America Loses If Russia Wins

By Michael R. Pompeo

Monday, June 09, 2025

 

The world is watching Ukraine, and what they see will determine America’s standing on the world stage for decades to come. If Russia emerges from this conflict appearing victorious, America’s interests — and those of our partners in Europe and around the world — will be severely damaged.

 

This isn’t hyperbole — it’s the stark reality of how power projection works in the 21st century. When adversaries believe they can defeat American interests and allies without consequence, they grow bolder. When allies doubt America’s commitment to their security, they seek other arrangements — hedging with the Chinese Communist Party, or the Islamic Republic of Iran, or both.

 

These dynamics are already underway, and a perceived Russian victory would only accelerate them. If America relinquishes its leadership of the free world, our economy, our security, and our future will be in peril. Make no mistake, leading the world is costly, but the benefits far exceed those costs. The alternative — ceding spheres of influence or global leadership to brutal regimes that want our grandchildren to live in tyranny — is far too high a price to pay.

 

As I was standing in Odessa last month — just days after Russian strikes on the city — the stakes were crystal clear. Ukraine’s remarkable resilience, including the recent stunning attacks on Russian strategic bombers deep inside Russian territory, proves that this war is far from over. However, Ukraine’s courage alone cannot solve America’s credibility crisis, which was created by years of Obama-Biden weakness and strategic drift.

 

Every day that Russia maintains its territorial gains in Ukraine, America appears weaker to our adversaries. The authoritarian axis of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea is already testing our resolve precisely because they sense American weakness fostered by the Obama-Biden doctrine of leading from behind. A negotiated settlement that allows Putin to claim victory by recognizing Russian control of Ukrainian territory would transform this opportunistic cooperation into a coordinated challenge to American power.

 

China is watching Ukraine to gauge American commitment to Taiwan. Iran is measuring our resolve as it advances its nuclear program and regional aggression. North Korea is calculating whether America will actually defend South Korea. If Russia succeeds in Ukraine, each of these adversaries will conclude that American security guarantees are hollow promises — a perception already seeded by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and years of appeasement.

 

This isn’t theoretical speculation. Putin himself has demonstrated that success breeds appetite for more aggression. His 2008 seizure of Georgian territory during the Obama years, his 2014 annexation of Crimea after Obama’s weak response, and his 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine following Biden’s projected weakness follow a clear pattern: test American resolve, encounter weak responses, then escalate. A perceived victory in Ukraine will only convince him that America lacks the will to stop him from pursuing his next target — whether that’s Moldova, the Baltic states, or beyond.

 

A Russian victory would permanently destabilize European security, making America less safe by forcing NATO to defend territory under far more dangerous circumstances. Instead of containing Russian aggression in Ukraine with Ukrainian forces, the West would face the prospect of direct military confrontation with an emboldened Russia that has learned it can seize territory without a decisive American response.

 

Meanwhile, Russia would escalate its hybrid warfare against both America and Europe — including cyberattacks on our infrastructure, political influence operations, sabotage of our facilities, and state-backed violence against our citizens. Putin’s confidence in these gray-zone operations grows directly from his perception of American weakness in conventional conflicts, a belief cultivated by years of Obama-Biden foreign policy failures.

 

Fortunately, President Trump has the chance to reverse this dangerous trajectory. His return to the White House presents a historic opportunity to restore the peace-through-strength doctrine that kept adversaries in check during his first term. Unlike his predecessors, who telegraphed weakness and uncertainty, President Trump understands that American strength prevents wars rather than causing them. This administration, like his first, is on its way to doing so. In President Trump’s first term, low oil prices, meaningful sanctions, and the provision of actual serious weaponry to Ukraine deterred Putin. Those same tools can deter him now and bring peace.

 

Some argue that this isn’t our war and that this could become President Trump’s Vietnam if he doesn’t pressure Ukraine to accept a quick — and disadvantageous — deal. This argument is both historically and strategically mistaken. America hasn’t deployed the 82nd Airborne or the 101st Airborne to Ukraine, nor have we been asked to do so. We’ve been asked to send weapons and share intelligence — a wholly different level of commitment than what we provided for years in Southeast Asia.

 

Advocates for ending support to Ukraine often claim that further support is fruitless because we cannot succeed. Yet this becomes an American failure only if we allow the China-Russia-Iran joint effort to march to the capital and see emergency airlifts like Saigon or, more importantly, Kabul. While the oft-cited risk of “escalation” is real, as we can see from the last three years of war, escalation and the erosion of deterrence will only increase if the United States and Europe conclude that pushing back against Russian aggression exceeds our grasp.

 

America’s word must mean something, or it means nothing. In exchange for its nuclear disarmament, we provided security assurances to Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. We already weakened those commitments when Obama failed to respond decisively to Russia’s 2014 invasion. Biden compounded this failure by providing Ukraine just enough support to survive, but never enough to win.

 

President Trump now has the opportunity to restore American credibility by ensuring that Russia does not claim victory. His proven ability to project strength while avoiding unnecessary conflicts, combined with his successful track record of deterring adversaries through decisive action, positions him uniquely to solve the Ukraine crisis in a way that strengthens rather than weakens America.

 

At a minimum, America must not recognize stolen Ukrainian territory as legitimately Russian. We should reaffirm the 2018 Crimea Declaration’s “refusal to recognize the Kremlin’s claims of sovereignty over territory seized by force in contravention of international law” and provide Ukraine with the tools necessary to reclaim its territory.

 

Today, again under President Trump’s leadership, America can finally move beyond the half measures and strategic timidity that characterized the Obama-Biden approach. The choice is stark: continue the failed policies of appeasement and indecisiveness of Obama-Biden that brought us this war, or restore the respect and deterrence that kept the world stable and America secure. For as it has been true for 80 years, the world is safer when America leads.