Volodymyr Zelensky – the front-line president (Wilkinson Publishing)

Andrew L. Urban & Chris McLeod

Our new book (the 2nd on Zelensky) marks the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine … it comes out in the wake of Tucker Carlson’s February 6, 2024, much-discussed interview with Putin. In the chapter titled The Carlson Critique, we critique Carlson’s earlier accusation of Zelensky’s arrogance and cheek ‘for saying America’s money was not charity but an investment in global security and democracy’.

Reporting on Zelensky’s address-in-person to the special US joint house meeting two days before Christmas 2022, Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused Zelensky of arrogance and cheek for saying America’s money was not charity but an investment in global security and democracy.

Carlson invited one of his frequent guests, acclaimed journalist Glenn Greenwald, to join him in criticising the US policy supporting Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s invasion. What benefit would the US population gain from such assistance, vast as it is, they asked rhetorically. Ukraine has nothing to offer US interests, they asserted. It’s far away and not a US problem.

Tucker Carlson is an influential former cable news host and has delivered some valuable work, notably through his extensive and explosive interviews with former Biden family business partner, Tony Bobulinski, including allegations about the Biden family’s links to Chinese interests. His heart appears to be in the right place as a loyal American citizen, but his head seems to have taken a holiday … with the esteemed Greenwald as its travelling companion, who later wrote on his blog: ‘Are American citizens benefiting from any of this? And does that even matter anymore?’

The logical conclusion to the Carlson/Greenwald position is that Putin should have been left alone to invade Ukraine, brutalise and overcome it, and annex Ukraine to Russia against its will. This is an isolationist position that ignores reality and history. It was Hitler’s September 1939 invasion of Poland that triggered the second world war. It wasn’t just about Poland…

And so it isn’t just about Ukraine. The free world would not remain free if it allowed powerful nations to invade smaller nations at will. Notionally, the UN was established to prevent, minimise, or halt such flagrant breaches of international law. It never has. And when even a permanent member of its Security Council turns violent bully as has the Russian Federation, there is an urgent need for an alternative ‘policeman’ to intervene. As the saying goes, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ – and the US-led free world has that great power and that great responsibility to act.

In Ukraine, ‘We face nothing less than a clash of political systems between democracy and authoritarianism…’ commented Peter Jennings, of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. ‘The challenge is no less profound than that of the late 1930s. But in a dire strategic situation, we should take comfort from the fact that 2022 turned out to be a terrible year for the dictatorships and better for democracies. The lesson of 2022 is that democracies and free peoples will beat tyranny.’

Does Carlson think the US should have stayed out of the conflict and let the Europeans and the UK do what they want to support Ukraine? Either way, the notion ignores the reality that the US is a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, along with the UK and the Russian Federation, which promised protection for Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty in exchange for it giving up its nuclear arsenal. The fact that the Russians threw that memorandum in the bin doesn’t mean the US should. It should invoke the Memorandum and urge the UK to do the same, especially when Putin threatens to escalate the war in response to increasingly powerful military assistance.

Second, failing to assist Ukraine, even in the strategically disastrous half-hearted manner at first, incrementally adding new military power as the war went on, the US would have signalled its total surrender to aggressive autocrats with their own military – unless they directly threatened US soil. That stupendous mistake would surely echo through time and draw even Carlson’s opprobrium. US interests go far beyond their soil, and their physical geography.

But perhaps this response is understandable in view of the Biden administration’s catastrophic failure (in reality it’s intentional policy) to protect its own southern border. Still, welcoming illegal migrants – ‘illigrants’, many of whom barge in with a sense of entitlement that doesn’t augur well for America – by the millions with welfare benefits, in no way alters the moral and geopolitical imperatives of providing military aid to protect Ukraine. Putin’s excuse for his invasion that Russia is alarmed over having a Nato member on its border is absurd: had he succeeded in annexing Ukraine, other Nato members Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Poland would remain on his border.

Footnote:

In the first week of September 2022, President Zelensky sat down for a meal with soldiers in their field canteen, just 700 metres from enemy lines in the Donetsk region. He was given a briefing on the battle situation and noted that: ‘We’re seeing – and our military are noting, too – a decrease in the number of live fire incidents – it has significantly dropped over the past seven to 10 days. However, there are provocations, and, unfortunately, there are combat losses. However, thank God that now we’re hearing thunder, not shots.’

He encouraged civil servants to also visit the front line to encourage and support the fighting soldiers, to whom he presented awards and gifts. ‘I just want to thank each of you, each serviceman, for protecting Ukraine on a daily basis,’ he said. ‘Come back alive from the combat field.’

In the newly liberated Izium, Zelensky raised the Ukrainian flag. Safe in Moscow, Putin was opening a giant new Ferris wheel.

Online, hawkish Russian commentators directly criticised the President. ‘You’re throwing a billion-ruble party,’ one wrote, in a widely circulated online post, mocking Putin for presiding over the opening of a Ferris wheel as Russian forces retreated. ‘What is wrong with you?’

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