"The Feb. 4 meeting in Beijing between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping makes it official: The U.S. and its allies now face an axis of the East stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific.
What Russia and China have in common now is more important than what has divided them in the past. They reject the postwar economic and political order that the U.S. and its allies created. They are revanchist powers determined to regain territories they believe were separated unjustly from their homelands. They endured extended periods of national humiliation, which they are replacing with assertive national pride. And they see the West as a threat, both inside and outside their borders.
Before French President Emmanuel Macron flew to Moscow to discuss a peace deal with Mr. Putin, he said that Russian security concerns were "legitimate" and that Western countries need to understand better "the contemporary traumas of this great people and great nation." He intimated that the West would have to yield ground to reach an agreement. When he arrived in Moscow, he stated that the "Finlandization" of Ukraine would be "one of the models on the table" during his talks with Mr. Putin.
Olaf Scholz, Germany's new chancellor, has been even more equivocal -- so much so that Germany's ambassador to the U.S. felt compelled to warn him that Washington was coming to regard Germany as an "unreliable partner." Mr. Scholz has been criticized for refusing to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons, and Germany's dependence on Russian natural gas has generated suspicion in other Western capitals.
Very much on the defensive, Mr. Scholz flew to Washington on Monday to confer with Mr. Biden and congressional leaders. After the two leaders met, the president declared that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would "put an end" to the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The chancellor spoke of unity but did not explicitly commit his country to this position.
Here at home, the issue of Ukraine has proved divisive for Republicans. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham have given Mr. Biden's troop deployments their full support, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, darling of the burgeoning "national conservative" movement, called it a "mistake to send more American troops to Europe."
This past weekend, three of the movement's intellectual leaders published an article in the New York Times castigating the Cold War era's "violently expansionist foreign policy," which they dubbed "liberal imperialism," and called on conservatives to reject the "crusader project" and embrace instead a posture of "cultural nonaggression abroad." [1]
We have already pumped huge amounts of money and weapons for the corrupt leaders of Afganistan we supported. How did it end? Total loss to us. We are now pumping huge amounts of money and weapons for the corrupt leaders of Ukraine that we now support. Where does it end now? Guess three times.
1. Politics & Ideas: The New Axis of Autocracy. Galston, William A. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 09 Feb 2022: A.15.
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