Last night the Russians bombed a dormitory, killing seven people in Ukraine. The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for Mr. Putin as a war criminal; thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded, Ukrainian children have been abducted into Russia, hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, and there are over eight million refugees having to flee Ukraine across Europe. Whatever this is, it is most certainly not simply an issue of a “territorial dispute” as Mr. DeSantis recently suggested. Mr. DeSantis is not alone, having joined Mr. Trump in his suspicion of helping the Ukrainians. Yet other current and potential Republican contenders have knocked Mr. DeSantis on this question, most powerfully by Nikki Haley. This is a good debate to be had, but as a Reagan conservative, I’m grounded on the reality of sinful humanity, not what we wish them to be. There are several questions/issues people raise about Ukraine, and while my responses are not particularly profound, I think we Bereans ought to be part of this debate. What does a conservative foreign policy look like?

Is supporting Ukraine in the national interest? This is the critical question. Americans have a long history of supporting military engagement directly as well as indirectly supporting allies with military equipment. Yet there has also always been a consensus that we “don’t want to be the world’s policeman.” More recently Ron Paul, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have all campaigned against so-called “endless wars.” So what does the national interest entail? The answer should be obvious–this is always going to be subjectively assessed by the leaders of our country at the time. We can’t do everything, but clearly we’ll fight for our interests in the right situation. Does Ukraine then fit that? We have a fairly strong majority view (both Republicans and Democrats, albeit Republican support has lessoned) that the U.S. should assist the Ukranians with military equipment. No one is in favor of sending active U.S. troops into combat. I believe Ukraine is in the national interest. Most obviously, we have had hostile relations with the USSR and Russia since before WWII. Vladimir Putin considers the US his enemy, but even when he is gone, other potential future Russian leaders are also quite hostile to the US. We have spent trillions in NATO and the military generally to keep USSR/Russia contained over the years. Failure to stop Russian aggression in the Ukraine will only embolden Russian hostility against us. The converse is also true; if the Ukrainians unequivocally win, the Russian threat recedes considerably. Mr. Putin’s seething hatred of the U.S.’s victory in the cold war will not be satisfied simply by capturing part of Ukraine. We either equip the Ukrainians today, or we significantly increase the likelihood of fighting the Russians with NATO tomorrow.

Is Ukraine worth protecting and risking WWIII? One of the common objections against our assistance in Ukraine is that it could lead to WWIII. Mr. Biden used that risk to deny implementing a no-fly-zone last spring, and Mr. Trump likewise thinks that our involvement could lead to WWIII:

“We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine, or we will end up in World War III and there will be nothing left of our planet.” 

Several things need to be considered here. First, just because a conflict could escalate to something worse (there is always that possibility), doesn’t mean that the risk is not worth taking. Not confronting aggression also is problematic–weakness only encourages more aggression, as anyone familiar with bullies at a playground can attest. History has repeatedly shown that wicked leaders hungry for power cannot be satiated–they must be defeated. It is not an inappropriate comparison to Neville Chamberlain’s comment that he’d secure peace in our time. As history has shown, that peace can be quite short-lived. Certainly the nearby neighbors believe that Russia has much grander ambitions, as Finland and Sweden have abandoned neutrality and now are asking for NATO membership, while Poland has been the best supporter of Ukraine in Europe as memories of Russian aggression in WWII have not completely faded. While we don’t have a NATO commitment to Ukraine, should the Russians succeed in Ukraine it significantly increases the possibility that we will have a NATO conflict in the future. Secondly, if you ever allow fear of escalation drive your decision, you have already lost. Would not fighting against a Russian invasion of Poland also potentially lead to nuclear war? Peace at all costs simply ensures you will be a slave or dead. Mr. Biden’s failure in Ukraine is not that he has provided military aid, it is that he is always only reactive–unwilling to provide what is required to win, but simply to allow Ukraine not to lose. Conservatives should be criticizing Mr. Biden for his half-hearted support of the Ukrainians, not the support he has given. I like what Nikki Haley said in her WSJ op-ed:

Mr. Biden says the U.S. stands with Ukraine, but he has consistently let Russia seize the initiative. He encouraged the invasion by surrendering in Afghanistan and by saying a “minor incursion” into Ukraine would be OK. He has failed to send Kyiv the support it needs, when it needs it. He has even given Ukraine money without accountability when he should have sent weapons and military equipment. Ukrainians clearly have the will to win. But Mr. Biden has given Ukraine only enough to slow the Russian advance, not to repel it.

Ukraine is a corrupt country; undoubtedly we’re enriching corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs. This is highly likely to be true, but irrelevant–we don’t cut off our nose to spite our face. If you buy my logic in the previous paragraph, the benefits of defeating Russia here greatly exceed any costs of equipping the Ukrainians (to include the corruption). It would of course be much better to execute the aid package better, but if that is the price to defeat Russian aggression, it is worth it. And the quicker we help Ukraine win, the less corruption we’ll enable.

We shouldn’t be sending a blank check to Ukraine. I totally agree with this point, but who is arguing for a blank check? An unwavering commitment to equip the Ukrainians with weaponry that can repel the Russians is not the same thing as a blank check. To the extent we are concerned about the costs of supporting this war, the best way to reduce those costs is to see that the Ukrainians have what they need to end this war more quickly. But make no mistake, we must convince the Russians of our commitment to Ukraine’s success as they believe we will eventually lose the will to help and they can outlast our support. We need to do this not only for the Ukrainian people, but for the poor hapless Russian conscripts who are being offered as human sacrifices by the Wagner group.

Why should we aid Ukraine when we can’t stop the invasions across our own border? This is perhaps the silliest of arguments, as this is a completely false dichotomy. The reason we don’t stop illegal immigration is not a question of focus or resources, it is because Mr. Biden does not want to stop it. We could clearly do both. But if we never had assisted the Ukrainians, we would still have a border crisis, because Mr. Biden does not wish to stop it.

We shouldn’t be helping the Ukrainians, we need to focus on our real threat, the Chinese. Most Republicans and Democrats see this correctly–if we don’t stop Russia, if Mr. Putin outlasts us in Ukraine and gets the victory, this greatly increases the likelihood of conflict with China over Taiwan. Mr. Biden’s weakness and abject failure in Afghanistan emboldened Mr. Putin, and if we collectively lose our will to equip the Ukrainians, the Chinese will doubt the sustainability of our commitment to Taiwan, and this will increase the likelihood of direct conflict with the Chinese. There is no more important deterrent to the Chinese than our helping the Ukrainians expel the Russian invasion.

EDIT Addition: We shouldn’t be contributing large resources when the ones that should be most concerned, the Europeans, are doing so little. It would be nice for Germany, et al, to do more. It would be great for the President, who claims to have mobilized the world, to mobilize them for paying their fair share. But once again, the problem of the free rider is that as long as it is in our interest to pay the price, we should still do this. Every student that has ever been assigned to a group project knows this to be true. It’s not fair that one sluggard can bring everybody’s grade down, so the good student is forced to do more than their fair share, because he/she cares more about getting a good grade than the sluggard. Same principle here. We’ll do it because it is still in our interest for Russia to be defeated.

What about our values makes us want to help Ukraine? Aren’t we America First? Let’s say that there were no significant geopolitical need to stop Russian aggression in Ukraine. Do we not have some national interest to support freedom generally? And what about our specific commitment in the Budapest Agreement with the British to support Ukraine against the Russians, which we signed to convince the Ukrainians to send the nukes that were based in Ukraine to Russia? Just because we can’t help everybody doesn’t mean we help nobody. The conservative consensus for many years is that we would help people fight for their own freedom against tyranny where our aid can help. That is what it means to be America. I’m afraid many so-called conservatives think that America First means America Only, as if our only interest is in the U.S., and only right now. The neo-conservative movement of Bush and building democracies was no better than the nation-building utopian scheming of the left with Clinton. The older conservative view of helping others fight for their own freedom is neither one of those, and is still this American’s ideal. Notice a huge difference here–conservatives are much more interested in helping people become free than promoting some abstract view of democracy. And certainly not Mr. Biden’s description of a “rules based international order;” if he were to retire that term we’d all be much better served. While democracy and freedom are not mutually exclusive, we have many cases of democracies not being committed to freedom. It is freedom that leads to human flourishing, not necessarily democracy.*

It seems like we are so partisan now (on both sides) that whatever the other side is in favor of, we must be against. Are some subset of Americans against Ukraine simply because Joe Biden is supporting them? Remember, even a stopped clock is right twice per day. And as Nikki Haley showed above, there is plenty to criticize Mr. Biden on Ukraine about without hanging the Ukrainians out to dry and likely leading to much worse conflict in Europe and Asia in the future. So I’d love to hear your thoughts. Am I wrong on my take? Are there important issues I haven’t addressed that I should? Join the discussion in the comments below.

* Of course constitutional democracy seems the best protector of freedom, but it is at best a means to an end, not the end itself.

EDIT Update #2: Mr. DeSantis provided clarification for his comments on Tucker Carlson which I’m much more happy with; see last night’s late update over at National Review online.