Russia's invasion of Ukraine makes neocons — not national conservatives — look bad

Kyiv.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

There is a growing sense in some quarters that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a setback for national conservatism. Many on the right instinctively see the Kremlin's war differently than the nascent populists do, and some of the latter have genuinely allowed reasonable criticisms of the West's missteps, especially on NATO expansion, to bleed into credulity about Russia's claims.

But it's not entirely clear that anything going on in Ukraine particularly discredits the new nationalists' ideas, at least in their higher-brow form, as opposed to perhaps some of their most vocal personalities. And that's not just because the media is still full of commentators who sold the Iraq War to Americans, and who are now explaining the Russo-Ukrainian War to us, even at times leading the charge on the effort to dismiss rivals they brand as the new unpatriotic conservatives.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.