My friend Luther Abel is no longer interested in the subject of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But, my friend, Russia and Ukraine are still interested in you.
I’m glad my friend Luther Abel put down in writing his argument that “It Is Time to Be Done with Ukraine” because it allows me to address two points on the subject.
First, Luther writes that “infantrymen, tankers, and civilians die in their hundreds on a weekly basis while swaths of the American press cheerlead a war that cannot be won to ‘own the cons’ and ‘stand up for democracy.’”
That Ukraine’s war for survival “cannot be won” has indeed become conventional wisdom on the American right and in the halls of power of the Trump administration. The argument, such as it, rests on the facts that the war has gone on for three years, that it’s been a bloody mess, that the operational and tactical situations look somewhat static, and that both sides are having trouble filling their ranks in an attritional struggle.
But of course, as anyone who has studied history should know, not a single one of these factors means that the war cannot be won by Ukraine.
The question of whether it’s a good idea for Ukraine to continue the war is a prudential one — whether continuing the fight is worth the cost to Ukraine, to its people, and to us. It’s a question on which reasonable minds can disagree.
But while Russia may or may not have the advantage right now (they have problems of their own, of course), let us dispense with the lazy idea that Ukraine cannot win based on the factors above.
The fundamental war aim for the Ukrainians, as declared by their government, is that Ukraine should maintain its independence from the Kremlin, that it should defend itself against the Russian invasion, and that it should prevent itself from being subjugated as a vassal state. The initial secondary war aims were that Ukraine would recover its lost provinces currently under Russian occupation, and that Ukraine would exit the war with guarantees of Western support so that it would be able maintain its independence and its security in the future.
But President Zelensky has already indicated that he’s willing to accept de facto Russian control over Crimea and the other occupied provinces under a peace deal that provides for Ukraine’s future security. In a November 2024 interview with Fox News’ Trey Yingst, Zelensky said that, while his government “cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian,” Ukraine “cannot spend dozens of thousands of our people so that they perish for the sake of Crimea coming back.” Zelensky continued, “We understand that Crimea can be brought back diplomatically.”
Translation: Ukraine can “win” the war if it holds off the Russian army, which it is doing, and ends the war with assurances of Western help should Russia try to renew hostilities.
Those are Ukraine’s primary war aims, and they are eminently achievable. They are also within the Trump administration’s power to facilitate.
Ukraine maintains control of its capital, five-sixths of its territory, and four of its five largest cities. Ukraine’s army remains in the field. Despite casualties, its fighting spirit has not flagged, and it continues to inflict disproportionate losses on the invaders. Moreover, the Ukrainian army has repeatedly shown itself capable of seizing the initiative and taking the offensive, such as in its invasion of Russia’s Kursk province last year.
Ukraine is not a nation that is irreversibly on the road to defeat.
Smaller, weaker countries — especially those that have the backing of outside patrons — win wars against more powerful countries all the time. See, as but a few examples, the British, Soviet, and American experiences in Afghanistan, Frederick the Great’s Prussians in the Seven Years’ War, the Vietnamese Communists against the French and the Americans, the Texas War of Independence, the American War of Independence, and Greece’s long fight against the Persian invasions.
Besides, the fact that Russia’s war on Ukraine has ground on for three years and appears relatively static by no means requires that it remain so. The fighting could peter out and end at the negotiating table, and quite soon. Or the dynamic could change, more suddenly than anyone might predict, and the Russians could meet defeat, as when the tables suddenly turned in Syria against Bashar al-Assad’s regime this winter after years of stalemate, or as when the Imperial German Army went from near total victory in the Kaiserschlacht spring offensive between March and July 1918 to utter defeat by that November. War is contingent. Things change.
Again, the question of whether or not Ukraine should fight on is a prudential one. But the war can be won. That victory, should it come, is not going to look like the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay onboard the USS Missouri. But can the Ukrainians achieve their currently stated war aims if given enough time and enough support? Yes. That’s plausible. Not certain. Not guaranteed, but certainly plausible. To say otherwise is poor analysis and ahistorical.
Second, regarding the contentious Oval Office incident on Friday, Luther writes that “ultimately, the event should have never happened because we should be done with Ukraine, and it with us.”
“Whatever utilitarian argument we have for supporting them — Ukraine fights Russia so we don’t have to — has run its course as we deplete munition stores for which we do not have replacements,” he says.
“I’m tired of it,” Luther writes, a little further on. “And not in the exasperated, bored Goldbergian sense. I’m tired of watching the same team debate play out month by month while two countries slaughter each other. War is a crime, full stop. Actively, indefatigably pursuing its end is the greatest good.”
So Luther says he’s tired of reading about and arguing about the merits of a people defending themselves from a murderous invasion. Moreover, he’s tired of considering whether it’s in our interest — America’s interest — to see Ukraine forced to accept what it considers to be an unstable, temporary peace. He’s tired of considering what such an American policy might say to our friends in Asia, such as Taiwan, which also lives in the shadow of a hostile imperial power bent on its subjugation.
Might I suggest that Luther look into the long twilight struggle — a struggle that lasted 45 years — that America waged against the monstrous tyranny of Soviet Communism? There were plenty of setbacks and defeats in that struggle too. There were times when it looked like America was outright going to lose.
I would remind Luther of the long, bloody, terrible years of the American Revolutionary War — could it have been benignly and rationally truncated? That war lasted seven full years from the firing of the first shots at Lexington and Concord. Would Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson have been lumped in as writers without “anything interesting to say in the English language” about such a conflict or about the arguments in favor of fighting on?
Whatever else it might be, Luther’s arguments in “It’s Time to Be Done with Ukraine” are a very long way from John Kennedy’s inaugural address, in which he declared, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
We’re a very long way from Ronald Reagan’s idea of how the United States should confront the nations that wish to end the benign American hegemony, as China, Russia, and Iran do today: “We win, they lose.”
Yes, indeed, Luther, war is a crime. War is evil. I agree.
But it’s not the most evil of things. Slavery is worse, as is a certain blasé attitude toward the subjugation of others — as if the enslavement of other peoples, if it does not immediately affect us, never will.
It all reminds me very much of what Winston Churchill told a joint session of our Congress in December 1941, in the days after Pearl Harbor. “For the best part of twenty years,” Churchill said, “the youth of Britain and America have been taught that war was evil, which is true, and that it would never come again, which has been proved false.”
My friend Luther Abel is no longer interested in the subject of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But, my friend, Russia and Ukraine are still interested in you.
Correction: The Japanese surrender took place on the USS Missouri, not the USS Iowa as I originally wrote.