What Ukraine Is Fighting For

Zelensky and his family in happier times.
Click to enlarge.

BBC correspondent Katty Kay, based in the United States, writes:

Since coming into office, Joe Biden has spoken repeatedly about the tectonic struggle between democracy and autocracy. It's been the leitmotif of his presidency. His argument is that democracy must deliver for its people if it's going to survive. But there's another side to that social contract. We citizens have to deliver for democracy as well.

For a start, we have to bother to vote. It's an activity America is famously bad at. In the 2020 election, one of the most consequential in recent history, only 62% of eligible voters bothered to turn out and vote. That was a modern day high. The UK doesn't do much better, 67% voted in its last general election. . . .

Of course it's not just the lack of participation that weakens liberal societies. Twenty-first century democracies are hotbeds of social and economic inequality. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer. Many democracies, like the US, have such polarised political systems that you can't get laws passed that would make lives better. They've become virtually ungovernable. Long-term challenges, like climate change, get kicked down the road as politicians focus their efforts on short term gains, like getting re-elected.

Democracies aren't giving the next generation the tools they will need to be responsible democratic citizens in a complicated, changing world. Our kids need lessons on how to spot real news from fake news and how to avoid baseless conspiracy theories that undermine the strength of democracy itself. . . .

I am part of a generation that has taken political pluralism for granted. Decades of peace produced a failure of imagination. Despite the war tales our parents told us, we couldn't envisage that a way of life we'd all got used to might disappear if we didn't defend it.

Ukraine has snapped us awake. It has shown us both the risks, and, more inspiringly, what it means to really care for democracy. In a war they didn't choose, Ukrainians are fighting, and dying, for the right to free elections, to the rule of law, and an impartial media, for the right to be a democratic country. Their bravery puts our laziness to shame.

Ukrainian President Zelensky will be interviewed on the long-running CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes tomorrow.  Excerpt:

 

"We are defending the ability of a person to live in the modern world," Zelensky says. Rhetorically, no one can dispute that inconvenient truth that puts all Western nations to shame.  "Being brave is our brand, " Zelensky said two days ago, "This is what it means to be us. To be Ukrainians. To be brave. If everyone in the world had at least ten percent of the courage that we Ukrainians have, there would be no danger to international law at all."

It may not be not quite that simple - but once again, he gets to the heart of the moral dilemma confronting the West that I have mentioned since my first post about this damnable war: every moral fiber quivers with the impulse to join Zelensky and his people in the fight against a monstrous evil; but to do so would probably mean a death sentence for many millions of people far from Ukraine, and unthinkable destruction on a gigantic scale. A devil's dilemma, that's what it is.

And who knows but what the unthinkable won't happen anyway, no matter how carefully Western leaders tiptoe around the edge of the abyss?  God forbid.  I have no idea what to do or what to say. I can only join with all other decent men and women in saluting the fierce courage of the Ukrainians and their indomitable president. May God deliver them from all assaults of the enemy and give them peace - and all the rest of the world, too. 

For a long, thoughtful read, here's a link to an essay by the BBC's Fergal Keane:  "Ukraine, the UN and History's Greatest Broken Promise."

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