Why the West Should Care About Ukrainian and Israeli Independence

By Seth Mandel

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

 

Certainly, the main complaint about the Biden administration’s handling of the wars in Ukraine and Israel is its ambivalence toward victory. But another problem, and it is shared by the West broadly, is the lack of recognition that sovereignty, not mere survival, is an important goal in itself.

 

For Ukraine, at least, this is unlikely to change in a Trump presidency. Indeed, the election of Donald Trump is being interpreted, reasonably, as increasing the chance to end the war. Doing so, however, will come at a price: Ukraine will not get all of its territory back from Russia.

 

That, unfortunately, may have been made inevitable by the current administration’s wishy-washy support for Ukraine. Unless something changes dramatically and quickly, Western leaders will have essentially imposed upon Ukraine conditions it would never accept for their own countries. Namely, that sovereign territory alone isn’t enough of a reason to fight.

 

It is easy to take this for granted if you do not border an enemy state or you have not been losing territory to hostile neighbors bit by bit. Which is to say, if you are in NATO and surrounded by NATO member states. Ukraine and Israel check neither box.

 

The Ukrainians are a people on their historical land. Israelis understand this concept, but fewer and fewer in the West seem to. The goal of the hostile foreign powers that invaded Ukraine and Israel was to negate the legitimacy of the land so they could wipe out the people.

 

The West’s original sin against Ukrainian legitimacy goes back 30 years now. In 1994, the U.S., UK, Ukraine, and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum. In return for security guarantees, Ukraine agreed to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, which it inherited from the Soviet Union upon the USSR’s dissolution.

 

In addition to agreeing not to attack Ukraine, all the signatory countries vowed to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” (Emphasis added.) They also promised (again, emphasis is mine) “to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.”

 

The U.S. and UK have failed to uphold their obligations in humiliating fashion. Not only has Ukraine been losing territory to Russian aggression for a decade, that aggression was spurred in 2014 by the discussion of increasing economic ties between Ukraine and Europe. All of which means that back in 2014, we made Ukraine give up one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals in return for promises we have been breaking every day for 10 years. Coincidentally, the U.S. ambassador to Hungary at the time, and therefore the man standing next to President Bill Clinton at the press conference announcing the Budapest Memorandum, was Donald Blinken—the father of current Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

 

In 2014, Russia occupied and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. In the current war, Russian troops still occupy nearly a fifth of Ukraine. Unless the future Ukraine-Russia settlement contains any pleasant surprises, there’s no reason to believe Ukraine’s territorial integrity will remain intact. Which is to say, Ukraine has been forced to reduce its sovereign territory each time Russia wanted to take a bite. Ukraine is very nearly becoming independent in name only.

 

Meanwhile, in Israel, Lebanon-based Iranian militias keep killing Israelis in the north and perpetuating the forced displacement of civilians there. The Hamas invasion of last year triggered the displacement of Israelis near Gaza Strip. Israel has been building underground hospitals to go with its shelters—a slightly different use of underground construction than that of Hamas in Gaza.

 

Israel’s total landmass is a rounding error in the Middle East. Yet the ceasefire proposals from the U.S. and Europe have for months envisioned a “peace” in which Israelis cannot be confident that they can safely live in their homes again. Hamas and Hezbollah chose to live underground, so Israeli civilians should be forced to do the same? Nonsense. Yet, that is very clearly the implication behind any “permanent” ceasefire deal that leaves Hamas in power in Gaza or Hezbollah right on Israel’s northern border.

 

For the comfortable West, for those wrapped in the security blanket of NATO, our allies’ limited territory is negotiable. But NATO was founded on the principle that sovereignty and independence mean something. American and European leaders ought to act like it.