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      in World Politics

      Cold Warriors Stoke Another War in Ukraine

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in US Politics

      I warned national guard of possible coup, Trump defense secretary says

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      I warned national guard of possible coup, Trump defense secretary saysMark Esper writes in new memoir of how worried he was that Trump would try to use US military to hold on to power A week before election day 2020, the US secretary of defense was so worried that Donald Trump would seek to involve the military in the election in an attempt to hold on to power, he told the general commanding the US national guard to notify him of any communication from anyone at all at the White House.Trump called top aides including Pence ‘losers’ as 2020 protests raged, book saysRead more“Without being too explicit,” Mark Esper writes in a new memoir, “my message was clear: the US military was not going to get involved in the election, no matter who directed it. I would intercede.”Such an intercession, Esper writes, would involve trying to persuade Trump not to use the military to hold on to power, then if necessary Esper would resign, appeal to Republicans in Congress and hold a press conference to appeal to the American people directly.Esper thought Trump might order actions such as seizing ballot boxes in key states. Ultimately, Trump did not attempt to use the military to influence the election, which he lost to Joe Biden. He did seek to overturn the result by other means.Esper was fired by Trump on 9 November 2020, six days after the election.He details the extraordinary steps he felt compelled to take before that in a new book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Esper devotes considerable space to his work with Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, to stymie Trump’s attempts to use the military for political purposes, either in military strikes against Iran or in Syria – or even Mexico – or at home, by invoking the Insurrection Act against protesters for racial justice.Trump’s request that such protesters be shot in the legs, and Esper’s account of his resistance to it, has been reported elsewhere. The protests died down but Esper says the two most senior Pentagon figures remained concerned Trump could seek to use the military domestically, to tilt power his way.Esper describes a meeting at the Pentagon with Milley and the national guard chief, Gen Daniel Hokanson, on 30 October, “the last Friday before the election”.The “ostensible purpose of the meeting”, Esper says, given it was visible to anyone who could see his calendar, was an update on national guard military police units placed on alert to placate Trump during the protests for racial justice.But with regard to the election, Esper says, “this was a serious moment”.He says he told Gen Hokanson: “If at any point in the coming days – before, during or after the election – you get a call from anyone at the White House, take it, acknowledge the message, and call me immediately. The same rule applies if you hear of any TAGS [national guard state adjutant generals] or governors getting a similar call.”Esper says he also asked Hokanson “to figure out a discreet way to get this last part out, which he said he would”.Esper writes that as the only civilian between the president and the military, he was concerned the White House might “try to circumvent me to do something inappropriate” and “wanted to be ready for anything”.“The whole point of my game plan – the reason that I had taken so much crap over the last several months – was to be in this position, at this moment, to act. The essence of democracy was free and fair elections, followed by the peaceful transition of power.”Milley, he writes, told him he and the other joint chiefs would “resign if pressed to break their oath” and involve the military in the election. Esper says he did not want to allow the generals “to be put in such a compromising position, especially if a presidential order was legal but grossly wrong or inappropriate.“… If such an order came from the White House, my immediate recourse would be to demand a meeting with the president. I would want to hear and understand the directive straight from him, to offer alternative solutions if such were possible, and to voice my opposition face-to-face if he was unyielding. If I was unsuccessful I would be forced to resign on the spot in protest. But that wouldn’t be the end of the line for me.”Esper writes that he would have called senior Republicans on Capitol Hill to ask them to intercede with Trump, then staged a press conference “where I informed the country about all that had transpired and continued to unfold.Trump the hero for anti-abortion movement after bending supreme court his wayRead more“I would present my best case and make an appeal to the American people, their elected leaders in Congress, and the institutions of government to intervene. The point would be to buy time and put pressure on the president to stand down.”As Esper writes, election day, 3 November, “came and went without any incident involving the armed forces. Thank God.” He says he was relieved that though the contest was not called until the following weekend, Biden’s lead was clear.Esper also says he “never imagined” what came next: Trump’s attempt to overturn the election through lies about electoral fraud and coordination with Republicans in Congress and other rightwing groups and advisers, culminating on 6 January 2021 in the storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.The attack on the Capitol has been linked to seven deaths and has led to more than 800 charges. But it failed to stop certification of Biden’s win. Having been fired after the election, Esper watched the attack on TV.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpUS militaryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Trump called top aides including Pence ‘losers’ as 2020 protests raged, book says

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      Trump called top aides including Pence ‘losers’ as 2020 protests raged, book saysMemoir from ex-defense chief Mark Esper details extraordinary outburst in Oval Office in which president seethed at advisers In the heated summer of 2020, thwarted in his desire for a violent crackdown on protesters for racial justice, Donald Trump raged that senior advisers including his vice-president, Mike Pence, were “losers”.Trump’s second defense secretary, Mark Esper, details the extraordinary Oval Office outburst in a new book. A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Trump the hero for anti-abortion movement after bending supreme court his wayRead moreEsper’s account of an extraordinary presidential question in the same meeting – “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something” – has already been reported.But the former defense secretary’s full account of the meeting, which happened as Washington and other US cities were convulsed by protests inspired by the police murder of George Floyd in late May 2020, is equally remarkable.Esper’s account of Gen Mark Milley’s attempts to explain to Trump the role of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff echoes others, including by the reporter Michael Bender in a book published last year and by William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, who was present.Like Barr in his own memoir, the former secretary of defense does not stint when describing what he says Trump said when he was told Milley had no command authority over active duty or national guard forces the president wanted to deploy against protesters.“‘You are losers!’ the president railed. ‘You are all fucking losers!’“This wasn’t the first time I had heard him use this language, but not with this much anger, and never directed at people in a room with him, let alone toward Barr, Milley and me.”Esper expands on Barr’s account of what the then-attorney general called a “tantrum”, saying Pence was also a target.“He repeated the foul insults again, this time directing his venom at the vice-president as well, who sat quietly, stone-faced, in the chair at the far end of the semi-circle closest to the Rose Garden. I never saw him yell at the vice-president before, so this really caught my attention.”Pence was a loyal vice-president to Trump until 6 January 2021, the day of the deadly Capitol riot, when he refused to attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Like Trump, Pence is now eyeing a run for the presidency in 2024.Esper also writes that “Trump shouted, ‘None of you have any backbone to stand up to the violence,’ and suggested we were fine with people ‘burning down our cities’.”The former defense secretary then details the question about whether protesters could be shot.Esper, who presents himself throughout his book as one of a group of aides who resisted the wilder impulses of Trump and his acolytes, says Trump did not order the shooting of protesters but was instead “waiting, it seemed, for one of us to yield and simply agree”.That, Esper writes, “wasn’t going to happen”.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansMike PencenewsReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      The Russia-Ukraine War Shows History Did Not End, Ethics Did

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in US Politics

      Why the Ukrainian war is also a domestic political issue for Biden

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      Why the Ukrainian war is also a domestic political issue for BidenThe Democratic party is encouraging president to be more forward-leaning as he broadened US objectives in the conflict The visit of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Kyiv at the head of a congressional delegation this week was a reminder that in Washington the Ukraine war is not just an issue of national security but is an increasingly important domestic political issue too.In his approach to the conflict, Joe Biden, has the wind at his back in terms of US public opinion and Democratic party sentiment which is encouraging him to be ever more forward-leaning.In a new poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News, 37% of Americans questioned said his administration was not doing enough to support the Ukrainians, fractionally more than the 36% who said he was doing the right amount. Only 14% suggested he was doing too much.Late last month, the administration broadened US objectives in the conflict, to not just support Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity but also to weaken Russia, with the aim of preventing a repeat of Moscow’s aggression against other countries.Pentagon chief’s Russia remarks show shift in US’s declared aims in UkraineRead moreA European diplomat suggested that one of the factors behind that shift was impatience in the higher levels of the party with the administration’s posture.“It’s fundamentally about trying to get on the front foot in this crisis. There’s a lot of domestic criticism of the administration for being so passive,” the official said.“The Hill [Congress] are cross and a lot of the big Democratic donors think it’s not being as forthright as America should be … Biden thinks he’s treading a careful path between intervention in its broader sense and keeping the focus on domestic concerns – and some Democrats are starting to think that balance isn’t right.”Senator Chris Coons, a senior figure in Democratic foreign policy circles, has criticised Biden for taking direct military intervention off the table as an option. On the other side of the party, there has been little pushback from the progressive wing, which is normally sceptical about sending large quantities of military hardware into foreign conflicts.And for once in Washington, the Republicans are pushing in the same direction.“This is one of the few areas where Democrats and Republicans are reasonably well united and that makes it pretty easy for a president to move in that direction. He’s not making enemies,” said Larry Sabato, politics professor at the University of Virginia.“The umbrella over all of this is the moral issue and the powerful video of Ukrainians being slaughtered and dislocated,” John Zogby, a pollster and political consultant, said. “Americans are moved by that and overwhelmingly support the Ukrainian people.”It is nonetheless a political wedge issue. Support is more uniform among Democrats than Republicans. Donald Trump transferred his personal admiration for Vladimir Putin to at least some of his followers and the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who has consistently raised pro-Moscow talking points on his show.Democratic support is deepened by the important role of Ukrainian-Americans, thought to represent about 1 million people (Zogby thinks that is an underestimate) and who are influential on the party’s ethnic coordinating council. They have all the more sway because they are concentrated in swing states.“You’ve got a decent number of Ukrainians in Ohio, and you have a Senate race in Ohio. There are Ukrainians in Pennsylvania and you have a Senate race in Pennsylvania,” said Wendy Schiller, political science professor at Brown University.In Wisconsin, Democrats have been running ads against the incumbent Senator Ron Johnson, focusing on his 2018 visit to Moscow.“It’s not an accident that Nancy Pelosi went to Ukraine,” Schiller said. “To have the speaker go, it says this is going to be an issue that the national party is going to take into the midterm elections.”With state-level and national politics, moral outrage among the public and Biden’s own foreign policy instincts, all pointing in the same direction, the administration has sharply raised its stake in the Ukraine conflict, asking Congress for an extraordinary $33bn in military, economic and humanitarian support for Kyiv.Public support, however, dies away dramatically when it comes to the question of sending US troops. Only 21% asked in this week’s poll backed such direct intervention, and concern about Ukraine escalating into a nuclear conflict is significantly higher among Democrats than Republicans.Biden, who has made extricating the US from “forever wars” his signature foreign policy, has repeatedly said he will not send US troops into Ukraine, and has cancelled routine missile tests to reduce any risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation between the two nuclear superpowers.“Boots on the ground may very well be a very different story,” Zogby said. “I don’t think world war three polls very well.”TopicsUS foreign policyJoe BidenUS politicsUkraineRussiaEuropeanalysisReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Militia group leader tried to ask Trump to authorize them to stop transfer of power

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      Militia group leader tried to ask Trump to authorize them to stop transfer of powerJustice department alleges Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes called unidentified presidential confidant on January 6 to make request Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia group leader charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, asked an intermediary to get Donald Trump to allow his group to forcibly stop the transfer of power, the justice department has alleged in court papers.The previously unknown phone call with the unidentified individual appears to indicate the Oath Keepers had contacts with at least one person close enough to Trump that Rhodes believed the individual would be a good person to consult with his request.Capitol attack committee requests cooperation from key Republican trioRead moreOnce the Oath Keepers finished storming the Capitol, Rhodes gathered the Oath Keepers leadership at about 5pm and walked down a few blocks to the Phoenix Park hotel in Washington, the justice department said on Wednesday in a statement of offense against Oath Keepers member William Wilson.The group then huddled in a private suite, the justice department said, where Rhodes called an unidentified person on speakerphone and pressed the person to get Trump to authorize them to stop the transfer of power after the Capitol attack had failed to do so.“Wilson heard Rhodes repeatedly implore the individual to tell President Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to forcibly oppose the transfer of power,” the document said. “This individual denied Rhodes’ request to speak directly with President Trump.”The extraordinary phone call indicates that Rhodes believed two important points: first, that he was close enough to the Trump confidant that he could openly discuss such a request, and second, that the confidant was close enough to Trump to be able to pass on the message.James Lee Bright, a lawyer for Rhodes, told the Guardian that he was uncertain about who his client called or whether the call took place.The previously unknown phone call surfaced on Wednesday in charging documents against Wilson, the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Oath Keepers, who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding as part of a plea agreement.The statement of offense said that Wilson was involved in efforts to prepare for January 6 with the national leadership of the Oath Keepers, and how Rhodes added Wilson to the “DC OP: Jan 6 21” group chat on the encrypted Signal messaging app.“Rhodes, Wilson, and co-conspirators used this Signal group chat and others to plan for January 6, 2021,” the justice department said.On the morning of the Capitol attack, Rhodes confirmed on the group chat that they had several well equipped QRFs outside DC – a reference to quick reaction forces, that the government said it believes were on standby to deploy to the Capitol with guns and ammunition.At about 2.34pm, the justice department said, Wilson stormed into the Capitol through the upper West Terrace doors as one of the first co-conspirators to breach the building, and by 2.38pm, was helping to pry open the doors to the rotunda from the inside.The seditious conspiracy charge against Wilson – an offense that carries up to 20 years in federal prison – is the latest in a string of recent such indictments to members of the Oath Keepers. Wilson is cooperating with the the justice department in its criminal investigation into January 6.As part of the criminal investigation into January 6, the justice department is also examining connections between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, another militia group, having obtained text messages showing the two groups were in touch before the Capitol attack.The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack also believes the Capitol attack included a coordinated assault perpetrated by the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, the Guardian first reported last month.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS justice systemnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Trump still won’t shut up. He’s doing Democrats running for office a huge favor | Robert Reich

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      Trump still won’t shut up. He’s doing Democrats running for office a huge favorRobert ReichTrump is framing the midterms as a referendum on his continuing influence over the Republican party – even as polls show most voters want him to go away The beginning of May before midterm elections marks the start of primary season and six months of fall campaigning. The conventional view this year is that Democrats will be clobbered in November. Why? Because midterms are usually referendums on a president’s performance, and Biden’s approval ratings are in the cellar.But the conventional view could be wrong because it doesn’t account for the Democrat’s secret sauce, which gives them a fighting chance of keeping one or both chambers: Trump.According to recent polls, Trump’s popularity continues to sink. He is liked by only 38% of Americans and disliked by 46%. (12% are neutral.) And this isn’t your normal “sort of like, sort of dislike” polling. Feelings are intense, as they’ve always been about Trump. Among voters 45 to 64 years old – a group Trump won in 2020, 50% to 49%, according to exit polls – just 39% now view him favorably and 57%, unfavorably. Among voters 65 and older (52% of whom voted for him in 2020 to Biden’s 47) only 44% now see him favorably and more than half (54%) unfavorably. Perhaps most importantly, independents hold him in even lower regard. Just 26% view him favorably; 68% unfavorably.‘JP, right?’ Donald Trump appears to forget name of candidate he endorsedRead moreRepublican lawmakers had hoped – and assumed – Trump would have faded from the scene by now, allowing them to engage in full-throttled attacks on Democrats in the lead-up to the midterms. No such luck. In fact, Trump’s visibility is growing daily.The media is framing this month’s big Republican primaries as all about Trump – which is exactly as Trump wants them framed. But this framing is disastrous for Republicans. The Republican Ohio primary, for example, became a giant proxy battle over who was the Trumpiest candidate. The candidates outdid each other trying to imitate him – railing against undocumented immigrants, coastal elites, “socialism”, and “wokeness”, all the while regurgitating the Big Lie that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election.Whether Trump’s endorsements pay off in wins for his chosen primary candidates is beside the point. By making these races all about him, Trump and the media are casting the midterms as a whole as a referendum on Trump’s continuing power and influence. This is exactly what the Democrats need.June’s televised hearings of the House January 6 committee will likely show in detail how Trump and his White House orchestrated the attack on the US Capitol, and rekindle memories of Trump’s threat to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless Ukrainian president Zelensky came up with dirt on Biden. But the real significance of the hearings won’t show up in Trump’s approval ratings. It will be in the heightened reminders of Trump’s reign in Washington, as well as Trump’s closeness to Putin. The result is an almost certain shift in marginal voters’ preferences toward the Democrats in November.The leaked decision by the supreme court to uphold Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks and reverse Roe v Wade – courtesy of Trump’s three Court nominees – will green-light other Republican states to enact similar or even tighter bans, and spur Republicans in Congress to push for national legislation to bar abortions across the country. Republicans believe this will ignite their base, but it’s more likely to ignite a firestorm among the vast majority of Americans who believe abortion should be legal. Score more Democratic votes.There is also the possibility of criminal trials over Trump’s business and electoral frauds – such as his brazen attempt to change the Georgia vote tally – whose significance will be less about whether Trump is found guilty than additional reminders, in the months before the midterms, of Trump’s brazen lawlessness.Meanwhile, Trump will treat America to more rallies, interviews and barnstorming to convince voters the 2020 election was stolen from him, along with incessant demands that Republican candidates reiterate his Big Lie. More help to Democrats.Somewhere along the line, and also before the midterms, Elon Musk is likely to allow Trump back on Twitter. The move will be bad for America – fueling more racism, xenophobia and division. But it will serve as another memento of how dangerously incendiary Trump and Trumpism continue to be.Accompanying all of this will be the ongoing antics of Trump’s whacky surrogates – Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Steve Bannon, Madison Cawthorn, Trump Junior, et al – who mimic Trump’s bravado, bigotry, divisiveness, and disdain for the law. All are walking billboards for Trumpism’s heinous impact on American life. All will push wavering voters toward Democrats in November.I’m not suggesting Democrats seeking election or re-election center their campaigns around Trump. To the contrary, Democrats need to show voters their continuing commitment to improving voters’ lives. Between now and November, Democrats should enact laws to help Americans afford childcare, cut the costs of prescription drugs, and stop oil companies from price gouging, for example.But Democrats can also count on Americans’ reawakened awareness of the hatefulness and chaos Trump and his Republican enablers have unleashed. And it’s this combination – Democrats scoring some additional victories for average Americans, and Trump and others doing everything possible to recollect his viciousness – that could well reverse conventional wisdom about midterms, and keep Democrats in control.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2024US midterm elections 2022Joe BidencommentReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Is escalation in Ukraine part of the US strategy? | Adam Tooze

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      Is escalation in Ukraine part of the US strategy? Adam ToozeCongress’s extraordinary new Lend-Lease plan commits billions of dollars to the war effort, echoing a second world war strategy In the spring of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Washington DC seems haunted by the ghosts of history. The US Congress has passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 to expedite aid to Ukraine – just as Franklin D Roosevelt did, under the Lend-Lease Act, to the British empire, China and Greece in March 1941.The sums of money being contemplated in Washington are enormous – a total of $47bn, the equivalent of one third of Ukraine’s prewar GDP. If it is approved by Congress, on top of other western aid, it will mean that we are financing nothing less than a total war.Lend-Lease was a wartime intervention. The vast majority of the goods delivered were armaments. Monty’s army in the north African desert fought with Lend-Lease Sherman tanks. After 1942, the great Soviet counter-offensives were carried by Lend-Lease trucks.What made this so extraordinary is that at the moment the Lend-Lease programme was launched in March 1941, the US was not in the war. Lend-Lease was the decisive moment in which the US, while not a combatant, abandoned neutrality. It forced jurists to come up with a new term to describe a stance of “non-belligerence”. In broader terms it marked the emergence of the United States as the hegemon that, for better and for worse, it remains today.However, history is complex – scratch the surface and the ambiguities multiply. What does invoking Lend-Lease really imply for the direction of US policy?Presumably, the narrative is sustained by the promise that a good war fought against an evil regime will be won through the generous sponsorship of the United States. But to complete that narrative arc you have to keep winding the clock forward from Lend-Lease in March to the Atlantic charter in August 1941 and, by December, to Pearl Harbor and the US entry into the war. Providing aid to both China and the British empire, Lend-Lease was a crucial step in turning what was originally a separate Japanese war on China and a German war in Europe into a world war. If the US Congress is now launching a new Lend-Lease programme, the question of whether escalation is part of the plan must come into consideration.Both friends and critics of FDR have always insisted that provoking a war with Nazi Germany was the hidden agenda of Lend-Lease. Most historians today would argue that the president’s intentions were more uncertain. Even after Pearl Harbor it was not obvious that Roosevelt could find a majority to declare war on Germany. As Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman show in their book Hitler’s American Gamble, an extraordinary reconstruction of the fateful week following Pearl Harbor, the immediate reaction to the Japanese attack was to suspend Lend-Lease shipments; London and Moscow were horrified. It was not FDR but Hitler who saved the alliance by declaring war on the United States on the afternoon of 11 December.Then, as now, it was our antagonists who were left with the choice of whether to escalate from economic to military confrontation. Then, as now, the motives of those antagonists are obscure.After the announcement of central bank sanctions on 28 February, Putin rattled his nuclear sabre. If Biden signs a giant Lend-Lease-style aid package into law, who can tell how the Russian president will react? Further questions arise: will Ukraine be given weapons only to expel Putin’s army? Or will we equip Kyiv to strike at Russia itself?In 1941, the main Anglo-American vision was to mount an unprecedented strategic bombing campaign to lay waste to Germany’s cities and “dehouse” its population. With conventional bombs that was a real slog. But part of the quid pro quo for the Anglo-American partnership was the Tizard mission, through which British know-how, including atomic bomb development, was transferred to the US. Behind the sugar-coated narrative of a good war won by the arsenal of democracy lurks the unleashing of an apocalyptic world war.This was the nightmare that haunted Roosevelt’s opponents in America in 1941. They bemoaned the US being dragged into a second terrible conflict and the militarisation of the world order. And this was not a marginal point of view. Whereas the 2022 version of the Lend-Lease Act passed the Senate unanimously, in 1941 a third of the Senate voted against it.Roosevelt knew that the American public was not ready for war. And he hoped that the Lend-Lease Act would allow him to avoid calling for it. This was the sentiment that Churchill played into when he appealed to the US in February 1941 not to enter the war, but to give Britain and its empire the tools “and we will finish the job”. But the very generosity and scale of Lend-Lease, and the commitment that implied, brought into stark relief the fact that the US was paying for others to fight the battle on its behalf.That is precisely its position today. The US and its allies are for very good reasons choosing to back one side in a fight in which they will not directly engage. We do so like FDR, with one eye to the heroic resistance of those holding out against attack and with another eye to the geopolitical balance. If Russia has chosen to smash itself on the rock of Ukraine, if Ukraine is willing to fight, so be it.If that is the plan and Putin allows us to stick to it, it certainly has logic on its side. It is a calculation so cold-blooded that it is little wonder that we want to dress it up in half-remembered histories of the second world war, in which the happy ending is assumed without the necessary sacrifices ever being spelled out.
      Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University
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