A funny thing happened on the way to Kyiv

Tragic things happen when powerful countries try to smash weak ones into submission. In Ukraine, Russia is now paying the cost of not having learned the lesson that in 1939 the brave people of Finland first taught them when Finnish troops on skis fought off a Soviet invasion. Decades later Afghan tribal fighters frustrated a Soviet invasion that aimed to rescue the unpopular communist government and ended up being forced to withdraw in defeat. That adventure played a role in the later collapse of the Soviet system itself. Now the Ukrainians are teaching Russia a new lesson on the cost of hubris.

The leaders of strong countries usually underestimate the will to resist of people defending their land on their own soil. In 1961, the CIA thought the U.S.-backed proxy invasion of Cuba effected through anti-Castro Cuban exiles, would be a cakewalk. Cuban forces would run or melt away, and the anti-Castro underground would paralyze the country. Instead, the underground, penetrated by Cuban intelligence, were imprisoned and the invaders were defeated in less than 72 hours. Later, the United States underestimated the resistance of the Vietnamese and the Iraqis at the cost of many lives and enormous treasure.

I once asked Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a top adviser to President John F.  Kennedy, what was the main reason the Bay of Pigs invasion was such a disaster. “We underestimated Fidel Castro’s capacity for leadership,” he responded. If the Americans and the exiles were surprised by Fidel Castro’s ability to rally Cubans against the invasion, the whole world is shocked at the valiant leadership of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky faced by overwhelming Russian power.

Fidel Castro was another story and should not have been underestimated so drastically by the United States. After all, Castro came to power after an improbable victory over the more numerous and better equipped troops of Fulgencio Batista, which should have raised all kinds of red flags in Washington and Langley but did not.

As a result, the U.S. suffered a defeat on the ground and humiliation at the United Nations where Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who was kept in the dark by his own government, argued the United States had played no role in the invasion. Shortly thereafter, President Kennedy assumed full responsibility for the debacle known in foreign policy circles as “the perfect disaster.”

Zelensky has been a true surprise. Before he became a politician, he was a comic and TV personality. Before he was president, he played one on television. Some people concluded that his presidency would be a joke. They were so wrong. Zelensky was elected president in a peaceful election. No one could have imagined his serene, energetic, and strong leadership in response to a massive Russian invasion.

Zelensky is the man that Donald Trump tried unsuccessfully to blackmail into manufacturing misinformation with which to smear Joe Biden in exchange for U.S. military assistance. Zelensky has the distinction of having stood up to two of the world’s biggest bullies: Trump and Putin. If there were a Nobel Prize for character, courage, and integrity, Zelensky would be the leading candidate.

Trump and Putin are brothers in delusion. Trump thought he could make America white again. Putin imagines he can put the egg back in the shell, reconstitute the old Soviet Union one piece at a time, starting with Ukraine. Putin considers the breakup of the Soviet Union the “worst tragedy of the twentieth century.” That’s a curious choice in the category of worst tragedies, which include the Holocaust, the Gulag, and two bloody world wars, Hiroshima and Nagasaki among many other genocides and disasters.

Delusional rulers lead their nations into devastating disasters. Hitler’s fantasy of a German 1,000-year-Reich lasted twelve, left Germany a smoldering rubble, and Hitler dead.

Trump’s delusions of grandeur contributed greatly to the Covid-19 catastrophe. Trump knew more about war than the generals and more about epidemics than the epidemiologists. He was not going to be persuaded to adopt public health measures or a tone of urgency and mourning at the cost of being unable to boast that he presided over “the best economy ever.” Neither science, truth, nor death would prevent him from achieving the grandiose dream of having his likeness carved into Mt. Rushmore. He sacrificed many lives for nothing. Instead of a great economy, he led the country into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Instead of being honored at Mt. Rushmore, he stands as the only president to have been impeached twice.

The Ukrainian people have given a lesson of what a nation that stands together against a common foe can accomplish. The United States, in sad contrast, has shown what happens in a nation, engaged in a war against an invisible and implacable enemy, when the centrifugal force driving things apart exceeds the centripetal force bringing things together toward a common center: pandemonium, chaos, catastrophe.