Opposition to Western help for Ukraine is interesting in that it spans the ideological spectrum. And the Neo-Trumpist Right, the neo-Chomskyite Left and the Kissingerian Realists have one big reason in common for their position: the risk of escalation to a NATO vs. Russia nuclear level is just too great. The MAGA folks also claim that support Ukraine ignores the voice of the American people, who, polls say, are more concerned with inflation and the crisis at the southern border. The moral-equivalence types stress their position that the US and the West generally have to get used to the idea of a multipolar world in which Russia, China and Iran are going to have a say equal to that of the West in how things go on the world stage.
But they're all wrong, because they have an amoral basis for coming to their conclusion.
Ukraine had a corruption problem for much of the first two decades of its post-Soviet independence, but its cultural flourishing made it clear that it had a Western orientation.
Consider the comedic films and comedic television that were coming out during that time. And consider the high profile of one Volodymyr Zelensky in those genres.
And before any of the above-mentioned opposition-to-supporting-Ukraine types attempt to dismiss Zelensky as a lightweight, let them be reminded he also has a law degree, and that his father was head of the Department of Cybernetics at Kryvyi Ric State University, and that his mother has engineering credentials. His wife is an architect, pianist and co-founder, with him, of the television entertainment company Kvartal 95.
It's pretty clear from photographs and interviews that they and their kids comprise a solid family that likes to have fun.
He was so popular that when he registered Servant of the People as the name of a political party in order to prevent anyone else from using the name of his sitcom in that fashion, a groundswell of support for him actually running for president happened.
He was proving himself as a president of integrity even prior to the Russian invasion. Recall the poise with which he handled Trump's I'll-send-the-already-authorized-aid-if-you'll-help-me-find-dirt-on-the-Bidens phone call.
And he's taking measures to address the above-mentioned corruption.
Who can say that, should the current invasion get resolved in a way that allows Ukraine to start healing and rebuilding, Zelensky will still be the right guy at the helm? The Brits, after all, did not re-elect Churchill as prime minister mere months after he'd helped achieve victory in the greatest global conflagration in history.
But he's exactly the right man for the moment.
He says repeatedly that Ukraine will settle for nothing less than restoration of all lands seized by Russia since 2014 to status as Ukrainian territory. That includes Crimea.
This is why he's been so insistent that the West supply tanks, armored personnel carriers, air-defense systems and other serious weaponry, which the West is now doing. The military support may even include fighter jets; some groundwork is already being laid for such a move.
While the Crimean peninsula's status has been up for grabs throughout history - its annexation by Russia in 1783, the victory over Russia of a Western-Ottoman alliance in the 1850s war for it, and the 1954 transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by the Kremlin, and the granting of a fair amount of political elbow room since the fall of the USSR - it's pretty clearly in Ukraine's orbit.
More fundamentally, the way Russia went about disputing that - invading and taking over - ran counter to the generally recognized rules of the world order of the last 70-plus years, as codified in the documents of various international organizations.
And then came the exponentially more flagrant violation of those rules in February 2022.
Defense of an international consensus that nations' sovereignty ought to be held sacrosanct or discussed in proper governmental channels is what is really at stake in the Ukraine situation. To compromise on any square foot of seized territory would be to set a precedent.
And what of the specter of nuclear escalation?
Well, here we get to a very large philosophical question. Is it better to dodge that bullet and live to see another day's prospects for a better world, or to have the eternal record book show that one did the right thing? That really depends, it seems to me, on whether one believes in an actual eternal record book.
And that's why I can't take anti-support types of either the Right or the Left seriously. They're fine with some kind of legitimization of what Putin has done. What kind of argument that's not coldly utilitarian justifies that?
I've written before about the moral parallel between this situation and that faced by the inhabitants of the Alamo in the 1830s:
I will say that if you've never spent much time in Texas, or specifically in San Antonio, don't mess with booking your hotel room in some chain place or swanky modern place. Get a room at the Menger Hotel, which was built in 1859, just as San Antonio was becoming a city and beginning to surround the Alamo area.
And then go to the Cinemax across the street and watch the re-enactment movie about the Alamo massacre.
In 1836, when the battle took place, people - yes, of Northern European extraction - had been settling into the compound called the Alamo that had originally been established as a religious community for many years. Davy Crockett, from Tennessee, had been among them. After Mexico's securing of independence from Spain in 1821 and the subsequent rise of the dictator-general Santa Ana, that land had become an expansionist victory for the newly established nation-state. But at that point, there was not much but wilderness around the compound, and the people within had come to develop a strong sense of it being home.
Scouts from the Alamo went out and came back with reports that Santa Ana's forces were coming northward, and were within a couple of weeks of reaching where they were.
Things came to a head after one guy in the Alamo community, William Barrett Travis, called all the men into the courtyard after dinner one evening. He took his sword out of its sheath and drew a line in the dirt. All those who were with him were to so indicate by coming over the line. He said that if anyone had a problem with the collective decision to defend the walls of the Alamo, he would respect that decision, and no hostility would be shown to that man. One man took that position, and the community wished him well as he walked away.
There is a statue of Travis unsheathing his sword in the Menger Hotel lobby.
What happened when Santa Ana's forces arrived was a complete bloodbath. Literally, as in blood flowing down the walls. Not a single man defending the Alamo survived.
Mexican forces rounded up the women and children and huddled them in an inner chamber.
The whole Mexican victory soon became moot, however, as Texas won a territory-wide victory and became an independent nation for nine years, and then part of the United States of America.
At this point, the Alamo, in the 1830s a lone outpost surrounded by wilderness, is in the middle of downtown San Antonio.
The world needs to ratchet down its level of cynicism and icy-heartedness, and this is where that effort needs to begin. Ukraine was just sitting there, being a sovereign country, with all the issues and foibles attendant to any and all earthly nations comprised of fallen human beings, when it got invaded by a neighbor, pure and simple. That's not right, and letting a wrong persist runs counter to God's design for His universe.
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