February 22, 2023

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine, its invasion has stalled. 

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268089992-0’); }); }

The Ukrainians have not only held their own, but have managed to liberate a good chunk of their conquered territory.  They’ve been buoyed tremendously by a constant influx of Western military aid.  I argue here, against a small but vocal conservative faction, that we should continue this aid.

There has been plenty of unhelpful hyperbole on both sides of the debate.  Prominent pro-Ukrainers have attempted to equate opposition to Ukrainian aid as opposition to democracy itself.  Michael Beschloss, NBC’s resident Rent-A-Zinn, referencing members of Congress who didn’t applaud Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent speech, and in Stalinist fashion, tweeted “we need to know from them exactly why.”  Neocon David Frum tweeted that Elon Musk, who questions some aspects of the U.S. response, is a Russian “trial balloon.”  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, more detached than a greasy Duplo block, called Ukrainian assistance our “number one priority.”. 

But some prominent anti-Ukrainers, not to be outdone, dutifully rose to the challenge.  Dan Caldwell, vice president of foreign policy for Stand Together tweeted, “Zelensky…has been very clear his goal is to get America’s sons and daughters to fight and die in the war in Ukraine.”  Likewise, Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren tweeted, “We can’t fight this war for you for eternity!!!”  I’m not sure which war we are fighting for them and, to my knowledge, Zelensky has not requested anything beyond funding and weapons.  “I assure you that Ukrainian soldiers can perfectly operate American tanks and planes themselves,” Zelensky told American lawmakers.  Unless Caldwell and Lahren have information that we don’t, they’re engaging in reckless fear-mongering.  American troops are not fighting in Ukraine, nor will they. 

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609270365559-0’); }); }

The rational position of the anti-Ukrainers, outlined in more reasonable terms by John Daniel Davidson, Katherine Thompson, William Wolfe, and others, seem to rest on the following four points, which I attempt to refute:

THE MONEY WE’RE SENDING TO UKRAINE COULD BE BETTER SPENT HERE

Yes, we are largely funding the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion.  We’ve given them roughly $100 billion in piecemeal funding with many strings attached and, as Matthew Continetti pointed out, in the grand scheme of our $31 trillion debt and our now-routine trillion dollar budgets, this aid amounts to a rounding error.  The United States government spent $6.27 trillion in FY 2022, from which our Ukraine aid barely registers.  Sure, we could have spent the money domestically…on such urgencies as “environmental justice” programs, transgender youth programs, and further FBI investigations into concerned parents domestic terrorism, all of which Mitch McConnell helped pass in the latest leftist smorgasbord omnibus package.  Given the choice, that money is better spent kneecapping Russia than it is surgically mutilating children. 

UKRAINE IS NONE OF OUR BUSINESS

The mirage that we can isolate ourselves from the happenings of the world is one we’ve entertained before, most consequentially on Dec. 6, 1941 and Sept. 10, 2001.  Subsequent events were assumed to have shattered that mirage, but, alas, it appears difficult to eradicate.  This is not the bugle call of the neocon fever dream demanding all war all the time everywhere.  Rather, we need to pick and choose our battles carefully but assertively and, when possible, fight them through proxies.  We did this across the globe for the entirety of the Cold War, as did our enemies.  And every country in which we fought a proxy war could justifiably be considered “none of our business.”  Yet you’d be hard pressed to find a Republican, then or now, who criticized Ronald Reagan’s decision to support anticommunist armies in Latin America, or other paramilitary efforts to contain communism in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.  And unlike democratic Ukraine, most of these allied governments were unabashed dictatorships and Islamist theocracies. 

Austria in 1938 was “none of our business,” too. Afghanistan in the 1990s was “none of our business.”  Except they were.  You might not be interested in totalitarianism, but totalitarianism is interested in you.  Our experience with domestic leftists should have us beyond convinced of this reality.  Freedom and tyranny are not static entities; one grows or shrinks in inverse proportion to the other.  We can choose to fight it when it’s weak, or be forced to fight it (or submit to it) when it’s strong.