A retracted letter from 30 liberal Democrats in Congress that urged the Biden administration to hold diplomatic talks with Russia over the fate of Ukraine proved one thing: There are politicians in both parties who just don’t get what’s at stake here.
The letter, made public this past week, said President Biden should match ongoing U.S. economic and military assistance to Ukraine with a “proactive diplomatic push” aimed at creating a framework for a cease-fire.
What could these Democrats have been thinking? What has anyone seen from Russian President Vladimir Putin that makes them think he’d be open to reasonable diplomacy?
The progressive letter correctly stated that the alternative to diplomacy is a long war with unknowable risks. And that is precisely the point: It is becoming more likely that Russia will be unable to sustain a long war, so why not wait Putin out? If he is too stubborn to recognize his mistake and back away, why should NATO and other nations give him any prize at all for his Ukraine atrocities?
The humor of the Democratic letter is that when it got withdrawn, the Washington congresswoman who is the leader of the Progressive Caucus said in a statement that the letter was drafted several months ago and released by staff Monday without being reviewed. To translate, elected officials threw the people who work for them under the bus because nobody foresaw the guaranteed negative reaction.
To be fair, it’s not just the most liberal Democrats who are questioning America’s financial and military commitments to Ukraine. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., says that if Republicans win control of the House in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, the party will not write a blank check for assistance to Ukraine.
Neither Biden nor anyone else has asked for a blank check. And while weapons plus billions of dollars is no small sum, Americans ought to keep in mind that the people fighting and dying are Ukrainians. There has been no talk of sending American troops, as the George W. Bush administration did in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is stunning that so few people in power appear unable or unwilling to war-game this. If Russia is allowed to keep more of Ukraine’s territory, what is to stop the aggressor from taking aim at other small European nations? If it decided to take over the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — all former Soviet republics — would NATO really live up to its obligation to defend alliance members?
In the even bigger picture, if the West backs away from Ukraine, what message does that send to China, which seems intent on invading the island of Taiwan?
Americans should be grateful that these Ukraine skeptics weren’t around in the 20th century. There would have been no Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and probably no NATO. Both efforts were controversial and expensive, but our leaders’ foresight paid off immensely by keeping the peace in Europe for many years.
Sadly, today’s foresight is limited to pandering for votes. Americans have elected a disappointing bunch of people in both parties.
