By David Carlson | For The Times-Post
As the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine passes, the news out of Ukraine is dark. Russian forces have achieved significant victories, and the Ukrainian death toll has passed 31,000.
What President Zelensky needs right now is a strong recommitment from NATO and particularly the United States to help his country and brave troops turn the tide.
Instead, the Ukrainians watch as support for their survival as a democratic nation has become a political football in our country.
Republican support for Ukraine has become particularly problematic.
Really? Isn’t the Umited States the country that faced down the Soviet Union and contributed the most to ending the Cold War? Isn’t it we who think of ourselves as democracy’s great protector?
While Washington quibbles about how much aid should go to Ukraine and if aid to Ukraine should be separated from aid to Israel, there is no debate on what will happen if Ukraine falls.
Ukraine is just the beginning of Putin’s plan to retake democratic countries such as Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania that once suffered under the Soviet Union.
Putin has even threatened the neighboring Scandinavian countries of Finland and Sweden.
Putin’s ambitions raise a question similar to the one facing democracies in the late 1930s, when Hitler put his plan to rule Europe in motion.
Those democracies watched as Hitler took Austria, then Czechoslovakia, believing he would keep his promise to stop there. Finally, those democracies realized that the only way to halt Hitler’s aggression was all-out war.
Putin, as was true of Hitler then, wants to redraw the map of Europe, with Ukraine being just the beginning.
If democracies, including the United States, allow Ukraine to fall, at what point will they, will we, be forced to send troops to stop Putin?
Russia isn’t the only country encouraged by the decreasing support for Ukraine in the United States.
If democracies flinch instead of standing up to Putin in Ukraine, Xi Jinping will have the proof he needs that the United States and other democracies lack the will to oppose China’s repeated aim of absorbing Taiwan.
Most American students have heard the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Will future students be forced to learn a similar story if our elected leaders fiddle away this chance to tell Putin and Xi Jinping “No. No in Ukraine; No in Taiwan?”
There are numerous issues that will be debated in this presidential race.
All are important, but no issue is more important for peace in the world than saving Ukraine.
Now is not the time for our nation to turn inward and relinquish our role in leading the democratic world.
Yes, leading the free world can be tiresome, complicated and expensive.
But take a moment and imagine what the world would be like if the United States chooses isolationism.
Can anyone in good conscience say that such a world is the one we want our children and grandchildren to inherit?
David Carlson of Franklin is a professor emeritus of philosophy and religion. Send comments to [email protected].
