Back to the Garden? Not So Fast.

Author

jamie baldwin
June 06, 2024

Like many in the enormous cohort of people born shortly after World War Two, I grew up cheering the good guys in Hollywood versions of that war and came of age facing a real war in Vietnam and realizing that war—any and all war—is wrong. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. I joined the ranks of protestors in the anti-war movement. At rallies, we put daisies in the barrels of National Guard soldiers’ rifles.  Once, after we’d destroyed some buildings on a campus, those soldiers shot at us and killed some of us.

Now, as the sun sets on the lives of those of us who grew up then, we see that Woodstock has not resulted in worldwide peace.  War is not over because we wanted it.  Maybe we didn’t want it enough or went about wanting it the wrong way.  Maybe not enough people wanted it. Jimi Hendrix is quoted as saying “When power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”  That hasn’t happened.  

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine shocks us.  We were right about war, but this war challenges what remains of the moral certitude we once possessed. The people of Ukraine are right to go to war to defend themselves, their homes, and their democracy.  Isn’t joining forces with them the right thing to do?  We have the power to defeat Putin’s forces in Ukraine. When a friend is bullied on the playground you intervene to help, don’t you? Aren’t we morally obligated to intervene in Ukraine?

Putin is a bully, but the playground analogy oversimplifies.  Like all bullies, Putin feels weak and tries to compensate by picking a fight with a less powerful adversary.  Putin attacked Ukraine knowing Russia’s military capacity vastly exceeds that of Ukraine and thinking he would easily prevail because NATO nations would not respond.

Should we fight the bully? As anyone who’s thrashed a playground bully learns upon arrival in the principal’s office, two wrongs don’t make a right.  We are obligated to help Ukraine defend itself but going to war with Russia, which we’d be doing if the United States and our allies engaged Russian forces in Ukraine, would compound, not solve, the problem.

Morality sometimes poses problems that moralizing doesn’t solve. Ukraine, Russia, and the United States are nations, not kids on the playground. Putin is not Russia. As much as we want Putin to fail, we do not want to harm the people of Russia.  They did not authorize Putin’s war in Ukraine.  Most of them didn’t know what was happening when the war began. Many still don’t.

World reaction to Putin’s war shows that most who are free to find out what’s happening and to say what they think about it reject Putin’s war.  If we went to war with Russia, this might change.  It’s a bit like the seemingly naïve proposal of anti-war protesters, “Suppose they gave a war and no one came.”  Putin is giving a war.  We are declining to attend.

The immediate task is to enable Ukraine to defeat Putin’s invasion.  Putin believes that might makes right. Using our power to defeat him would actually affirm that proposition. Supporting Ukraine’s resistance thwarts Russia’s invasion and proves Putin wrong.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in isn’t just about territory, resources, or political control.  It is about values. Tyranny requires war to survive, and democracy makes peace.  Ukraine must resist, but neither Ukraine nor the U.S. can solve the problem of Putin’s tyranny.  It is up to the people of Russia to replace Putin’s regime with a democratic, peaceful one. For the time being, they at least seem to be high on the adrenaline of war.

There are other reasons not to go to war with Russia.  Putin maintains his power by deceiving Russia’s citizens, by preventing them from getting information, by instilling fear in them, and by stoking them with enmity. He needs people to believe that he’s protecting them from enemies that besiege them.  Going to war with Russia would appear to confirm his propaganda.

It would also require us to match Putin’s escalations of violence.  We didn’t enter World War Two with the intention of destroying whole cities and the civilian populations within them, but that’s what we ended up doing.  Many cities.  Today, nuclear weapons are the ultimate instruments of war. Never mind morality, it’s a practical matter. No one wins.

So, no, the bombers have not turned into butterflies.  Perhaps we can’t eliminate conflict. We can deal with it differently, though. We can choose more wisely between the love of power and the power of love. Maybe that’s what it’s always been about after all, not magically achieving universal peace, but slowly learning how to give peace a chance.

PostScript

In 2022, shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine, I wrote this essay. It serves here as an introduction to what will be a collection of essays more than a newsletter. In writing these essays, I am thinking of young people now who roll their eyes and say “OK, Boomer,” when someone of my generation speaks, as we are wont to do, as if the whole world should listen. I know better; still, my time on this stage is not actually up, so, until then and for what it’s worth, I will write these essays.

Two years after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia had lost and won territory but had not taken control of Ukraine. The people of Ukraine had endured the truly terrible levels of death and destruction wrought by Russian forces and Russian bombardment, and Ukraine had not fallen. People and nations around the world had taken sides in the dispute. The United States continued to support Ukraine and to support the principle that nations should respect each others’ sovereignty and protect each others’ integrity.

In March of 2024, Russian President Putin was re-elected to a fifth term with 88% of the vote. No doubt many people in Russia, misled as they are, like that result. I doubt, though, whether many Russians would argue the election was legitimate.

In November of 2024, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. I question the legitimacy of that election because 19 million Americans who voted against Trump in 2020 did not vote in 2024. What changed their minds? I suspect a propaganda campaign on Trump’s behalf tipped the election in Trump’s favor. You don’t have to spit in the soup too many times before people lose interest in eating it. As I write now, in March of 2025, the United States has abandoned the principle that it sought to uphold in supporting Ukraine and has halted military and diplomatic support for Ukraine, seeming to anticipate a settlement which will reward and appease Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. These developments don’t change my mind about anything I said in this essay.