America has done well by supporting Ukraine. It is a situation of unusual strategic gain, says Yale historian Timothy Snyder:
- Ukrainians are fulfilling the entire NATO mission by themselves, absorbing and halting a full-scale Russian attack.
- Ukrainians are deterring a Chinese offensive in the Pacific by demonstrating how difficult such an operation would be.
- Ukrainians are defending the notion of an international order with rules, making war elsewhere less likely.
And there is an important way that doing right and doing well come together, he writes for Substack:
Ukraine was attacked as a democracy, and is defending itself as a democracy. It is historically unusual for a dictatorship to try to destroy a democracy by force.
That Putin’s Russia is trying to do so reminds us that we are a historical turning point. On one side of the scale are Russia’s ruthlessness and resources. On the other side are Ukrainians’ sacrifice and our support. Their sacrifice will be enough, if our assistance will be enough.
It is a matter of strategic urgency that we defend democracies under attack like Ukraine and Israel, said Journal of Democracy founding coeditor Larry Diamond, delivering the 20th annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World, sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the Embassy of Canada.
“Doing well by doing right: American support for Ukraine”
My latest post on “Thinking about…” pic.twitter.com/9KELxRSa2H— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) December 12, 2023
Historians will look back at these two years of war and marvel at how much the Ukrainians did for their allies. I expect they will describe this turning point for what it was, including in its moral dimension, Yale’s Snyder adds. We have an unusual chance to do well by doing right. Will we take it?
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke yesterday at the National Defense University (above), addressing the imperative to aid his country’s war effort.
