Regular Berean readers know that I have a very simple and historically conventional view of foreign policy: there are countries that are implacably against the U.S. and its interests (e.g. Russia), those that allied with ours (e.g., the U.K) and those that are not hostile but may or may not support our interests (e.g., India). Further, I believe strongly that carefully crafted alliances have served the U.S. well over the last 80 years, even if not perfectly, and they can continue to reduce our risk and contribute to relative global peace. The strength of NATO has helped to ensure we didn’t have another European war that spread globally to hit the U.S. The Soviet Union/Russia has been the threat that we needed to confront, and they still are today.* After the end of the cold war, we tried to integrate a new Russia into the west, and that is simply not something that Vladimir Putin wants to be a part of. He still harbors the fiction that Russia is a superpower and needs to be accorded the respect and deference in regional affairs he believes is his due. Further, he believes that neighboring states should be vassal states to the big brother Russia.

Since the war started and in response to the Biden’s failed articulation of a U.S. strategy, I offered that our strategic imperative was simply to make Russia bleed as much as possible, such that at whatever conclusion would eventually result, that Russian military would be drastically weakened and that it would have come at such a price to them that they would not want to do it again. Further, I argued that only this could signal to the Chinese that they ought to think twice about attacking Taiwan. In March, as part of my Ukraine fallacies posts, I addressed the fallacy that the war is “unwinnable” for Ukraine. Yesterday’s action in Russia validates all of these points.

The planes Ukraine hit fill a role in Russia’s air force fleet roughly comparable to America’s B-52 and B-1 bombers, both of which are more modern and more consistently updated than the Tupolevs. The U.S. also has stealthy B-2 flying-wing bombers and is developing a successor, the B-21. Tu-95s, which first flew in the 1950s, are so old that instead of jet engines—which the Soviet Union hadn’t yet mastered at the time—they use four engines, each with a pair of propellers that rotate in opposite directions for speed. 

Both countries’ bombers represent vital parts of their ability to deliver nuclear weapons in a war. The other two legs of the so-called nuclear triad are submarines and land-based missiles. Russia’s navy has struggled in recent years to maintain and modernize its equipment. The readiness of its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and their launch silos is difficult to gauge.

Kyiv’s success hitting Russian bases from nearby comes atop a string of Ukrainian long-range attacks on Russian military and energy facilities. Ukraine last year destroyed a Russian early-warning radar antenna that had been built to detect a potential U.S. nuclear attack.

This morning, Russia is far less of a threat to the U.S. and NATO than they were last week. The Ukrainians continue to innovate, while the Russians continue to throw people into the meat grinder to gain inches of territory. Imagine what would happen if Mr. Trump would throw his full support behind Ukraine, rather than assisting the Russian aggressor, who Mr. Trump now knows Mr. Putin has been playing him. To Mr. Trump I would say this: I know you don’t like war. I admire your desire to end the useless killing of lives. But the end of the evil that one country will do to another will not end until Christ returns. In the meantime, fight against the evil that desires war, rather than the country that desires peace. You will end the war faster by giving Mr. Putin significant indigestion from the bite he is trying to take. This is the conservative perspective–don’t be like the leftists of old that always thought the Soviets really wanted peace. They must be defeated. The question for you, as it was for Mr. Biden, is why not victory?

* Of course the Chinese are a more strategic threat than Russia, but Russia is far more malignant across the globe than the Chinese. Further, as seems obvious to me and many other traditional conservatives, the best deterrent of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is for the West to support Ukraine and repel the Russians.