The American Conservative
BY DOUG BANDOW
Kiev faces a choice: make peace for its people or war for its supposed friends?
Russia’s war against Ukraine rages on. The U.S. and Europe continue to support Kiev. But not, it seems, to make peace. Rather, the allies are prepared to back the Zelensky government as long as it fights Moscow to the last Ukrainian—which has always been the West’s approach to Kiev.
Ukraine has become a cause célèbre in the West. People who normally pay little attention to international affairs have gone all-in for Ukrainians. Indeed, frenzied backers have borrowed the practice of self-criticism from China’s Cultural Revolution and demanded that Russian athletes, singers, conductors, and others make public confessions, abasing themselves and denouncing Putin, or lose their jobs.
Allied governments have offered abundant weapons to Kiev and imposed excruciating sanctions on Moscow, all of which serves to keep Ukraine in the war. America and the Europeans have made clear that they do not intend to take part in combat. Equip Ukrainians to fight, sure. Help Ukrainians fight, forget it.
