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Our Cowardly Handling of Ukraine Could Come Back to Bite Us
If America has learned anything from foreign entanglements over the past century, surely it is this: enemy conflicts must be engaged only if our vital interests are at stake. A war worth fighting must have clear objectives and a path to victory.
Clearly in WWII, all options save winning were unthinkable. We did win and the modern classical liberal order was created.
We had no such resolve in Vietnam. Worried about riling China and with growing domestic programs to fund, we fought not to win but for containment and so lost to a determined foe. America was humiliated, forfeiting immense blood and treasure as well as our national self-confidence.
Meanwhile, the Cold War spanned 45 fretful years during which the world became more dangerous. Neither side could afford to fall behind in the nuclear arms race when Mutually Assured Destruction was our defense against annihilation.
Ronald Reagan’s idea of actually defeating the Evil Empire turned the tide. Massive arms superiority and strategic defense weaponry convinced the Soviets that future efforts were futile.
The Middle East wars were fought without particular strategic goals and no endgame. We seem to believe we could mitigate Islamist terrorism through nation-building and intervention in centuries-old intertribal conflicts. We finally beat a disgraceful retreat with little to show for our losses.
Yet these lessons of history seem lost on our current administration’s response in Ukraine. We don’t want our proxy, Ukraine, to lose but we’re not committed to winning either.
The heroic Ukrainians have fought to a virtual standoff. Yet, as a result of our indecisiveness, the outcome remains in doubt.
The seminal question was: why get involved at all? Is the Russian aggression basically a regional dustup, like our Middle East debacle? Or does a hegemonically ambitious autocrat represent an existential threat, analogous to the prelude to WW II?
Most Americans seem to realize this conflict has implications beyond the ancient Russian/Ukrainian grudges. If Russia successfully breaches Ukrainian sovereignty, it will be the end of the international rules based order that has sustained general peace and prosperity since WWII. Moreover, if nuclear weapons or their threat are decisive, it will embolden rogue states everywhere, including China and Iran.
President Zelensky has pleaded many times for faster delivery of air defenses and anti-missile systems. Yet our aid to Ukraine has been halting and inadequate. Not until late April did the Biden administration announce it would ship 90 desperately needed howitzers.
When the US finally decided to provide Ukraine with MLR (multiple launch rocket) systems, to defend against Russia’s unremitting air attacks,
only MLRs with a 70 km range, not the 300 km range necessary to reach Russian targets, were provided.
Too little, too late. Ukraine’s foreign minister lamented that if Ukraine had received more weapons earlier the situation today would be “much different… much better.”
Meanwhile, the unimaginable human toll, the death and destruction of Ukraine, continues to mount. Last month, the UN development agency announce that if the war continues, an astounding 90% of Ukrainians would be at or below poverty levels.
According to the UN refugee agency, 13 million people have been displaced, which has serious political and military consequences. When Ukrainians are scattered, it makes unity more difficult and Russian control easier. A hollowed-out Ukraine also enables Russia to take more Ukrainian territory at war’s end.
US hesitation to provide more robust help to Ukraine is based on the fear of escalation and possible nuclear war with Russia. Some have urged Ukraine into an armistice that involves territorial concessions.
But that wouldn’t stop the bear. Instead, it would incentivize further military incursions. Over-caution could actually increase the possibility of escalation.
Biden and NATO have repeatedly ruled out direct military involvement and nuclear deployment without getting any concessions in return. Our weakness sends a message to Russia and other aggressors that threatening nuclear weapons works to soften western resistance.
The free world must decide what it stands for and how to meet this moment. If we don’t thwart Russian ambitions now, it will likely get more dangerous in the future. Ukraine, for their survival and ours, deserves protection now.
Published in Foreign Policy, Military
It does. Putin is not Hitler. Zelenskyy is not Churchill. Russia is not Germany. Ukraine is not France or Poland or the UK. Locking oneself into a frame of reference of the past when Europe was a very different place prevents one from seeing things as they are in the current day.
So they are not the exact same people. It doesn’t matter. When you learn from history, nobody is exactly the same. The principles are the same, however. When you appease an autocratic dictator who is invading countries, he just laughs and takes more. I didn’t have to use Hitler. I could have cited the Viking conquests where Europeans thought if they just gave them enough gold, they would go away. Or Napolean. Or the Ottoman Turks, who gobbled up adjoining territories for Centuries.
Heck, I could have just cited recent Russian history itself. General Patton wanted to invade Russia to stop them from their conquests of Eastern Europe, but Harry Truman wouldn’t let him. As a result, Russia conquered something like 17 adjoining countries and made satellites out of another dozen Eastern European countries, putting most of Asia into dark Communism which resulted in the murder of tens of millions of people and abject misery for the survivors.
I read either in Solzenitsen’s Gulag Archipelago or Victor Korchnoi’s autobiography, that people in Russia were surprised how much Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were admired, when they gave away half of Europe to Russian domination with nothing in return. They considered the Western leaders to be stupid dupes who were easily taken advantage of by Stalin.
The Ukrainians need help; we have self-interested as well as altruistic reasons to help them. What’s “immoral” about that?
Immoral was when Biden pandered to Putin and Merkel by lifting Trump’s ban on the Nordstream 2 pipeline. Aside from the damage it was going to do to the Ukrainian economy, Putin may have interpreted it as a signal from Biden that Russia had a free hand in Ukraine.
You misunderstand my point about Finland and Sweden. The point is, they remained neutral through the entire Cold War. Evidently, they considered the Soviet Union a rational actor in foreign affairs. And so was Putin, they thought — until he invaded Ukraine.
“Brand New Thing” — that’s hilarious. Isolationists interpret every overseas involvement as the same thing!
In any case. “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” (Winston Churchill, after George Santayana and Edmund Burke.)
The thought of engaging in any military action or frankly any external conflict when our current administration is very obviously anti-American is the deciding variable. We need to limit every possible conduct of this administration and pick up the pieces later. Sorry Ukraine. You should’ve been more prepared.
I don’t think it would take a one-to-one war between Russia and the United States to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I think we need a united front that asserts every nation’s right to be sovereign. It would be led by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. There is a tremendous amount of support for stopping Putin’s aggression.
When 41 stopped Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he had the help and support 35 other nations. The United Nations and International Court of Justice were involved in the Serbia and Croatia and Bosnia conflict. Our military was one of many.
Europe has a real interest in stopping Putin because of the refugees he is creating.
Every one of the countries and institutions I’ve mentioned has made mistakes in the past of one sort of another. But I think the world’s nations have learned a lot.
Using Ukrainians as cannon fodder for our war?
I’m not sure what you mean. Am I supposed to be an isolationist in your view? Then why am I saying this is not the same thing?
Sure. But if you continue to force everything into a WWII analog, what happens when reality doesn’t conform? One must be flexible and nimble and adjust to the facts on the ground. Locking yourself into a WWII analog prevents the required nimbleness.
Not just anti-American, but the Biden regime is compromised by China. We have to assume that any action (or non-action) is being done to benefit the CCP.
If the patient is bleeding out and all you have is a doctor being sued for malpractice, you don’t push him away and let the patient die.
In a parliamentary system, Prime Minister Joe Biden would have lost a vote of confidence by now, and been replaced. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a parliamentary system.
I thought the isolationist complaint was, we’re getting unnecessarily involved in their war!
Given Obama’s and Biden’s pandering to Russia before the invasion, it’s not like the U.S. was looking for a fight.
Maybe it should have been, but it wasn’t.
But you just said they were fighting for us. So is it our war, or not?
If we’re going to fight a war, then let’s put it before Congress, make them formally declare war, and start sending over our soldiers. Rather than, you know, letting someone else die on our behalf.
I would support that.
A representative republic is much better than a parliamentary system for a big country. A parliamentary system is find for city-states.
This is an interesting topic that I am no good at.
This was really good and is highly related.
You said “it’s a good idea to let the Ukrainians do our fighting for us.” “Our fighting” implies it’s “our war.”
And if that’s “just a metaphor,” it’s really sloppy. Because the U.S. is doing everything it can to ensure this war drags on. And as mentioned above, if we’re going all-in, we need leadership that can actually fight a war. Right now we have leadership that is compromised, incompetent, and a bunch of DEI/ESG ninnies. And I have no idea what their real agenda is, besides ensuring poverty and starvation for all.
Well, it’s a pretty common metaphor, as when people would routinely say that the French Resistance was “fighting for us”, the Polish Home Army was “fighting for us”, etc. It really means, “fighting in a common cause”. And implies, “maybe we should think about helping them more”.
It’s not just about us, of course. This is a mistake Americans on both Left and Right often make. We may be leader of the free world, but dozens of other countries are also sending assistance to Ukraine.
As the saying goes, “you fight with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.” It doesn’t have to be perfect; it never is. The British won the Napoleonic Wars with an army where rich people purchased commissions, and a Navy in which promotion had a lot to do with family connections. (Oh no, he’s referencing history again!)
P.S.: #136 got a bit scrambled because I forgot about the bug where using an “at-sign” prefixed name causes loss of text.