By Daniel Davis
As the cost of the six-month Russia-Ukraine war continues to pile up on the United States and Europe – and as the risk rises in the coming months of yet more serious pain accruing to the West – the people of the U.S. and Europe have a right to ask whether the authorities in Kyiv did all they could to prevent war prior to Moscow’s invasion, and whether it is doing all it can now to bring the fighting to an end. A close scrutiny of available evidence suggests some unpalatable answers.
Defense of democratic ideals and support for victims of aggression is virtually embedded in American DNA, and at multiple points over the past centuries, the U.S. has shed much blood in defense of others. But we dare not get so cavalier with the extension of American military support (or the introduction of American troops) for the benefit of other nations that we fail to require them to first do all they can to support their own defense.
We should expect our government first to ensure our Armed Forces remain fully capable of defending our shores and not risk the blood of our service members for foreign missions not tied to the defense of U.S. national security.
When American military support is assumed by a non-treaty ally, when a given nation refuses to make hard choices for its own security in the expectation – if not the outright demand – that the U.S. provide it with substantial and open-ended military support, then it is appropriate for the U.S. government to reevaluate whether, to what extent, and over what period of time it should agree to provide such support.
As this analysis exposes, assessed against this standard, both Kyiv and Washington have fallen short.
This piece was originally published in 1945 on August 28, 2022. Read more HERE.