Over the next few days I will write a series of posts on what’s happening with Ukraine, primarily to address comments that those that are opposed to continuing support Ukraine make. There is an isolationist case to be made–those that make it are not necessarily evil or lovers of Putin. Nevertheless Bereans already know that I consider that position unwise, both from a biblical and a historical perspective. But the case that is being made is often tenuous to even foolish, failing to consider the longer term implications of the isolationist position. So let’s start with the easiest assertion to rebut–we voted for Trump to end the war.

No matter how confidently Trumpians assert this, it simply is not true. I’ve written a bit about this before in my book on why markets are so much better than politics at making collective decisions, so let me quote that logic here at length:

Let’s expand on the complexity of voting for a particular politician.  We started this section by noting that if you wanted a particular good and service, you went into the store and bought it.  In collective decision making, this is not possible; you are forced to choose a bundle of goods.  Imagine that you are in the supermarket, and you want to choose a “pro-life” product, mixed in with a “strong defense” product, and maybe a “low tax” product.  You cannot go to the shelf and pull off each of these products and put in your collective market basket.  Instead, you look down the aisle, and there are two baskets, chock full of products.  Some of the products you can’t see, they’re hidden below others on the top of the basket.  One basket clearly has a “pro-life” product, and also “low tax,” but has a “gut defense product.”  And oh by the way, it also has a “global warming carbon tax” hidden in the middle that you can’t see, along with “funding for National Endowment for the Arts.”  The two hidden items in the basket you strongly dislike, but you hadn’t really thought about purchasing them when you went into the store—further you won’t even know they were in the basket into well after you get home with the basket.  It’s as if someone unloads your basket at home and it might be two years from now that you’ll reach deep in the pantry and find the “global warming carbon tax” behind the sugar.  The other basket has “strong defense” clearly on the top of the cart, but it also has “higher taxes on the rich” and “gay marriage” in the basket.  It has hidden items such as “tariffs on Chinese products” and “increased Pell grants,” which you may or may not like.  Which basket do you choose?  If you bought a regular product like Pepsi in store, we could be very confident that you valued Pepsi more than your money.  If you “buy” a bundle of political positions with your vote (including many that you cannot know), neither we (or the politician) can tell whether you are actually in favor of any politician’s particular position.  Even aside from the rational ignorance problem (which suggests you won’t have a strong incentive to find out positions of politicians) many positions will be hidden and will not manifest themselves until much later.  All we can say is that based on the two baskets of positions–which rational ignorance assures will only be a limited subset of the basket’s content—you prefer one basket to the other, based on the limited knowledge you have.

So the only thing we know about what American’s voted for in 2024 was that the basket of Donald Trump policies was preferred (slightly but solidly) to the basket of Kamala Harris. When Americans voted for Joe Biden in 2020, they were voting for a perceived moderate basket that would return us to normal. That is not the basket they actually purchased however. In the same way we can have some ideas of what Americans were voting for in 2024 by looking at the issues people cared about in exit polling. Very clearly immigration and high prices were at the top of the list. Consider this chart from Gallup from before the election (which is very representative of other polling both before and after the election)

Or this one from CBS news:

As I said right after the election, “He has a mandate to fix the border and get the economy straightened out. Not much more, but certainly not less.” If you look at these polls, you won’t find that the issue of Ukraine, Russia or foreign policy generally were strong motivators for either candidate, and even those that cared about those issues would be split, e.g., they don’t necessarily support Mr. Trump’s position. The idea that we voted for Mr. Trump’s current position is simply inconsistent with the facts.

However, let me concede two points that those making this argument are conflating with the idea that “we voted for this.” First, Mr. Trump was explicit in his “I’ll end the war in one day.” He never said how he’d do that, and my personal belief is that if he would have said what he’s saying today during the primary, he would not have won the nomination. There is a reason he was cryptic–there is a world of difference between a campaign promise to end the war in one day and saying I’m going to abandon Ukraine and effectively end NATO (the latter he dared not say ahead of the election). But we all knew that he’d pursue some sort of negotiated end to the war (which few would disagree with). The second is that support for Ukraine has eroded significantly, and quite a bit from those that call themselves Republican. This is now seen as Joe Biden’s war, and something Donald Trump is against. But as a country we’re still pretty evenly split. So I have no beef with those who say that Mr. Trump is keeping his campaign promises (though I deny that what he is currently doing is what most Americans would have been thinking in ending the war in one day), but that is decidedly different from saying that we voted for it, as both the logic of collective decision making and exit polling confirm.