Putin and Lincoln: Two Scorched-Earth Legacies

By all rights, any American who thinks the American Civil War was righteous, fair and necessary should come out in full support of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Hear me out.

I will not argue with you that the War Between the States (Civil War) was not partially, or even primarily, about freeing the slaves. But it was not entirely about freeing the slaves. The "states' rights" argument was real, and it was important, and it is the states' rights argument with which this post is concerned. 

How is Putin's invasion of the Ukraine not just as much a Civil War as was Lincoln's invasion of the Confederacy?

The states that formed the Confederacy believed that the federal government, by its persistent denial of states' rights, had dissolved the legal and political ties between the federal government and the states. The Confederacy, in other words, no longer wanted to be governed by what it considered a despotic government. And isn't that what Ukraine did when the Soviet Union dissolved? Did Ukraine not throw off the chains of a despotic government and assert self-rule? And did not Russia reject the Ukraine's right to separate itself from Russia on any terms, just like the United States rejected the Confederate states' claims to the legitimacy of separating themselves, on their defined terms, from the U.S.?

Putin and Lincoln both Aggressors

In the American Civil War, the Confederacy fired the first actual shot, but it was not until Lincoln purposefully provoked them to do so. After the Confederates defeated Lincoln's troops at Fort Sumter, Lincoln immediately responded by sending 70,000 troops to crush the "rebellion." There is a bit of a gap in how long it took Putin to send 100,000 troops into the Ukraine to force it to again become a part of a new USSR, but Putin's actions are essentially the same as Lincoln's (and vice versa). 

Putin's and Lincoln's Scorched Earth Policies

Modern American's have developed more than just a comfort level with Lincoln's scorched earth military tactics against the South. The vast majority might cringe (though most do not) upon learning about the brutal and often cruel razing of the South, but they largely have come to think of Lincoln's scorched-earth policy as necessary, whether their justification is the freeing of the slaves, the preservation of the union, or both. 

If we examine carefully what Putin has said about his invasion of Ukraine, it was to free ethnic Russians who still wanted to be part of Russia, and to preserve what Putin (and many Russian citizens) consider to be the rightful union of the nation-states that once were part of the USSR. Attempting to differentiate Lincoln from Putin when it comes to waging war against your own is splitting hairs.

There is scarcely a scintilla of difference between Sherman's (Lincoln's) "March to the Sea" and Putin's march to Kyiv, nor will there be much of a difference between what happened to Atlanta and to the towns through which Sherman passed to reach that city, and what is going to happen to Kyiv, and already has happened to the towns through which Russian troops have passed to reach the capitol of Ukraine. Sherman destroyed industry, infrastructure and civilian property, and many civilians were killed or left starving in the wake of Lincoln's campaign against the South. I suppose some people apply some sort of weird morality or contextual perspective to justify Lincoln's scorched-earth policy while condemning Putin's scorched-earth policy. Me? I think scorched-earth policies are damnable…period.

(At this point an interesting scenario appears in this argument. Had the Confederacy repelled the Union troops and remained free for some period of time, would another Union President have come along in, let's say, 30 years, and launched another offensive against the Confederacy to force them back into the original union? Not only would that have been possible, I would argue that it would have been likely, and that today's Americans would have applauded that move, too.)

So, What's the Real Difference?

Most Americans today view Lincoln's assault on the South as a "just war" and Putin's assault on Ukraine as manifestly unjust. I would venture to say that most Russians, 100 years from now, will view Putin's re-annexation of Ukraine as a good and just war.  

Personally, I view both the American Civil War and the Russian invasion of Ukraine as essentially the same; they are both manifestly the unjust actions of despotic heads of state, no matter what their justifications and outcomes were or will be.