Thoughts on Putin's war on Ukraine and American influence

Map of Eurasia

By now, it is clear that I know little about relevant Russian and Ukraine history. So, I have to stick with the bits and pieces I come across and know that extrapolating from that to US involvement in Putin's war on Ukraine is a fraught proposition. That caveat in place, a fact-intense opinion The Guardian published raised some interesting recent history and thoughts about the American presence:

This weekend, British investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr said on Twitter, “We failed to acknowledge Russia had staged a military attack on the West. We called it ‘meddling.’ We used words like ‘interference.’ It wasn’t. It was warfare. We’ve been under military attack for eight years now.” 

Of course the most striking role of the Russian government in the 2016 US election was its many, many ties with the Trump campaign, including with Trump himself, who spent the campaign and the four years of his presidency groveling before Putin, denying the reality of Russian interference, and changing first the Republican platform and then US policy to serve Putin’s agendas. 

A stunning number of Trump’s closest associates had deep ties to the Russian government. They included Paul Manafort, who during his years in Ukraine worked to build Russian influence there and served as a consultant to the Kremlin-backed Ukrainian president who was driven out of the country – and into Russia by popular protest in 2014 (the Russian line is that this was an illegitimate coup and thus a justification for invasion is still widely repeated). Manafort was, during his time in the campaign, sharing data with Russian intelligence agent Konstantin V Kilimnik, while campaign advisor Jeff Sessions was sharing information with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Manafort, Donald Trump Jr and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner held an illegal meeting in Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked lawyer on 9 June 2016, where they were promised damaging material on the Clinton campaign.

Various other bits and pieces that evince the ex-president's and at least tacit Republican support for Putin[1]:

After Putin seized Crimea, Obama put sanctions on Russia. Trump got rid of those sanctions and declared that Crimea belonged to Russia, recognizing the legitimacy of their invasion. Trump Told G7 Leaders That Crimea Is Russian 

Belarus, is run by Putin's puppet dictator Lukashenko. Lukashenko won a clearly rigged election in 2020, leading to mass protests. A similar situation happened in Ukraine during Obama's administration, and we backed the protests and they ousted Yanukovych, and Ukraine was able to elect a free government that wasn't Putins puppet. So when a similar situation arises while Trump was president, guess what we did? The Trump administration was AWOL on Belarus.

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates ran Putin's puppet, Yanukovych's political campaign in Ukraine. Trump made them his campaign manager and deputy campaign manager. Paul Manafort Helped Elect Russia's Man in Ukraine

In 2019, Manafort plead guilty to "Conspiracy against the United States." Trump's campaign manager, a Putin-puppet enabler in Ukraine, came to America, helped Trump get elected, but was then imprisoned for conspiracy against the United States for collaborating with Russia. Trump pardoned him.

Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador (it was later learned the US had to extract one of their assets for their safety due to this).

Trump Pushed CIA to Give Intelligence to Kremlin, While Taking No Action Against Russia Arming Taliban

Trump team knew Flynn was being investigated (for lying about discussions with Russia), report says

Trump officials altered intel to downplay threats from Russia, White supremacists, DHS whistleblower says: A former acting undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security accused top officials there of ordering him to stop sharing intelligence assessments on Russia’s efforts to interfere in the U.S. election because they “made the President look bad.”

Trump followed this up with the criminal conspiracy to steal the US 2020 election for which the investigation committee has now submitted a 61 page court filing.

And then there's the heaps of highly classified documents Trump stole and stashed in Mar-a-Lago, containing information too sensitive to announce, it's assumption so far but it's not too much of a stretch to think they were probably destined for Russia, they have the largest interest."

What about the Republican Party?

What about the Republican Party, including its donors, propagandists (Fox News, etc.) and political leadership? What is their culpability, if any? The Guardian opinion essay ends with this:

The Republican party met its new leader by matching his corruption, and by covering up his crimes and protecting him from consequences, including two impeachments. The second impeachment was for a violent invasion of Congress, not by a foreign power, but by right-wingers inflamed by lies instigated by Trump and amplified by many in the party. They have become willing collaborators in an attempt to sabotage free and fair elections, the rule of law, and truth itself.

In my opinion, it is evidence-based and rational to attribute the same level of support for Russia and Putin, including the current war in Ukraine, that Trump showed. One can reasonably say that there is no significant difference, despite some recent Republican elite rhetoric about Russia being bad and Ukraine being good. One can defensibly believe and argue that is just pure propaganda and lies necessitated by the American public's siding with Ukraine and democracy (flawed as it was) over Putin and his kleptocratic dictatorship. 

The evidence is clear and convincing that the sympathy of Republican Party elites is with Putin and the kleptocrats, not Ukraine and the democrats. Right now, they just have to act otherwise or maybe face some opposition in the 2022 elections that they can subvert now simply by pretending to be democratic. The Republican rank and file can be subverted and kept loyal by this simple ruse because they have been taught to hate and distrust Democrats with serious intensity.

 

Question: Is arguing that there is major Republican Party elite culpability here (i) irrational, and/or (ii) not supported by significant evidence?

Footnote: 

1. For context about the current Russian geopolitical mindset, here is some commentary on an influential Russian book The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, by Aleksandr Dugin. Wikipedia writes: 

In Foundations of Geopolitics, Dugin calls for the United States and Atlanticism to lose their influence in Eurasia, and for Russia to rebuild its influence through annexations and alliances.

The book declares that "the battle for the world rule of Russians" has not ended and Russia remains "the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution". The Eurasian Empire will be constructed "on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us."

Military operations play relatively little role. The textbook advocates a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.

The book states that "the maximum task [of the future] is the 'Finlandization' of all of Europe". 

In Europe: 

• Germany should be offered the de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe. Kaliningrad Oblast could be given back to Germany. The book uses the term "Moscow–Berlin axis".  

• France should be encouraged to form a bloc with Germany, as they both have a "firm anti-Atlanticist tradition".

• The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from Europe. 

• Finland should be absorbed into Russia. Southern Finland will be combined with the Republic of Karelia and northern Finland will be "donated to Murmansk Oblast". 

• Romania, North Macedonia, Serbia, "Serbian Bosnia" and Greece – "Orthodox collectivist East" – will unite with "Moscow the Third Rome" and reject the "rational-individualistic West". 

• Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire [ideologically contained, i.e., a pro-Russia puppet regime is installed], which would be inadmissible.