Who knows? President Biden has steadfastly failed to make a case for what his goals are, nor therefore explained how those goals are in our national interest. Ukraine war critics are right to ask serious questions, but they’re wrong to deny support in the absence of this case by Biden–our interest in seeing Putin’s aggression thwarted is not diminished by Joe Biden’s inability/unwillingness to make the case. Yesterday, Al Mohler (who supports aiding Ukraine against Russian aggression) noted the overwhelming numerical advantage in population and Russia’s commitment to winning in Ukraine, and suggested we must at some point be clear eyed about what Ukraine is likely to accomplish:

So at this point, it is unhelpful for President Biden and his administration to continue to say Ukraine gets to name the end game, and yet we’re going to continue to prop up Ukraine with massive American military support. I’m not calling for an end to the support. I’m calling for a fact that the end game has to be agreed upon, understood, and that has to inform what is and is not a wise investment of American military funds, and frankly, a wise stewardship of our responsibility with and our responsibility to Ukraine……

But sometimes in a fallen world, you just have to take an account of where things stand. And committed to the future existence of Ukraine as a functioning and self-defending nation, you have to get to the point that it’s going to be able to survive and you’re going to have to get to the point of honesty about the fact that the end game has to be a part of the consideration because the end game has to inform what Congress does, what the administration does, how the Pentagon thinks, and how we relate to the people of Ukraine.

To explain what the endgame should be, I think we need to first understand why we are there. In an ideal world, we would be there because a sovereign country (that generally is among peaceable nations albeit with a bit more corruption than most) was invaded. But that is not a sufficient rationale, as that contains no limiting principle, and we’re not prepared to come to the aid of every country in the world attacked by another. Beyond our ideals then, what is it about Ukraine that requires our commitment? In another even stronger ideal, we promised in 1994 to protect Ukraine from Russia in exchange for Ukraine surrendering the nuclear missiles fielded in Ukraine back to Russia. So our word should count for something. But beyond that, we have committed massive resources for decades to constrain one wicked nation–Russia–who has repeatedly invaded neighbors (in its instantiation as the USSR as well as it’s Czarist years) and has threatened the United States and its interests, including causing significant turmoil in our own hemisphere. When we allow Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin to win, the United States loses. Period, end of story. This leads to the key conclusion–we are not primarily supporting Ukraine because we somehow have an affinity for Ukrainian oligarchs. We support Ukraine because Russia’s external aggression must lose, or at the least, come at such a heavy price that Russia (with or without Putin) will not want to take another bite of the apple. And it is this latter goal that must be the objective of US policy.

It is of course true-as Mr. Mohler reminds us-that Ukraine has little chance to fully displace the Russians, especially when the Biden Administration continually slow-rolled aid to the Ukrainians to avoid “escalation,” since you know that would lead to “WWIII.” And it is also true that continuing the length of the war will lead to more Ukrainian (and Russian) lives lost, something all of us should lament. Yet this latter concern must not drive us–if our goal is simply to save lives, then we could have immediately supported that goal by not giving any aid at the beginning of the conflict, and encouraging Zelensky to surrender upon the Russian invasion. It might have only needed for Zelensky to die in some Russian prison to save others, if that were our goal. We must respect people that are willing to fight and die for their country, and further, as the Reagan Doctrine argued, we should be willing to provide military aid to freedom fighters who are willing to fight for their own country against Russian aggression. If they are doing the fighting, then there is far less likelihood that we will be doing it in the future–for at least two reasons. First, when the Russians are engaged in battle in Ukraine, they don’t have the manpower and resources to attack someone else. But second and most importantly, while the cost to Ukrainian young men is horrific, Russia has suffered an estimated 315,000 casualties as of Dec 2023. And every day we support Ukraine, Russia bleeds a little bit more. Since the war began, over 1M young Russian males have fled, and the longer the war drags on, additional young people coming of age will try to escape, and the less likely those that have left will return as they’ll be integrated into their new life abroad. As the conflict continues, Russia becomes weaker, not stronger. And as the costs continue to rise, the pain will be nonlinear. Such that whenever the Ukrainians say they’ve had enough, the Russians will be 1) more willing to allow better terms for the Ukrainians, and 2) have far less stomach for further adventurism in the future.

So what is in the national interest of the United States with respect to Ukraine? I would love Ukraine to regain all their territory, especially Crimea. But that is not our strategic objective. Our strategic objective is really very simple: Help Ukraine make Russia bleed. Let them bleed long enough that they never want to do this again. This is harsh, and I don’t relish this thought. But the alternative, given their aggressive history, is for many, many others to bleed. And if we’re not careful, a future round of a revitalized Russia that gets away with this, will include U.S. military members as part of NATO. Far better to help those willing to die for their country today. And China is watching our commitment to Ukraine closely. And Iran. And North Korea. John Stuart Mill’s quote still applies today:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”

BTW, for those that somehow unreasonably conflate our southern border issue with the Ukraine issue, I have a question or two for you. Which of these two belligerents (Russia and Ukraine) has contributed more to our border crisis? Do you think that Latin American instability leads to more illegal immigration? If so, which of these two countries destabilizes our neighbors to the south? Which of these two countries has funded revolutionaries for decades to create insecurity that leads people to flee? Are you really sure it’s not in our national interest (even on narrow grounds of our own border security) to want to curtail Russian ability to intervene in countries abroad?