Move over, Buzzfeed, and stand down, Upworthy. There’s a new boy on the block, who’s just lost all his scruples. Yes, Literature R Us is all about the traffic, and today’s headline is the proof. Though I’ve done my share of Anne Applebaum-bashing in the past, I must confess that, when Anne isn’t trying to corrupt the intellect of the American people, she’s a damn good scholar, and not—not all the time, anyways—a jive-talking, sky is falling neocon. In other words, she’s no Jennifer Rubin. Except in her latest column, here, where Anne gets all Jennifer on our ass, claiming that if we don’t make Ukraine and Georgia* part of NATO our gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual brothers and sisters in Eastern Europe will suffer.
I guess I missed all of Anne’s other impassioned columns about gay rights, because, frankly, it’s news to me that she gives a damn, or at least gives a damn about giving a damn in public. It used to be that Anne and her neocon pals were pretty much anti-gay, but treason never prosper, after all, and now that gay marriage is pretty much a done deal north of the Mason-Dixon, Anne’s ready to put boots on the ground east of the Urals and north of the Caucasuses to kick us some homophobic ass.
Needless to say, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Neither Ukraine nor Georgia should be part of NATO. NATO was originally conceived of as a defensive alliance against the Soviet Union, which no longer exists. When the enemy disappears, the alliance has lost its purpose. Vladimir Putin clearly fantasizes about reconstructing the former Russian Empire, but “mishmash” plus copious gas and oil reserves do not an empire make. Annexing the Crimea, which was, after all, a part of Russia for several centuries, is probably about as much “empire” as Putin can lift without giving himself a hernia. More to the point, any serious muscle-flexing by Putin, assuming it doesn’t kill him, would simply irritate the real power in Eastern Europe, Germany. Germany is a far more powerful country than Russia, despite its lack of nuclear weapons. Anne Applebaum is married to the foreign minister of Poland, Radoslaw Sikorski. I can see why a Pole would not want to have to choose between Russia and Germany, but that is the fact of the matter. The U.S. tried to civilize Iraq, and Afghanistan, and our adventures in empire haven’t worked out so well. We don’t need to try again.
