Michael “Mick” Patrick Mulroy and Chris Hyslop
There has been much debate on whether the United States should continue aid to Ukraine. That debate sharpened after Hamas attacked Israel last Saturday, with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) posting on X (formerly known as Twitter), “Israel is facing existential threat. Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately.”
Support for additional aid to Ukraine among regular Americans has been softening. While 76% of Americans hope for a Ukrainian victory, only 59% are willing to provide the arms and resources necessary for that victory.
Such a position is untenable not only because it ignores the centrality of American equipment to Ukraine’s battlefield successes but also because it fails to reconcile itself with the reality of what would happen if American aid stopped.
What would the world look like if America gradually turns off the taps of military, economic, diplomatic, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine?
Without American support, Europe would try to fill the gap but ultimately fail. Although European aid to Ukraine is currently twice that of America’s, without American leadership, European resolve and support would weaken. In which case, overwhelming Russian force would eventually bow Ukraine by brute force and mass war crimes against civilians. A peace deal favorable to Russia would be struck, a Russia-friendly government installed, a sham referendum launched and 99.8% of “voters” in Russian-occupied land “deciding” to become Russia proper.
War crimes investigations of Russian leaders and soldiers would quietly be shelved. As Western attention turns elsewhere, Ukraine would launch an insurgency that would be brutally suppressed. Ukrainian aspiration to join democratic European institutions would be quashed, as what’s left of their country regresses, subsumed into a Greater Russia.
Emboldened, Russia would then move on low-hanging fruit to re-establish its former empire. For example, if an anti-Russian campaign were fomented in Moldova, Russian troops already stationed there would come to the “rescue” and a Russian vassal government would be installed — followed by the Caucuses: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Russia could easily orchestrate — under the pretext of “oppression of ethnic Russians” and “regional instability” — military and social destabilization to topple the existing governments and insert itself into their affairs, spreading its influence within the former Soviet states.
The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania would immediately fall into the Russian crosshairs. An anti-European campaign aided by cyberattacks could destabilize those governments and societies just enough to spread nationalist and anti-Western sentiment without overt Russian presence or intervention. An uncertain NATO — led by countries more focused on faction at home — would see no grounds to invoke Article 5 of the treaty.
Russia sees the recreation of the Soviet empire as possible.
It would be eyeing its former Warsaw Pact allies, now NATO members. Nuclear threats would keep Western powers on guard and deeply hesitant. Instability would spread across Europe as the shadow of war creeps over the continent.
Other dictators already are taking note. Russian victory in Ukraine would embolden China to ratchet up tension with Taiwan, with an unthinkable war looming close. Asian states would mobilize, causing their economies to falter and global trade to decline. The world would rapidly descend further into crisis. With global democracies distracted, Russian and Chinese proxies would step up their work in Africa, Asia, and beyond, actively supporting coups and conflicts. Moscow and Beijing could then install kleptocratic regimes under economic terms favorable to themselves, and Russia and China would find themselves in a position of greater strength to further their nationalist agendas.
Such insecurity would roll back decades of social and economic progress across the globe, and openly anti-democratic leaders would run roughshod over their citizens and, when possible, their neighbors.
Free nations attempting to push back against these dark tides would be hampered by a public ambivalent — or openly opposed — to their government’s efforts to maintain international order. Domestic haggling would further hamstring Western democracies, giving free rein to those forces who further destabilize the world to their own advantage.
Make no mistake: The global international order created from the ashes of World War II is threatened.
The benefits humanity has enjoyed from the spread of peace, democracy, human rights, and free-trade economics are challenged by disinformation, aggression, and isolationism.
American politicians who opportunistically used Ukraine as an electoral lever might realize, too late, that the global dynamics they unleashed cannot be put right.
It’s important to recall that the last two National Security Strategies, written by the last two very different administrations, both identified Russia as our second most significant adversary.
Ukrainians have degraded Russia’s combat capabilities by around 50%. That has been accomplished with the U.S. spending a mere 5.6% of our overall defense budget on the effort.
If that does not sway the U.S. electorate, if American voters fail to see that military support to Ukraine is money well spent on our own national security, American international influence, founded on our shared values and backed up by our willingness to act, will decline.
So what?
If that happens, if we decide not to defeat Russia on the cheap while we have the chance, there will be direct repercussions on Main Street, America: Global economic struggles and supply decreases will force price increases across the board. Gas and consumer product prices will skyrocket. All the resulting blame and mud-slinging will not change the fact that the U.S. domestic economy, once a mighty global leader, will now be a mid-level player trying to make ends meet.
The American influence on global economic, social, and cultural dynamics that we have enjoyed for decades will be greatly reduced. We will struggle to maintain value-based democracy, favorable trade terms, and American-supported peace and security.
To avoid this fate, we need to remain the country that helped save the free world in World War II.
Whether you are from the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the party of Ronald Reagan, or an independent, we need to return to a time in which politics — as former Sen. Arthur Vandenberg said — “ended at the water’s edge” and avoid partisan wrangling to maintain U.S. support of decisive international situations, like Ukraine.
In doing so, America unequivocally states that we are the partner and ally that can be counted on when it counts the most. We gather allies and stand against aggression. We invest in a peaceful, prosperous future that benefits us and everyone. We do this because our future and that of the free world depend on it.
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