We’ve all gotten very familiar with Vladimir Putin’s Orwellian logic, according to which peace is war, intervention is non-intervention, democracy is fascism, and fascism is democracy. His latest comments at the Valdai discussion club just reinforced, if any reinforcing were still necessary, the point that the man is a master of mendacity.
We generally don’t expect equally bizarre ethical or logical standards from Western commentators. And yet they do occur, especially with regard to Putin, Russia, and their war in Ukraine.
On October 20th, Professor Mark Galeotti of New York University argued that the “West has lost the right to lecture Putin.” According to Galeotti:
This is not simple “whataboutism,” that classic trick of deflecting criticism through raising the other side’s real or alleged flaws. Rather it is to note that Washington is currently seeking to have its cake and eat it. It can choose to base its foreign policy on strict moral principles or geopolitical pragmatism.
At present, it seems happy to act pragmatically but think morally. Thus it genuinely considers Putin not simply an antagonist, but an immoral one.
This is dangerous and foolish…. Castigating [Putin’s Russia] on moral grounds, without behaving in an unimpeachably moral way, is simply going to alienate Moscow, undermine Western credibility, and create a wholly false series of assumptions on which to base policy.
The uncomfortable truth is that in Syria, as in so many other ways, Putin is simply ruthlessly exploiting and expanding precedents already set by the West.
Galeotti’s suggestion that the choice before policymakers is either “strict moral principles” or “geopolitical pragmatism” is absurd. The fact is that Western democracies do indeed attempt to combine both principles; they do not just “act pragmatically but think morally.” True, Western democracies as often fail to combine both principles as they succeed. But 100 percent success is not the point. Instead, the point is to try to be both pragmatic and moral—no easy task.
In this respect, Western democracies differ fundamentally from authoritarian dictatorships, fascist states, and autocracies such as Putin’s Russia. Putin makes no effort whatsoever to combine morality with pragmatism. Indeed, he twists morality as need be in order to pursue his ends. A guilty conscience is thus impossible in Putin’s warped moral universe, while guilty consciences are built into the very fabric of Western thought. When the West criticizes others for their misdeeds, it effectively criticizes itself. Although the West is frequently hypocritical, its hypocrisy is testimony to the fact that it does have ethical standards, even, or especially when, it violates them. As a result, the West doesn’t just have the right to criticize Putin: It has the obligation to do so.
Take Galeotti’s argument to its logical conclusion, and you’d have to claim that no one but a saint should dare to express ethical reservations about anything or anybody.
Even more bizarre standards are found in a commentary by Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky, who believes that the recently released “MH17 crash report shows no side was innocent.” According to Bershidsky, while it’s true that “the Buk missile that destroyed the plane must have been launched from rebel-held territory,” Ukraine “failed in its duty by allowing passenger jets to fly over the conflict area.” To be sure, says Bershidsky, “while there can be no moral equivalency between arming or protecting the perpetrators of that crime, and failing to close the skies, the uncomfortable truth laid bare by the report is that both sides in the conflict were glaringly incompetent.”
Come again? The rebels or the Russians commit a heinous crime by deliberately shooting down a plane, and that’s mere incompetence? Even if they believed it was a military plane—which may be unlikely, given the high altitude at which MH17 was flying—the fact is that they deliberately decided to shoot it down. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians fail to imagine that the rebels or Russians would actually shoot down passenger planes and they, too, are as incompetent as the rebels or Russians who actually commit the crime?
Competence or incompetence is not the issue here, just as it is not the issue in any crime. The only relevant questions are: Was a crime committed and who committed it? And the answers to both questions are: Yes, a crime was committed because a plane was deliberately shot down, and the Russians or their proxies fired the missile that destroyed the plane.
Bershidsky doesn’t take his argument far enough. Logically, he should also accuse the pilot of MH17 and its passengers of being equally incompetent and hence indirectly complicit. After all, who but an incompetent would decide to fly over a war zone? Who but an incompetent would fail to determine beforehand whether the plane would be flying over contested territory?
The questions are as obscene as the moral standards of Putin and his apologists.
