It's the year of our Lord two-thousand-twenty-three, more than a twelvemonth into Europe's largest, bloodiest ground war since World War II. The international order hangs in the balance. Make no mistake: The East has aggressed against the West, with Ukraine sitting precariously as the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Should Russia triumph there, 44 million once-free inhabitants will become subjects of authoritarian tyranny. All of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states will be at risk. Central Europe, too. China is waiting, and watching, eyeing the South Pacific and Taiwan, as well as wider inroads into Central Asia. Iran has already joined with Russia and China in a kind of Eastern axis of evil.
Should this triad of autocratic oppression recreate the world order in its own image, presently unaligned states would go with the regnant power: the East. Western Europe, the United States and Australia would be squeezed geopolitically, economically and militarily.
A new Dark Age would descend on Earth.
Against this backdrop, The Bulwark's Jonathan Last writes:
"How can a serious person look at this state of affairs and then say,
Yes, the Republican party is wrong on Ukraine and this failure could have catastrophic downstream effects for the geopolitical balance of the world. But there is a barista at Starbucks who has “she/her” on her name tag and this pronoun insanity must stop. I have to vote Republican.
"And yet, that is exactly what the Always Republican caucus in Conservatism Inc. will do. Just watch."
We are indeed watching, although what Last predicts is as sure to occur as another Ted Cruz smirk. Ron DeSantis has now joined Donald Trump in elevating the perils of "wokeness" over the prospect of a new Dark Age, saying that the "U.S. has many vital national interests," but "a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them."
A territorial dispute — a most peculiar way to frame an autocratic superpower's wanton aggression against a democratic neighbor, especially when the "territory" cited happens to lie within Ukraine's sovereignty. But to make their case, DeSantis, Trump & Co. must give Vladimir Putin every gossamer benefit of every diaphanous doubt.
As for DeSantis' innovative rendering of a mere dispute, Ukraine's foreign ministry noted: "We are sure that as a former military officer deployed to a combat zone, Governor Ron DeSantis knows the difference between a 'dispute' and war."
Those bits of ideological chiseling are nothing, however, compared to the presidential wannabe's newly discovered conviction that a barbaric, wholesale recreation of the international order lies outside the U.S.'s vital national interests.
Because, damn, that barista at Starbucks who has "she/her" on her name tag — an outrage, nay, a deadly Damocles sword, that must be countered by every sinew of national will and determination.
In the global battle betwixt Light and Darkness, the Republican forces of anti-woke obsessions are as blinkered as a blind mule.