Ukraine-Aid Critics Should Present Their Vision

By Henry Olsen

Thursday, February 22, 2024

 

Conservative critics of military aid to Ukraine have made it clear what they are against. It’s time that they, and other conservative critics of traditional American foreign policy, present what they are for.

 

America did not build its web of international alliances blindly. They were consciously constructed in the early years of the Cold War with a specific purpose in mind: containing the spread of global communism. Democrats and Republicans alike knew that the Soviet Union would dominate the world if it could capture the industrial might of Western Europe and Japan. NATO and our mutual-defense treaty with Japan were created to eliminate that threat.

 

The same mindset influenced Cold War U.S. policy across the rest of the globe. After China fell to Communist control, America focused on building alliances in the Pacific and Middle East. Although now defunct, CENTO and SEATO — NATO-like alliances for Southeast and Central Asia — were considered essential to American security.

 

The Soviet Union’s collapse could have spelled the end of these alliances, but it didn’t. American influence was something other nations had grown used to, and they preferred playing second fiddle to Washington to the responsibility and potential costs and risks of an alternative system. America naturally also preferred a global order in which there was no substantial military challenger, and thus accepted American unipolarity under the guise of multi-nationalism.

 

Conservative critics of post–Cold War foreign policy, then, ought to focus more on that drift than on the underlying alliance structure itself. Our allies were not the reason American engaged in costly and ultimately futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. George W. Bush made those calls and our allies supported us as the cost of doing business with the world’s only superpower.

 

America now faces a return of sorts to the Cold War era. Russia’s nuclear forces and rebuilt military pose threats to the European Union, while Iran’s terrorist infrastructure finances assaults on Israel and the petrostates of the Persian Gulf. China’s emergence as a global economic power has allowed it to finance an increasingly capable military. Its aims are also increasingly global as it seeks bases in the broader Pacific and on the Atlantic Coast of Africa.

 

Any serious foreign-policy theorist knows that security hinges on the military ability to defend both the homeland and the resources upon which the homeland depends. In the industrial age, that meant access to resources such as oil and iron; in the post-industrial age, it also means access to rare-earth minerals and computer chips. America can’t produce enough of these resources on its own, and as such must engage with potential enemies far afield to ensure it is safe.

 

National security also depends on economic power. Modern wars between peers are often battles of attrition, as we are seeing in Ukraine. The combatant with more resources, manpower, and economic capacity eventually grinds its foe into the dust. That means America must ensure that this balance lies on our side rather than our adversaries’.

 

Our alliance structure helps us advance both objectives. The powers that are sanctioning Russia over its invasion of Ukraine produce nearly 60 percent of the world’s GDP. Acting in concert, they can still impose their will in any military conflict, providing they have built militaries that reflect their economic power. The failure of our Japanese and European allies in particular to have done that in the post–Cold War age is one of the major reasons our system of alliances is now weaker than it ought to be.

 

Aid to Ukraine is in America’s interests because it is in the interests of our NATO allies. They need a buffer between themselves and Russia as they rebuild their weakened militaries. Ukraine is that buffer, and its fall would place a confident Russia on the borders of seven EU members at a time when the EU nations — almost all of whom are in NATO — do not have the military capacity to effectively respond if attacked. Ukraine need not regain its lost territories, but it must remain capable of resisting Russian forces as Germany and other nations rearm.

 

Critics who deny this must responsibly advance an alternative theory of American security. Russia and its authoritarian allies do not need to occupy Europe; they need only to cow it into becoming neutral in their conflict with America. Remove Europe’s economic power from the equation, and suddenly the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis is nearly as powerful as the U.S.-led, Pacific-focused alliance rump. That’s a scenario that will encourage war with America, not lead to our safety.

 

Perhaps these critics have a persuasive alternative to maintaining and reinforcing our post-1945 foreign policy. If so, they should speak now or forever hold their peace.