(Dobbs) Can We Afford To Keep Funding Ukraine?
The hard right makes no good case for cutting it off.
EITHER / OR.
That’s the farce foisted on the American people over the weekend by the hard right, who were willing to stop the functioning of government— not just national parks but national defense— unless they could stop the funding of Ukraine.
It’s a farce because it’s not an either/or proposition. We can help Ukraine, while at the same time fund our most important priorities in America. It happens all the time. Every time a budget is formulated, money gets moved around. Higher priorities are favored— whether immigration policy, disaster relief, highway repairs, school meals, weapons for the military, or anything else critical to the lives of American citizens— and lower ones are deferred.
Yet the hard right wants us to believe that Ukraine shouldn’t be a priority. They held the nation hostage to ensure, at least for now, that we don’t send another dollar to an ally under siege.
But the battle isn’t over. With the stopgap measure passed at the 11th hour, we’ve got another 45 days to go. Another 45 days to determine what America wants.
So the question becomes, should Ukraine be a priority or shouldn’t it? As a journalist who covered American alliances and U.S. foreign policy for many years, my opinion is, the hard right is both short-sighted and, in its pursuit of power, selfish to say it shouldn’t. There are several reasons why.
The first is something about which I’ve written before but with so much at stake, it can’t be said often enough: supporting Ukraine is not just an investment in Ukraine’s future, it’s an investment in ours. Put another way, this is not just about Ukraine’s security, it’s not just about Europe’s security, it’s about our security, America’s, because a weaker Europe means a weaker America.
Second, we should stand by the side of people who were brutally attacked without cause. Unless you believe in the spurious set of moving targets that Putin has put forward for invading his neighbor nation— that it’s an existential threat to Russia, that it never really was a sovereign nation, that it’s run by Nazis— we must make sure we never forget this: Ukraine’s the victim, Russia’s the aggressor, not the other way around.
Third, it’s about stopping Russia, which really means stopping Vladimir Putin. We’ve seen enough by now from Mr. Putin to safely assume that if he wins what he wants in Ukraine, he might keep moving on to other vulnerable nations, possibly even including those now in NATO. Poland probably is at the top of the list, and like other nations once imprisoned in the Soviet bloc, Poland is worried. Why wouldn’t it be? Putin yearns for the good old days. He declared in 2005 that the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” At a rally in Russia a few years later, I saw him tell citizens that the Russian nation was a superpower once and will be a superpower again.
Unless his aggression is stopped cold, he might not rest until he has his good old days back.
Fourth, we have to show the psychopathic Russian president that his butchery against both the Ukrainian people and against the peaceful state of Europe for the last 80 years will not succeed. It isn’t just that Ukraine was better off before Russia invaded in late February last year. The world was better off.
Fifth, we have to continue to stand by those allies who, unlike Putin, share our values. Every democracy takes a different shape but all of them, albeit some shakier than others, have given their citizens some say in the affairs of their nations, and each has carved out a way to live in peace with its neighbors. If we stop funding Ukraine and Russia walks away with what it wants, those allies can’t possibly defend themselves without us. Like a domino effect, if any of them fails, it’s a loss for the whole Western world. That’s why Massachusetts Democratic congressman Seth Moulton said Saturday on CNN when Ukraine funding was taken off the table, “Vladimir Putin had a very good day.”
Sixth, if Putin is seen as the victor, it is bound to embolden President Xi in China— who declared at last year’s Olympics in Beijing that the two nations have a friendship with “no limits”— not just to invade our independent democratic ally Taiwan but to challenge the traditional supremacy of the United States in the South China Sea, through which up to a third of the world’s commerce is shipped.
Lastly, buckling to any of Vladimir Putin’s demands would be appeasement. It is only a coincidence but Saturday’s funding clash in Congress came 85 years to the day after British prime minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement to mollify Adolf Hitler.
Soon the world learned a hard lesson: that any attempt to assuage a bloodthirsty dictator will not bring the desired result. Hitler broke his word and went on to take Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then more beyond that. As the principled conservative Liz Cheney tweeted to Republicans Saturday on that very anniversary, “Members of the House and Senate who are voting to deny Ukraine assistance… should read some history: Appeasement didn’t work then. It won’t work now.”
So that’s the case for funding Ukraine. The hard right ignores it at our peril. The only case you can make against it, aside from the straw man argument that more for Ukraine means less for us, is that Ukraine has not been a model democracy. But right now, although Ukraine’s leadership has other things to deal with, they’re not just working on it, they’re fighting for it.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Let Ukrainians fight our battle now or we have to fight later when Putin attacks NATO allies. A NATO attack could easily escalate to a nuclear war. Once the Ukraine war ends, as all wars do, they should become a NATO member, That would further contain Putins.
Greg, I agree wholeheartedly, we must not only help support Ukraine maintain a balance of power, that continues the killing. we must aggressively shut down Putin. Wars are only ended by those with the most power, military power, economic power and political power, by bringing the aggressors to their knees. We should have stopped them in their tracks when they first rolled over the border John