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Antonio Garcia Martinez is a Cuban-American tech entrepreneur and author who has become a staple on conservative Twitter appeared on Joe Rogan, where they discussed his latest trip to Ukraine, the will of the Ukrainian people to fight the Russian invasion, and why the recent fascination by some people in the right with the Putin regime as a response to domestic politics is a terrible mistake.
Martinez, who is the son of Cuban-Americans who fled the Castro regime, spent weeks traveling through the Polish border with Ukraine and went to Lviv, the westernmost city of the country where he witnessed first-hand the effects the war is having on the Ukrainian national consciousness, how the war the Ukrainians are fighting against the Russians is “total war” he said.
What does ‘total war’ look like in the 21st century?
Martinez went to Western Ukraine to report the Israeli government’s efforts to evacuate the Ukrainian Jewish from the war zone. He was truly astonished at the mere scale of the conflict and the way an entire country can suddenly be embroiled in an existential conflict in a matter of weeks.
Antonio noted how millions of people have been forced to become refugees due to the invasion, and was amazed at the scale of the conflict. When going into a Polish train station, he saw a “constant stream of mothers and refugees” who have fled their country. Martinez described the way Polish civilians have mobilized to aid Ukrainian refugees who have been flowing into the country, noting that practically the entire “care for refugees comes is mostly volunteers and NGOs, there isn’t that much top-down organization.”
The war in Ukraine, according to what Martinez experienced, is totally different from what anyone in the United States or the Western world has ever experienced. He explained that while he has been in countries in conflict before, he had never witnessed the level of total commitment to the war as he saw in Ukraine.
Martinez pointed out that, while the United States has been involved in tons of wars and conflicts, war has “not been a direct experience (…) your life and my life don’t really change.” Ukraine, however, is entirely different. “Ukraine is experiencing what Clausewitz would call total war, all the resources of the society are geared towards one goal, which is kicking out the Russian invaders.”
In Ukraine, the entire country is working together towards aiding the war effort, “everyone in that society is either fighting at the frontlines (…) supporting those fighters (…) or is a refugee “, and the daily life for Ukrainian civilians is now entirely defined by the ongoing war, and how. He told the story of how he saw a group of school kids who were singing patriotic songs while filling sandbags, as a way to help the war effort as they are too young to volunteer to fight.
Although he clarified he is not a military expert, Antonio said he doesn’t see a way the Russians can somehow hold the country. “The Ukrainians are super nationalistic, (…) they see this as their nationhood birth moment,” and he doubts that Putin will have the manpower that will be needed to occupy a country of that size.
Antonio Garcia Martinez says the conservatives who support Russia are like the “hippies that supported Cuba 20 years ago.”
While Ukrainians have been fighting for their country, some Americans have been torn over the position they should take on the Russian invasion. While an overwhelming majority of Republicans support Ukraine and condemn the Russian invasion, there have been some conservative pundits who have basically repeated Kremlin talking points or have dedicated more time to bashing the universal support towards Ukraine than the Russian invasion itself.
Martinez lashed out against this group of people, saying that it appears some people on the right have decided to think, due to the traumas and failures of the intervention in Iraq or Afghanistan, that America can’t have a positive influence in the world and that any type of intervention or support will not bring any positive effect on the ground, an opinion that is “very disappointing.”
He criticized the “New Right” for this type of argument, saying that it “is weird that the right-wing is turning kind of anti-US” and argued that some conservatives have soft spot for Putin’s Russia since he is “antiwoke, and he stands against much of what they dislike of the liberal west.” He further noted that even within this line of thinking supporting Russia makes no sense as “their church attendance is lower than ours, their birth rate is lower than ours, all the ills of society (…) that the trads (traditionalist) are obsessed with, Russia suffers them as much if not more than us.”
Martinez had earlier criticized the American custom to project domestic, internal squabbles onto any foreign country, “we have this luxury in the United States (…) we take the outside world, and we project our domestic political neurosis onto them.”
He also criticized the way many seem to be skeptical of Ukraine just because people who had supported “woke” causes they had opposed before were now fully supporting Ukraine. Martinez noted that the fact that some people who you disagree with are in favor of something does not change the fact that Ukraine is right, and asked those Ukraine-skeptics “are you actually an independent thinker or just a contrarian a**hole.”
Martinez declared that debating over Ukraine with such groups was like “debating with hippies about Cuba 20 years ago” and said that those who tend to think that America is the worst place in the world and criticize it continuously are the ones who “typically can’t live outside of it”
The war was also a wake-up moment for Martinez, who said that the issues that consume American politics and that seem to be irreparably dividing the country are trivial compared to the existential war the Ukrainians are going through right now.
Daniel is a Political Science and Economics student from the University of South Florida. He worked as a congressional intern to Rep. Gus Bilirakis (FL-12) from January to May 2020. He also is the head of international analysis at Politiks // Daniel es un estudiante de Cs Políticas y Economía en la Universidad del Sur de la Florida. Trabajo como pasante legislativo para el Representate Gus Bilirakis (FL-12) desde enero hasta mayo del 2020. Daniel también es el jefe de análisis internacional de Politiks.