The Patriot Post® · In Brief: The American Case for Supporting Ukraine

There has been growing skepticism on the Right for sending aid to Ukraine. It’s too corrupt, we have more problems at home, we can’t trust Joe Biden’s decision making, etc. Certainly there are arguments to be made and just sending billions of dollars in foreign aid down another hole isn’t particularly palatable at the moment. Nevertheless, Senator Tom Cotton makes the argument in a Wall Street Journal op-ed for supporting Ukraine:

After years of observing Russian leaders up close during World War II, Winston Churchill remarked that “there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.” Churchill therefore warned against “offering temptations to a trial of strength.”

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what President Biden did in his first year in office, tempting Vladimir Putin to pursue his long-standing ambition to reassemble the Russian Empire by conquering Ukraine. Having failed to deter the war, Mr. Biden’s timid approach has now prolonged it.

Thanks to his failures, some Americans wonder whether we should continue to support Ukraine. But cutting off Ukraine wouldn’t end the war. It would only increase the chances of a Russian victory and harm our interests in deterring wider wars in Europe and Asia.

Mr. Biden appeased Russia from the start, from a no-conditions extension of a one-sided nuclear-arms treaty, to the waiving of sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to freezing an arms shipment to Ukraine. Then came the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. This humiliating failure telegraphed weakness and incompetence, and Russia soon massed an invasion force along Ukraine’s border.

Cotton criticizes the half-measures Biden has taken, leaving Ukraine to struggle in this war. “We should back Ukraine to the hilt,” Cotton says, “because the likeliest alternative isn’t peace, but rather another ‘frozen conflict’ that favors Russia and harms our interests.” There’s Russian gains in territory and strength, disruptions to western supply lines, danger to NATO nations, and so on. Strategically, “Stopping Russia also will allow the U.S. to focus on the greater threat from China.”

The Chinese dictator, Xi Jinping, is closely watching the war in Ukraine. If the West falters, he will conclude that we will never fight to protect Taiwan. In the 1930s, the West tempted the Axis powers by appeasing naked aggression against small countries like Ethiopia and Czechoslovakia. Some Western politicians may have forgotten the lessons of history, but Mr. Xi hasn’t.

Next, he addresses both the issue of deterrence and of worries of a larger war:

War is always expensive, but we must measure the current costs against the greater potential cost of wider war in Europe or Asia. The Ukrainians are fighting their own war, with no American troops engaged in direct combat—which won’t be the case if irresolution in Ukraine tempts our enemies to attack a NATO ally or Taiwan. Had the West retaliated when Germany remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936, that small operation might’ve seemed expensive and risky at the time, but it likely would’ve prevented world war.

History also shows that we can oppose Russian aggression without sparking a wider war. We fought proxy wars against Soviet Russia across the world in the last century. We armed insurgents during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians not only armed our enemies in Korea and Vietnam, but also took part in the fighting, shooting down American pilots. These proxy wars were more provocative than anything we’ve done to support Ukraine. In no case did they lead to war between our two countries.

Finally, Cotton concludes:

The Ukrainian people are fighting with spirit and resolve, exercising what Churchill called “the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in.” Their cause is sympathetic, but the world is a dangerous place and America shouldn’t act out of sympathy alone. We act to protect our vital national interests. That’s the case in Ukraine, and we deserve a strategy of victory to match.

Wall Street Journal subscribers can read the whole thing here.