New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had a piece out yesterday entitled "This Is Putin's War. But America and NATO Aren't Innocent Bystanders."  It is quite a remarkable rejection of the post-war liberal order and a spineless bit of appeasement.

First, Friedman writes: "Putin is the most powerful, unchecked Russian leader since Stalin."  Really?  This is factually untrue.  Before the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, its population exceeded 290 million.  The current population of Russia is less than half that, 144 million.  Russia's area is 2 million square miles, or about one quarter smaller than was the Soviet Union's, and its position relative to the U.S. is commensurately weaker.  In 1965, the Soviet economy was estimated at near 40% that of the U.S.  The Russian economy, depending on the measure used, is 7–17% of the U.S. economy today, one third of its relative strength in Soviet days.

To call Putin the most powerful Russian leader since Stalin is pure fantasy.  Indeed, the entire thrust of Putin's reasoning is to recover the power and standing of Russia during Soviet and imperial times.  Friedman should, and no doubt does, know this.  Why does he say it?  Because he is either afraid of the implications of confronting Russia or a fan of appeasement.  In other words, he is either a coward or unprincipled.

Friedman's main point is that the invasion of Ukraine is NATO's fault and that, really, the world should be carved up into spheres of interest, self-determination be damned.  He writes:

Most Americans paid scant attention to the expansion of NATO in the late 1990s and early 2000s to countries in Eastern and Central Europe like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, all of which had been part of the former Soviet Union or its sphere of influence.

The mystery was why the U.S. — which throughout the Cold War dreamed that Russia might one day have a democratic revolution and a leader who, however haltingly, would try to make Russia into a democracy and join the West — would choose to quickly push NATO into Russia's face when it was weak.

The underlying assumption here is that Russia has some sort of God-given sphere of influence.  Friedman suggests that when Russia collapsed, Post-It notes should have been placed on Ukraine, Belarus, and eastern Europe, stating, "Reserved for Russia When It Feels Better."

Image: Putin signs paper saying part of Ukraine is now Russia.  YouTube screen grab.

This is absolute nonsense.  The Soviet Union collapsed because communism was a terrible system, not because it was defeated in a war that ended in some sort of peace treaty granting Russia an exclusive sphere of influence.  The Soviet Union fractured into various nation-states because that's what its citizens wanted.  Russia's collapse was not caused by anyone other than the Russians themselves.  And if Russia is weak today, well, communism sucks, and it has a long tail.

The implications of Friedman's reasoning are unbelievable.  It implies, for a start, that Ukraine and Belarus have no right to exist.  But it's more than that: the Baltics have no right to exist, nor does Poland or southern and central Europe—Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia, as well as Romania and Bulgaria—places where Russia never had material influence before the communist era should also be under Russian "stewardship."  Hey, let's give half of Europe to Russia, because, you know, we wouldn't want to hurt the Russians' tender feelings.

Oh, if only we had been more tactful!  Friedman again:

To be sure, post-Cold War Russia evolving into a liberal system — the way post-World War II Germany and Japan did — was hardly a sure thing. Indeed, given Russia's scant experience with democracy, it was a long shot. But some of us then thought it was a long shot worth trying, because even a less-than-democratic Russia — if it had been included rather than excluded from a new European security order — might have had much less interest or incentive in menacing its neighbors.

This paragraph is surreal. Friedman concedes that democracy in Russia was "a long shot."  But even though that was not the expected outcome — that's the definition of a "long shot" — we should have reserved certain countries for Russia's sphere of influence because, well, maybe Moscow would have been nicer, if only we had rolled over pre-emptively.

This is as bad a piece as Friedman has ever written.  Truly damning.

Steven Kopits is the president of Princeton Policy Advisors.