NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T oday’s Russia is a pygmy compared to the Soviet Union of the 1980s. Yet, when Moscow invaded Afghanistan, the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan gave the mujahideen what they needed to sustain the fight. They did it because exhausting Russia was in the interests of the United States, not because we admired the pluck of the Afghans or hoped to strike a blow for freedom.
That’s the point I hope Ron DeSantis takes away from this week’s unforced error, in which he described the illegal war of aggression executed by Vladimir Putin’s thuggish regime against Ukraine as a mere “territorial dispute” — as if we should remain neutral in judging the relative merits of the armed robber and his victim. The flub was unfortunate, both because the promising Florida governor is just starting to introduce himself to much of the public as he readies a 2024 presidential bid, and because, on balance, the answers he submitted in response to questions by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson demonstrated a sound understanding of America’s interests in the world.
If he makes those interests his North Star, DeSantis will stay sharp — 1980s sharp.
It is a fair point that the world is a very different place than it was 40 years ago. At times, Republicans’ nostalgia for the party’s most successful modern presidency has attracted them to policy prescriptions that don’t fit contemporary conditions. (Read Rich Lowry’s superb Politico essay on the Reagan legacy for more.) Yet Reagan remains a worthy model. He is proof that practical politics always proceed best from a foundation of clear principle. He embodies peace through American strength, which is still the peace worth having — and, presumably, the kind of “peace” DeSantis had in mind when he described it as “the objective” for the United States in Ukraine.
To the limited extent that America is involved in the conflict, peace on our terms is the degrading of our Russian enemy.
No one would confuse Ronald Reagan for a populist anti-interventionist banging on about “forever wars.” Yet, his commitment to confronting the Soviets in Afghanistan came with significant restrictions that should resonate in today’s debate over America’s response to revanchist Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
There was, of course, no consideration of deploying American troops. Nor was there any transfer of advanced American weaponry to the Afghans — certainly not anything that could be used to attack Russian soil. The main American aid to the mujahideen took the form of Stinger missiles, whose use did not require much in the way of training. And even with respect to this modest aid, the Reagan administration used Pakistani intelligence as a cut-out, providing a fig leaf of deniability that might restrain the Kremlin from regarding us as a formal combatant.
Sound familiar?
Particularly given the unique topography of Afghanistan, the Stingers proved extraordinarily effective against the arsenal the Red Army had dedicated to the conflict. But that was only because the Afghans were willing to dig in and fight a long, withering campaign — to do what it took to convince a superpower that it could never win at a reasonable cost the dubious prize it sought.
This was the Cold War. Understanding that we had an identifiable, formidable enemy did much to concentrate the national mind, especially as the delusions of Carter and the foreign-relations clerisy gave way to Reagan’s hardheaded “we win, they lose” assessment of the twilight struggle. This was not post-9/11 Afghanistan or Iraq. Such inanities as “sharia democracy” were not being bandied about, let alone directing policy. No one was so daft as to claim that America’s vital interest in Afghanistan was Afghanistan. It was Russia. The Afghans were our proxies, not our protégés. We weren’t pretending to vindicate such abstractions as democracy and the post-war international order.
No, we were degrading our mortal enemy. At the time, few expected the USSR to collapse in a heap shortly after marching out of Kabul with its tail between its legs. But nobody doubted that tying down and humiliating the Soviet armed forces in Afghanistan would make them less of a threat and diminish their power in other Cold War hot spots. That was America’s interest in the Afghan conflict. That conflict was not the center of our universe. U.S. support was thus limited by the practical political, economic, and security realities of the situation. Nevertheless, U.S. support was also resolute and sufficiently audacious to make clear that the White House, not the Kremlin, was dictating the extent of American involvement.
To acknowledge that the Ukrainians are not our first-order priority is not to say that their fate is irrelevant to us. To the contrary, as I’ve previously conceded, while I am no fan of Kyiv’s deep-seated corruption (and I truly hope President Zelensky is sincere in his determination to eradicate it), we are obliged to support Ukraine because we induced it to disarm, in 1994 and 2006, on the assurance of such support. No, we didn’t enter a binding treaty, but we gave our word and Kyiv relied on it, so our honor is at stake.
It is in our vital interest that American security promises be kept, for miscalculation by our enemies on this point can lead to wider wars, and securing peace on America’s terms hinges on America’s credibility. It would also be a good thing for us and the world if Europe was at peace and Ukraine was thriving and productive rather than imperiled and burdensome. We can debate whether establishing that state of affairs is a “vital” American interest, but its desirability cannot be gainsaid.
All that said, our chief objective in Ukraine must be the weakening and dispiriting of Russia. Moscow should be made to understand that it may end up controlling parts of Ukraine, just as it controlled Afghanistan for a time; but it will sustain losses that it cannot afford in the process, and its control will never be secure because Ukrainian insurgents will continue to fight. China should be made to understand that, in Russia, it is backing a burdensome loser. It should also see that while our commitment to confronting Putin in Ukraine is real, it is commensurate with our interests — and in calculating those interests, we are mindful that Beijing is the greater threat.
Marrying policy to American interests means that the president we inaugurate in January 2025 will have to step up preparations to meet that greater threat. The attractive parts of DeSantis’s comments highlighted the imperatives of “addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Pace the “forever war” agonists, that’s the roadmap to peace through strength. It never goes out of style. If Ron DeSantis remembers that, he’ll be fine.