As the war in Ukraine reaches the one-year mark, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said last Tuesday that Russia has "lost strategically, operationally, and tactically." Which is not to say that the war is over or has been won—there are few winners in war, if any, really—but only that losers can sometimes be identified and named, Putin and the Russian Empire, first and foremost. When the Empire experienced a similar defeat in 1904-5, the Czarist regime collapsed into revolution. Futures are complexly contingent, so I don’t presume to predict the outcome of this war, the post-war, or its inchoate prospects for peace and reconstruction, but if all parties stay their current courses, we have cause for hope that all of this death and destruction can entail a better Ukraine and a better world. Supporters of the Ukrainian cause, however, must not slacken their efforts. Guns, treasure, and unity are still required.
A second loser: The Trumpian rump of the Republican Party, the so-called GOP, have been such tools of oligarchy and authoritarianism in general and of Vladimir Putin specifically, that they could more transparently express their call letters in the Russian/Cyrillic script—ГСП. Their (dis)putative House leader, Kevin McCarthy, has proclaimed that U.S. aid to Ukraine will not be a “blank check,” and the propaganda outlet of the ГСП, Fox Lies, continues to feature sycophants and apologists whom Russian media have taken to heart. They are losers, too, shameless appeasers, embarrassments. Donald Trump kissed, and continues to kiss, Vladimir Putin’s ass; Ukraine, and the global forces of more liberal and democratic values, interests, and institutions have kicked it.
