I never seem to get tired of making fun of Ross Douthat, but on Ukraine the dude has really been pounding the ball, pointing out politely to his neocon confrères that it really doesn’t matter who runs Ukraine. Today he pretends to take neocon huffing and puffing about “grand strategy”* very seriously, letting Walter Russell Mead ramble on about how “Mr. Putin and his fellow revisionists in Beijing and Tehran will continue to wreak havoc with Western designs” unless we in the West get our act together, but only after. undermining his whole damn argument by pointing out that “the West’s combination of liberal cosmopolitanism and democratic capitalism has no ideological rivals worthy of the name.” Vladimir “Master of the Game” Putin is struggling, 24/7, to keep his head above water, while we’re playing with “house money.” Not bad, Ross, not bad at all!
Afterwords
Naturally, Ross doesn’t go totally apeshit and point out that nine-tenths of right-wing “concern’ for the suffering masses in Ukraine, Syria, etc. is motivated by desire for political advantage for its own sake—because they can’t imagine how they can beat the Democrats on domestic issues—but we can’t expect perfection in these troubled times.
*Neocons are nothing if not grand, at least in their own minds.
