Sending arms and humanitarian aid to Ukraine is important for U.S. national security since Putin would undoubtedly continue to attack other eastern European countries to reconstitute the “Russian Empire” if Ukraine fell.
But it would not be wise for the U.S. to be drawn into a war with Russia over Ukraine. Nor to make a commitment to pay for Ukrainian reconstruction. These would have a Macroeconomic impact on the U.S. economy which we simply can’t afford… not to mention the potential cost in lives and the danger of nuclear war.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/opinion/biden-ukraine-lea…
**The War Is Getting More Dangerous for America, and Biden Knows It**
**By Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, May 6, 2022**
**Things are actually getting more dangerous by the day.**
__For starters, the longer this war goes on, the more opportunity for catastrophic miscalculations — and the raw material for that is piling up fast and furious. Take the two high-profile leaks from American officials this past week about U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war... [Killing Russian generals, sinking the *Moskva*.]__
**The staggering takeaway from these leaks is that they suggest we are no longer in an indirect war with Russia but rather edging toward a direct war — and no one has prepared the American people or Congress for that....**
**America needs to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty and beat the Russians back — but not let Ukraine turn itself into an American protectorate on the border of Russia. We need to stay laser-focused on what is our national interest and not stray in ways that lead to exposures and risks we don’t want....We need to stick as tightly as possible to our original limited and clearly defined aim of helping Ukraine expel Russian forces as much as possible or negotiate for their withdrawal whenever Ukraine’s leaders feel the time is right....** [end quote]
We have all seen the U.S. get sucked into long, draining wars in foreign countries that did not improve U.S. national security. For heaven’s sake, we just left Afghanistan a few months ago after a 20 year war!
President Volodymyr Zelensky is charismatic and demanding. It would be easy to give him more and more. But the U.S. has to be careful not to fall in love with Ukraine, which is going to need billions of dollars of reconstruction which the U.S. desperately needs to spend on our own decaying infrastructure.
Ukraine politics is famously corrupt and fractious. Zelensky turned this common knowledge into the TV comedy, “Servant of the People” (currently on Netflix) which boosted him into the presidency in real life. The U.S. should not pump billions of dollars into a corrupt nation the way we did in Afghanistan.
Russia invaded Ukraine 10 weeks ago, which is the blink of an eye in the long, blood-soaked history of Russia. Russia has the deep resources of a large population that can be drafted and re-directed toward war.
It’s easy to admire a hard-fighting underdog that craves freedom from a tyrannical conquest. But the U.S. must not “fall in love” with Ukraine to the point of being pulled into direct conflict with Russia or a blank check for defending and reconstructing Ukraine.
Wendy