Did the callousness of American conservatives make Putin over-confident about his prospects in Ukraine?
Republicans have been engaged in a desperate effort to try to blame the Russian attack on Ukraine on President Joe Biden. One common GOP trope is to try to claim that the United States chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan encouraged Putin to attack the Ukraine. A more careful analysis of Putin's motivations however suggests that it was the gullibility of American conservatives, and the fecklessness of Republican politicians in the United States that led Putin to think that the United States would be incapable of mounting any effective response to the attack on Ukraine.
The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was not a surprise, in fact, it was exactly what Republicans had hoped for. The Trump Administration and Mike Pompeo negotiated with the Taliban, with the intent that they would be retaking control of Afghanistan. Mike Pompeo met with Taliban leaders in November of 2020 to arrange to have them take over control of the country. The administration of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, which had been built up with the support of foreign nations, was shut out of the Pompeo-Taliban negotiations. After negotiating to have the Taliban take over Afghanistan, the Trump administration then demanded the release of 5000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons. Trump and his Administration staffers boasted that Biden would not be able to pull out of the Afghan deal. In spite of having heard these boasts from Trump, at no point did Congressional Republicans publicly object to the Pompeo-Taliban agreement, or offer to assist Biden in trying to undo the Trump Administration's agreement to pursue a more positive outcome in Afghanistan. What the situation in Afghanistan really demonstrated to Putin was that the Republican Party of the United States was so callous, and so craven, that its members would eagerly abuse the authority of their offices for any kind of political gain, even if it meant compromising US National Security, or putting a terrorist organization that was partly responsible for the worst terrorist attack on the United States in American history back in control of Afghanistan.
Putin had other reasons to think that the GOP would do everything in their power to prevent a strong response to his attack on the Ukraine. Republicans willfully downplayed the results of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, even though the report stated plainly in the first few pages that Trump was aware of Russian efforts to assist his campaign and intended to benefit from it. Republicans circled the wagons around Trump when he attempted to extort "dirt" on the Biden campaign from the Ukraine, and withheld the delivery of military aid intended to bolster Ukraine's efforts to fight pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region. A group of eight Republican Senators spent July 4th of 2018 visiting Russia, and they still have not spoken publicly about the nature of their visit, or who they spoke to during that trip. Russian operatives like Maria Butina were incredibly successful in infiltrating GOP circles, and are widely suspected of having helped direct large amounts of funding from Russian oligarchs, to conservative Super-PACs that then used that Russian funding to run attack ads against Democratic political candidates.
In the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin's belief in strong support from American Republicans was proven correct. Chief Republican Party propagandist Tucker Carlson used his FOX Propaganda Network television program to insist that American conservatives should support Putin and pray for a rapid defeat of the Ukraine. Trump supporters at a rally attended by two Republican lawmakers chanted their support for Putin and Russia. Donald J. Trump and Mike Pompeo both publicly praised Putin for his attack on the Ukraine. Representative Matt Rosendale, a Republican from Montana, introduced a bill in Congress that would prevent aid for Ukraine until the "southern border is secure" (a conservative red herring as the idea of what constitutes "secure" in such discussions is entirely subjective so waiting for the Southern border to be "secure" basically means waiting for Southern whites to abandon their racist views of Hispanics.) Putin had every reason to think that the Republican Party would prevent any strong response from the US against the attack on the Ukraine. The one thing that Putin apparently didn't expect, and this turned out to be his critical weakness, is that the Ukrainian people are a hell of a lot better at creating counter-narratives against information warfare than the Democratic Party of the United States is.
The Ukraine is winning the information war against the Kremlin and the Republican Party of the United States. In spite of relentless attacks from pro-Kremlin GOP operatives in the United States, Ukrainian leaders have been able to present a sympathetic portrayal of their plight. President Zelensky is now regarded as an international hero and a great leader for his people, and Russia is seen as a bumbling ape of a country with a flagging army that tried to bully a smaller, but surprisingly tough neighbor. The people of Ukraine have the overwhelming support of both Europeans and Americans. The conflict in Ukraine taps into the classical Biblical narrative of "David versus Goliath", and people all over the world are delighted by stories of Russia running out of tanks and armed troop transports, and having to ask other countries for soldiers, because they are unable to spark any widespread sense of patriotism that would permit them to recruit reserve soldiers from their own population.
Republican Party claims that Biden is to blame for the attack on the Ukraine are nonsense, and should be disregarded. Right now the Republican Party of the United States is running around with their tail between their legs because they can't find a narrative to try to extricate themselves from their past support for Russia. GOP support for the Russian attack on Ukraine was demonstrated by events in Afghanistan, and continued into the early days of the invasion. Even ten days into the war in Ukraine, the Republican Party is in disarray over those who want to present a hawkish anti-Russian narrative, and those who still want to call for an end to sanctions against Russia, and support of the Putin regime.
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