Armas No. 11 — The opposition case.

What opponents of American aid to Ukraine get right.

The alliance.

One of the recurring topics here at Armas is the necessity of a robust and prudential American engagement in the Ukrainian war. Among other things, we’ve discussed the empirical evidence in favor of American hegemony in Europe, the remarkable failure of worst-case scenarios to manifest attendant to the war, and the historical context of the American fiscal commitment to Ukraine — which has to date generated a tremendous proportional return. 

That advocacy obviously takes place in the context of a robust conversation within the American right on how and whether that aid ought to exist. There is a parallel conversation on the left, but it is considerably less interesting: the tankies will always be with us. It is also far less consequential, as most of the American left endorses whatever the White House does, from aiding Ukraine to robbing you of gas stoves. Naked partisan identification as a primary heuristic for belief is not what the Founders had in mind, but it is what we mostly have.