Washington should “stop confusing charitable impulses with U.S. national security interests and seeing our own security on the line in every conflict in the world,” Mr. Friedman advises. Such idealistic thinking, he says, “has this tendency to compel us to be a kind of global empire.” He argues that Israel’s war with Hamas and Ukraine’s war with Russia are both local conflicts, and positioning them as part of “a global ideological conflict” simply serves as a “sales pitch to justify support.”
In the case of Ukraine, the realist faction tends to advise against further military assistance for an offensive that appears likely to end in a stalemate. These allocations are “largely charitable,” Mr. Friedman says, as “our national security interest does not depend on them winning back all their territory.” Thus, “the Biden administration,” he asserts, “owes it to the American taxpayers to be frank about what Ukraine can reasonably achieve.”
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