Are we Westerners weaker than the Ukrainians?

“We will defeat the Ukrainian in you for loving Russia,” a Russian interrogator told a torture survivor I spoke to in Ukraine, before whipping and raping her.

Seems like a good summary of the strategy Vladimir Putin.

It doesn’t work in Ukraine, where Putin’s atrocities seem to strengthen the will to fight back.

That brave woman triumphed over her interrogations, albeit at terrible personal cost.

But I fear that in the West we are made of weaker stuff.

Some of the most important decisions the US will make in the coming months have to do with the level of support we will give to Ukraine, and I have received criticism from some readers who think the president Joe Biden he is making a terrible mistake by resolutely helping Ukraine push Russia back.

A woman named Nancy complained on my Facebook page that I was more interested in protecting the Ukrainian border than the American one.

He argued that we should focus on our challenges and not those of Ukraine.

“We are too much in debt, but we are funding a war we shouldn’t be involved in,” he said.

“It’s enough”.

According to polls, US support for aid to Ukraine remains strong but is waning, especially among Republicans.

And nearly half of Americans want the United States to pressure Ukraine “to settle for peace as soon as possible” even if it loses territory, a fact that should warm Putin’s heart.

Fed up with Western support for Ukraine it could continue to gain ground in the coming months as people tire of it high energy prices and, in the case of some European countries, possible supply cuts.

So let me explain to Nancy and others why we should continue to arm Ukraine.

The fundamental misconception among many Republicans in Congress (and some progressives on the left) is that we are doing it a favor to Ukraine by sending weapons.

It is not so.

We keep the coat of Ukraine while sacrificing lives and infrastructure in ways that benefit us, while degrade threatens a thousandItar from Russia to NATO and Western Europe, and then to us.

“They’re doing us a favor, they’re fighting our fight,” he told me. wesley-clarkretired US general and former Supreme Commander of NATO Allied Forces in Europe.

“The struggle in Ukraine is a struggle for the future of the international community.”

If the war ends in Russia’s favor, he argues, it will be a less safe world for Americans.

One lesson the world would absorb would be the critical importance of having nuclear weapons, as Ukraine was invaded after giving up its nuclear arsenal in the 1990s, and Russia’s nuclear warheads today prevent a stronger Western military response.

“If Ukraine falls, there will definitely be a wave of nuclear proliferationClark warned.

For years, military strategists feared a Russian incursion Estonia this would challenge NATO and cost the lives of US troops.

The Ukrainians are weakening Russian forces to reduce that risk.

More broadly, perhaps the greatest threat to world peace over the next decade is the risk of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait escalating into war between the United States and China.

To reduce that danger, we should help Taiwan increase its deterrent capacity, but perhaps the simplest way to reduce the likelihood of that happening Xi Jinping act aggressively or stand united against the Russian invasion.

If the West falters and allows Putin to win in Ukraine, Xi will feel better confidence that you can win in Taiwan.

Putin was a destabilizing offender and brutal for many years – from Chechnya to Syria, from Georgia to Moldova – partly because the world did not want to deal with it, and partly because it has a powerful military force that Ukraine is now dismantling.

Aside from energy, Russia’s economy is not substantial.

“Putin and Russia are weak,” Viktor Yushchenko, a former Ukrainian president who defied Russia and was then mysteriously poisoned and disfigured, told me.

“Russia is a poor country, an oil appendage of the world, a gas station.”

the world is in debt with Ukraine for its willingness to finally confront Putin.

In any case, I would like the Biden administration to carefully ramp up the capabilities of the weapons it supplies to Ukraine, because the best way to end the war may be simply to make Putin feel that the cost is no longer worth paying. say the same.

I do not mean to suggest that all those who support peace talks are cowardly, jaded or short-sighted.

The general Mark Mille and other Pentagon officials are understandably concerned that the Ukrainian conflict could spiral out of control and escalate into nuclear war.

It’s a legitimate concern, and it’s always good to look for ways out of the fog of war.

But give in to nuclear blackmail and rewarding an invasion would create its own risks for many years to come, and taken together those dangers appear greater than those of continuing on the present course.

By advocating for the West to support Ukraine, I emphasized our national interest in doing so.

But, in addition to interests, there are values ​​at stake, since there is also a moral question face up to.

When a nation invades its neighbor and commits murder, looting and rape, when it traffics thousands of children, when it pulverizes the electricity grid so that civilians freeze in winter…in such a blizzard of probable war crimes, the neutrality it is not the highest ground.

Let’s not let Russia win over the Ukrainians:

The world could use a bone marrow transplant from brave Ukrainians.

-c.2022 The New York Times Society