Yes, the U.S. has done despicable things as part of a despicable legacy of European colonization of the western hemisphere, “but the key element in the tankie mindset is the simple-minded assumption that only the U.S. can be imperialist, and thus any country that opposes the U.S. must be supported.”[1]
Tankies keep showing up in my social media feeds and so it’s time to set the record straight: Eastern European countries joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization do not do so because they have been conquered by or reduced to—the tankies’ preferred term—“proxies” of the U.S. or NATO but because they fear being conquered by or reduced to “proxies” of Russia, which has invaded Georgia and twice invaded Ukraine. This is why Finland and Sweden recently joined NATO. This is why Ukraine seeks to join NATO. This is why a number of other countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain have joined NATO.[2]
Vladimir Putin vehemently objects to this expansion,[3] but his enacted aspirations to emulate Peter the Great and restore “Russian lands”[4] are reasons for his neighbors to fear Russia and run into NATO’s embrace. Putin likely could have avoided the NATO expansion he so strongly opposes simply by being less bellicose. But no, he had to do his Peter the Great imitation.
The idea that only the U.S. is evil is 1) Manichean and 2) a false dichotomy. The unfortunate reality is that all powerful countries seek to advance their own interests—there is always a rationalization for territorial expansion because our international authoritarian system of social organization is inherently unsustainable and has been so from its beginning[5]—at the expense of countries they deem weaker. This explains Russian imperialism just as it explains material U.S. support for genocide in Gaza and Lebanon and Israel’s widening war in the name of oil. It’s called realism theory (also realpolitik) and the U.S., China, Russia, and other colonizing powers are all in varying ways and to varying degrees evil.
Tankies refuse to recognize this, valorizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, valorizing Syria’s dictator, and so on.[6] And I am not even in the slightest bit impressed.
[1] Roane Carey, “Don’t Be a Tankie: How the Left Should Respond to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine,” International Viewpoint, March 10, 2022, https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7555
[2] Associated Press, “Timeline of NATO expansion since 1949,” May 10, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-world-war-ii-sweden-finland-240d97572cc783b2c7ff6e7122dd72d2; Phelan Chatterjee, “How Sweden and Finland went from neutral to Nato,” British Broadcasting Corporation, July 11, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61397478; Laura Gozzi, “Sweden formally joins Nato military alliance,” British Broadcasting Corporation, March 7, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68506223
[3] Dan Bloom, Esther Webber, and Jamie Dettmer, “Putin threatens war as Western allies near deal on missile strikes in Russia,” Politico, September 12, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-vladimir-putin-war-in-ukraine-missile-strike-deal-britain-keir-starmer-united-states-joe-biden-white-house-summit-nato-iran-diplomacy/; Josh Cheetham and Jake Horton, “War in Ukraine: Fact-checking Russian claims that Nato troops are fighting in Ukraine,” British Broadcasting Corporation, September 21, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/62974506; Thomas Graham, “What Does Putin Really Want in Ukraine?” Council on Foreign Relations, May 16, 2024, https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/what-does-putin-really-want-ukraine; Jonathan Guyer, “How America’s NATO expansion obsession plays into the Ukraine crisis,” Vox, January 27, 2022, https://www.vox.com/22900113/nato-ukraine-russia-crisis-clinton-expansion
[4] Guardian, “Putin compares himself to Peter the Great in quest to take back Russian lands,” June 10, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares-himself-to-peter-the-great-in-quest-to-take-back-russian-lands; Simeon Netchev, “Peter the Great and the Russian Empire, c. 1725,” World History Encyclopedia, September 18, 2023, https://www.worldhistory.org/image/17891/peter-the-great-and-the-russian-empire-c-1725/
[5] John H. Bodley, Victims of Progress, 5th ed. (Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2008).
[6] Roane Carey, “Don’t Be a Tankie: How the Left Should Respond to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine,” International Viewpoint, March 10, 2022, https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7555