The investigation into Russia’s interference in last year’s election is causing a slow-motion meltdown in President Donald Trump’s White House and making life increasingly uncomfortable for elected Republicans. But the issue is also causing problems, albeit less existential ones, on the political left.

As Peter Beinart notes in The Atlantic, some anti-war leftists fear that the Russia scandal will push the Democratic Party toward a more hawkish foreign policy, so they’re trying to “minimize Russia’s election meddling to oppose what they see as a new Cold War. It’s a genuinely principled position. The problem is that principles are blinding them to facts.” Beinart cites writers Max Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald, but he also could have named linguist Noam Chomsky, filmmaker Oliver Stone, and scholar Stephen Cohen. In a recent interview, Chomsky derided the Democrats for attacking Trump’s attempts to improve ties with Russia, saying, “It’s one of the few decent things Trump has been doing. So maybe members of his transition team contacted the Russians. Is that a bad thing?”

As Beinart argues, the problem with the Russia skeptics, whom he describes as Jeffersonian anti-interventionists, is that they ignore the genuine harm done by Russian interference in the American election. “In recent years the United States has waged proxy battles against Russia in places like Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan, which are far from American shores,” Beinart concedes. “Jeffersonians can legitimately argue that America’s struggle for influence in those countries does more harm than good.” But the election interference story is different since it involves America itself: “No matter how anti-interventionist you are, you need to protect your own country.”

It’s hard to argue with Beinart’s point—and I’d extend it further. While the left should be wary of American hawks eager to launch a new Cold War, there is no reason to entertain any illusions about Putin’s foreign policy, which the left should oppose based on its own principles.

The problem is not just the nature of Putin’s autocratic government, which uses social conservatism and nationalism to hold together a nation frayed by massive economic inequality. Bad governments are commonplace, and the U.S. works with more than its share of them, from Saudi Arabia to the People’s Republic of China. The problem is that Russia’s foreign policy threatens to export many of the Putin regime’s worst features, particularly xenophobia and homophobia.