I had lunch the other day with a Christian Republican. Someone I know from childhood, a really nice guy, I like him a lot. But I knew we were on different sides of the fence and wanted to explore that. I always mean to talk to more people I disagree with and usually underperform in so doing.
I don't have space to recount it all, but one thing did really strike me. His lack of concern for Ukraine on principle. His thinking was guided by realpolitik, by the idea that we had "poked the bear" by allowing NATO's borders to extend to where they were touching Russia's. He quoted George Kennan as saying this was a mistake. I remember early in the Ukraine war when Kennan's opinion to this effect was circulating the interweb, I reached out to friends in Eastern Europe and got a clear and resolute answer: Fuck Kennan. People in Eastern Europe appreciate the fact that they don't live under Putin's wing. Admittedly, these were educated people, the so-called "global elite." Maybe people out in the countryside who are struggling for an economic model (Viktor Orban's constituency) would have thought differently.
But at the end of the day we have to stand for and believe in something, and freedom has been the best idea we've had. Admittedly, freedom is a complex topic which means different things to different people and we are always tripping over our own feet trying to figure out which aspects of it the electorate and society wish to prioritize, but we're always working on it.
And make no mistake, as the US's status as sole superpower has been in retreat for the last decade, we see signs that freedom as a priority retreats with it. Even in places like Taiwan we see polls indicating that a good chunk of the population could acquiesce to dominance by the mainland. In the UAE polls recently indicated that people preferred stability to freedom. And so on.
But the people of Ukraine have made their preference pretty clear, and if we abandon them it's all over.
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