Back in November 2021, the world was alerted to a Russian buildup of troops around Ukraine. A few weeks later, President Biden issued a warning to Putin against invasion. Given satellite imagery and reporting on the ground, the entire world had a front-row seat to watch, in near real time, the preparations for war. What were we to make of this Russian military activity?
Putin had years earlier already taken advantage of Ukraine’s internal turmoil to annex Crimea. At the same time, he funded and inflamed separatist movements in Eastern Ukraine. His goal, presumably, was to destabilize Ukraine and weaken it for a larger conquest.
Years even before the annexation, Putin had declared the collapse of the Soviet Union a great “geopolitical catastrophe.” What made it so catastrophic, he argued, was that “tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.” It had long been clear that Putin was itching to restore Soviet glory and borders. And now, in late 2021 and into early 2022, all signs suggested that an invasion of Ukraine was imminent.
And in February 2022, the invasion came. Millions of people around the world—perhaps billions—were shocked. It had been jarring enough when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, but the coordinated global response that followed seemed to suggest the bad old days of conquest were behind us. If we were not quite living in the “End of History” where liberal democracy reigned, at least the brutal age of naked invasions was supposed to be over.
But then here we were, faced with the unimaginable. And yet there was no need to imagine it at all. The evidence had been before us the whole time. In fact, in light of all the evidence before our eyes, the one thing none of us should have been was surprised.
Fast forward to the present United States. Through both formal proclamations and casual memes and everything in between, the President and his team have made clear their appallingly childish eagerness to deploy American troops and National Guard units into American cities, whether those cities want them or not. As Matt Bernius points out on this platform, Trump’s actions and messaging contain multitudes: justifications for his true believers to wage war, cover stories for his scolds to dismiss legitimate concerns, and culturally ambiguous memes designed to… well, who knows their real intent? Surely to own the libs but also to sow fear and blur the line between policy, threat, and deniability.
But the broader point of needing to believe what is before our eyes remains. Three years ago, we watched the Russian buildup, debated what it meant, and many of us convinced ourselves it couldn’t mean what it obviously meant. Then we acted shocked when the invasion came. I fear this same blindness is happening again in America today.
If President Trump sends unwanted military force into American cities, we may be enraged, terrified, or even delighted (if, say, we like the idea of a President modeling himself on Colonel Bill Kilgore). But the one thing we should not act is surprised.
Nor should we be surprised when Trump follows Putin’s lead of blaming the victim. Putin blamed Ukraine for his own aggression (and with Trump’s permission, MAGA nods along). So too will any occupation of American cities—and all the awful things that may come from it—be justified as the fault of the victims, not the actions of the President.
The pretext for such an occupation will be a phony crisis—unparalleled crime, an immigrant “invasion,” or whatever else serves the moment. But the constitutional and regime crisis that could follow may be all too real. Worse yet, there may be no “crisis” at all. If so, that may suggest we are already living in a new regime, in reality if not in name.
