really the anti-fascists we claim?
As a Soviet-friendly French acquaintance of Koestler put it in 1939: who could be persuaded to fight enthusiastically for Poland's collective defense?
Who could be fooled by those trying to present Poland, "which was the the first to introduce yellow ghetto benches in its schools, and to beat Socialists slowly to death [...], as living in a state of perfect democracy"?
Thus, the Stalinists could make their overnight volte-face—switching from militant critics of Hitler's government to favoring a policy of appeasement and non-intervention—effectually allowing Hitler's war machine to steamroll over Poland—suddenly seem principled.
It's pretty clear that Ukraine's recent corruption scandal has handed the Stalinists and the appeasers and the America Firsters of our time a similar rhetorical move. "Why should we be supporting this government? Aren't they unelected too? Aren't they just as corrupt as Putin?"
They say—like Koestler's correspondent—"You're going to tell us with a straight face that this country—with its Azov battalion and its kickbacks and its postponed elections—is 'living in a state of perfect democracy'"?
To which Koestler's response in 1939 is still relevant today. As he said to his Stalin-friendly correspondent in that year: "repeatedly in history men have had to fight a merely defensive battle, to preserve a state of affairs which was bad against a menace which was worse."
That is obviously what we are facing here. No one—certainly not me—is claiming that the Ukrainian government is a "perfect democracy." I do still admire Zelensky a great deal—and it's worth noting he has not been personally implicated in the corruption scandal. But I do not say the country is a model liberal democracy.
I merely say that a future in which Putin takes over the country is infinitely worse. Has he not already brought torture, detention camps, abduction, death, and dictatorship to every part of Ukraine he has touched? Why would giving him more of the country's territory yield a different result?
This is simply another one of those times, then, when one must defend a "state of affairs which was bad against a menace which was worse."
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