The 'Right' View by Francis P. Sempa

The Ukraine Lobby Appeals to Our Hearts, Not Our Interests

Earlier in the Russia-Ukraine War, U.S. politicians and observers who sought to convince the American people that we should make Ukraine our proxy against Russia portrayed the conflict as necessary to stop Vladimir Putin’s armies from overrunning Western Europe. After Ukraine, we were told, the Baltic states or Poland would be next. Then other NATO countries would fall. And soon, Russian tanks would be staring across the English Channel reminiscent of the Nazi blitzkrieg of 1940. In this scenario, Putin was Hitler, Zelensky was Churchill. It was, we were told, a Munich moment.

Three years later, the war in Ukraine resembles not World War II’s blitzkrieg so much as the western front of the First World War—a grinding, pounding war of attrition that has cost countless Ukrainian and Russian lives. Russia has captured some eastern provinces of Ukraine (they captured Crimea in 2014) but they are not poised to overrun western Europe (nor is there any evidence that Putin seeks to do that). The Munich analogy was always a stretch, but you don’t read or hear much about that anymore. The pro-Ukraine lobby has shifted from appealing to our supposed strategic interests to appealing to our hearts.