We’re All Neocons Now

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

 

I happen to believe that the character of the regimes the U.S. partners with abroad matters. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule when American national interests are at stake. Statecraft is a dexterous art. In the main, however, promoting liberal democracy abroad serves U.S. interests. Barring prohibitive exigencies, the U.S. should do what it can to encourage democratic reforms in our partners and preserve those conventions in our allies.

 

That’s what I believe, but it’s not what the realists believe. To the extent proponents of that school are familiar with it, realists should reject ideological foreign policy prescriptions. To hear them tell it, the character of a pro-American regime shouldn’t matter to policymakers in Washington so long as it is pro-American. The only calculation that should preoccupy foreign affairs practitioners is: How many advantages can we extract from our allies and partners until our rent-seeking reaches the point of diminishing returns?

 

That’s why the latest argument from those who have expressed skepticism about the prospects for Western success in Ukraine is only the nearest (and newest) weapon at hand.

 

In an outburst of deeply disappointing remarks on Tuesday in which Donald Trump blamed Ukraine for prolonging Russia’s war of conquest by resisting its designs, the president echoed a critique of Kyiv that has recently found broad purchase among Ukraine’s detractors. “We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine,” Trump mused, “where we have martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine — I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4 percent approval rating — and the country’s been blown to smithereens.”

 

The comments are reflective of sentiments abroad within the Trump administration. “In most democracies, elections take place even during wartime,” Trump’s envoy to the conflict, Keith Kellogg, stressed. “I think it’s important. I believe it’s good for democracy.” Moscow agrees. “President Zelensky’s term of office has ended,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Vladimir Putin’s regime considers the “legitimization of Ukraine’s leadership” key to negotiating a durable settlement with it — an irridentist autocracy.

 

Apparently, we’re back in the democracy promotion business, and with the Kremlin’s blessing. We’re all neocons now. Imagine that.

 

All should hope that Russia’s invasion and the martial law that accompanied it will end as soon as possible. If it did, the legitimate fears that some of Ukraine’s supporters have expressed about the prospect of Russian malfeasance in Ukrainian elections wouldn’t prove an obstacle to holding the vote. Ukrainians take elections seriously. Indeed, OSCE observers of its plebiscites have said as much, and its elections are contests in which incumbents often lose (ironically enough, Volodymyr Zelensky owes his 2019 election in part to his criticisms of his predecessor’s antagonistic posture toward Russia). But to hold one in the midst of war would violate its constitution and laws, which would need to be amended first. Nor could the international community be certain that such an election would be a fair one, not because of Russian interference but because Trump has Zelensky’s popularity precisely backward.

 

A February poll of Ukrainians found 57 percent “trust” Zelensky, up slightly from December’s 52 percent. Ukraine still has politics, and Zelensky isn’t the country’s only polarizing figure. But the old pro-Russian elite are thoroughly sidelined. Ukrainians do chafe under the restrictions imposed on them by martial law, and there is nothing untoward about calling for the resumption of elections. But that is a value-neutral process, and those advocating for its resumption are invested in outcomes Ukraine’s voters appear, for now, unlikely to deliver.

 

The portrait Zelensky’s critics paint of him is of a zealous and corrupt despot clinging to power, but the data suggest the opposite: His wartime leadership is likely only to be ratified by the Ukrainian oblasts capable of organizing a vote. There are historical examples of Western democracies that postpone electoral contests when they’ve been transformed into battlefields but don’t sacrifice their commitment to democratic ideals in the process. The U.S. should ensure that Ukraine joins that list as a free and sovereign entity, if not after the war concludes, then at a time in which fair elections can be organized and monitored in as much of the country as possible.

 

At least, that’s what I believe. It is flattering to see those who do not share my conviction assume that, by adopting principles they do not hold, they’ve somehow trapped me in mine. Rather, they’ve either revealed how little they understand their own or merely how situational their realist policy prescriptions are. We could be forgiven for concluding the value of this sort of circumstantial realism is the pseudo-academic legitimacy it lends to their immutable hostility toward the Ukrainian cause.