With or without border security, aid to Ukraine is needed now
Washington Examiner
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Congress should not break for Christmas before providing more aid for Ukraine. Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is in Washington this week, is an ally fighting for the right reasons, in the U.S. national interest, against a thuggish, anti-American regime.
Ukrainian aid need not be included in the same package with much-needed border reforms. Granted, there is no excuse for President Joe Biden’s dangerously lenient border policies. The border security measures sought by Republicans are essential in their own right. They deserve their own much-needed debate. But that debate will take time, time Ukraine doesn’t have.
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Materially supporting Ukraine against Russia is a classic application of the peace-through-strength “Reagan Doctrine,” which called for the provision of weapons and aid to foreign fighters seeking freedom for themselves from enemies of the United States. The Reagan Doctrine did not require, but was especially appropriate, when those foreign fighters were Western in orientation. And of course the doctrine largely was aimed at blocking ruthless Soviet imperialism, which was different in degree but very little in kind from Vladimir Putin’s murderous imperialism.
It is an imperialism that, just as with Hamas’s attack on Israel, uses rape and torture as deliberate means of terror. It’s an imperialism that aims to destroy the very nationhood of a sovereign people who, albeit imperfectly, operate with a functioning republican form of government and a commitment to Western liberty.
While aid to Ukraine recognizes Ukraine’s moral superiority to its Russian invaders, it is not a sign of mere fuzzy-headed instincts toward charity. Russia remains a global threat to the U.S. and its allies. It aims to reconquer the free people of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia; it provides material support to terrorist Iran and crazily brutal North Korea; and it favors the Palestinian cause against Israel. Russia also foments anti-American activity by nefarious actors worldwide, and it even threatens U.S. interests in the Arctic Circle and in space.
To whatever extent Ukraine bleeds Russia dry, it also bleeds Russia’s ability to damage the whole free world. And it is clear Russia’s capacities are being greatly diminished, to the tune of 315,000 casualties, including 3,000 just in three days this week, along with a setback of some 18 years in military modernization and a massive blow to its economy. No wonder a highly Kremlin-loyal pollster estimates that “The number of active, enthusiastic supporters of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine are no more than 10-15% of Russians.”
If the West allows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to succeed despite Ukraine already punching significantly above its weight, it is entirely likely that China will see such a Western failure as a green light for its own desire to conquer Taiwan and commandeer international shipping lanes, crucial for U.S. commerce, in the South China Sea. The losses to U.S. interests there would dwarf the costs of providing weaponry to Ukraine, not to mention the greater likelihood of U.S. military personnel dying in an Asian conflict whereas no U.S. soldiers will be fighting in Ukraine.
As Reagan understood and as we must not forget, there is geopolitical advantage in the moral cause of supporting democracies against autocracies. Democracies almost never fight other democracies. To support democracies is to support peace, which is always less expensive than war.
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Russia is worse than a mere autocracy. Of 210 nations analyzed by the internationally respected Freedom House, only 32 rate worse on the “global freedom” score than Russia does. Even Oman, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Haiti are more free than Moscow’s ill-gotten empire.
In meetings this week with Biden, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), and a slew of senators, Zelensky has been stressing these points and more. He is as pro-Western and reformist a leader as Ukraine has had since the fall of the Soviet Union, and he represents a nation that has shown its courage to the utmost degree. It would be an abandonment of principle and duty for Congress to let lapse the assistance for Ukraine’s righteous cause.