Stay Strong in Supporting Ukraine

The United States has now delivered over $60 billion in supplies and weapons to help the Ukrainians defend themselves against the now year-old invasion from Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Both the Ukraine and Russia have lost over 70,000 dead each - a rate of loss that vastly exceeds the 54,000 American dead from the Vietnam War.

The war is now in stalemate, with Ukraine having repulsed the early 2022 "blitzkrieg" towards Kiev, and recaptured of the strategically important southern city of Kherson.

Russia is now throwing everything it has at Ukraine - including over 300,000 new conscript soldiers - many of whom were recruited from Russia's jails and prison. The mass attacks by poorly trained Russian troops has been called a "meat grinder," with Russia sometimes losing over 1,000 dead in a single day.

In America there are now voices demanding that we stop supporting Ukraine. People denouncing Ukraine as "corrupt" and "mafia" and "a waste of US taxpayer dollars." Many of these calls come from the Trumpian right - and echo the isolationism of the pre-WW2 period.

But such calls fail to appreciate that it is very much in America's national interest to stop an aggressive Putin, and protect the integrity and independence of Ukraine - a country we vowed to protect 30 years ago.

In the early 1990's, a newly-independent Ukraine had hundreds of Soviet nuclear weapons. A security nightmare if any of those weapons fell into rogue state or terrorist hands. So the US negotiated a surrender of all Ukraine's nuclear weapons - in exchange for Russia agreeing to respect Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity. An American-brokered agreement.

Ukraine gave up all its nuclear weapons - and Russia agreed to respect Ukraine. It worked for over 20 years - until Vladimir Putin broke the agreements and started attacking and annexing parts of Ukraine. Those Russian attacks exploded in February, 2022, into a general invasion. Now Putin is threatening America with nuclear war, while violating its own promises.

The defeat of Putin in Ukraine means that stability prevails, and Putin's Russia will cease to be a threat against the West for at least a generation. In many ways, Ukraine is fighting America's war - using Ukrainian soldiers and American equipment.

That is why American defeatism and appeasement are so misguided. America spent over $10 trillion on the Cold War - over $40 trillion in today's dollars - and lost over 100,000 Americans dead. The Ukrainians are doing what we already spent vast amounts of blood and treasure to defend. And they are defeating Putin's scheme to revive the Soviet Union as a threat to America and our NATO allies.

Next to the $40 trillion we already spent, $60 billion is a pittance. And no Americans are dying. And the cause of defending Ukraine is a right and moral cause. We need to support Ukraine and stay the course.