How will history judge our response to Ukraine?
One day, not too far into the future, historians will hold the U.S. accountable for what is occurring in Ukraine. And unlike past horrors of humanity, there will be no option to feign ignorance.
This won’t be like World War II when dispatches were scribbled on notes in the field, then pecked out on typewriters at the end of the day, and finally sent back overseas. Nor will it be like other wars that involved heavy-handed military management of the media, when officers kept reporters away from the frontlines.
This war is playing out in real time. Keeping abreast of the latest news out of Ukraine is essentially watching atrocities unfold. There is no veneer of distance, not in this modern era of social media and hyper connectivity.
Most Americans have never visited Ukraine. They might not even be able to point it out on a map. Yet virtually the entire nation is aware of what’s happening. We’re enthralled by it even. Tracking whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still alive has become almost a ritual of the morning.
How different will history treat the decisions of today, when there is with no deniability about what happens on the battlefield?
The question is worth pondering. The hourly updates of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rampage across Ukraine has already settled into an eerie pattern.
Each new atrocity — an attack on a maternity ward, neighborhoods bombed and fears of a nuclear strike — are being met just firmly stated reasons why the U.S. and NATO prefer not to intervene.
It’s obvious the world’s on high alert. The geopolitical and economic stakes are too high. Many of the actions the West has already taken have been balanced and measured.
And yet it is also necessary to keep the questions that might haunt us later in mind. Blatant politicizing by both Democrats and Republicans is occurring, infecting not only our analysis, but also our opportunities to act.
All of it feels like frayed politics, or what has become our political norm. It’s all incredibly dangerous if allowed to distort our response to Ukraine.
But history can be a guide here.
Among the many stellar contributions of the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington are the unique ways that it forces a moral reckoning about the horrors of war.
The museum is a stellar resource for those who want to look back in time and reassess the Nazis’ motivations, their propaganda, aggression against other nations, and how the world slipped into war.
The museum offers interactive exhibitions that allow you to look back in time, pinpoint specific events and comb through newspaper clippings to see how it was all reported.
It’s possible to see how communities heard about what was happening and how they interpreted what might follow. We get a glimpse into what news they underplayed, debunked or rationalized away. Also, we see what history proved.
But again, the world at that time did not have instantaneous knowledge of what was occurring.
The fact-checking systems didn’t approach the robust, technological tools we have today.
So the U.S. – the world’s current leader — will not have the option to claim ignorance about Ukraine.
Three questions will be essential: What did Americans know? When did we know it? And what more could we have done?
It sounds simplistic to boil down this humanitarian and economic global crisis into snippets. But ultimately, these are the questions by which we will be judged.