Cold War language about Western unity and the “long fight” against autocracy has become more rousing as Russia flounders in Ukraine. It is time to start worrying that the response to Vladimir Putin's aggression, led by U.S. President Joe Biden, might cause more widespread damage than even the Russian despot had planned.
One only has to recall the Western reaction to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. After that atrocity, politicians and journalists freely indulged in the kind of spine-stiffening rhetoric Biden used in Warsaw last week. Those few dissenters who warned against self-congratulatory hawkishness — including the late writer Susan Sontag, who pleaded, “Let's not be stupid together” — were viciously attacked.
As it happened, the decision to declare an open-ended war on terror — quickly taken and fulsomely endorsed in that atmosphere of fervent unanimity — led to violence on multiple continents and helped unravel entire societies.
