America Needs a Realistic Ukraine Debate

A healthy democracy ought to be able to develop and debate its national-security options honestly, openly and vigorously. This has not been the case when it comes to the United States’ policy on Ukraine. The American debate is instead polarised between supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’ and withdrawing support altogether. To view the war in such binary terms is not good for the United States. Nor is it good for Ukraine. There is obviously a strategic logic to punishing the Kremlin for its aggression, and we can continue to hope that Ukraine emerges from this war as a democracy with a bright European future. On the current course, however, Americans are in for a very long and very costly war over a relatively small amount of territory of limited strategic relevance to the United States. Unless US policymakers can arrive at a constructively pragmatic realism, disaffected voters could revolt in a manner that exacerbates America’s existing domestic political fractures

Political economy · Political science · Sociology · European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies · European Politics and Security · Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics