Abandoning Ukraine Isn't Anti-War. It's Abdication.
The case for cutting off Kyiv fails every value the left claims to defend.
by David Shuster
There is a troubling spectacle unfolding on portions of the American left. Organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, along with a growing chorus of progressive commentators and activists, now argue that the United States should curtail – or abandon altogether, military support for Ukraine. These left-wing commentators have framed their arguments as anti-war. But their case is weak, absurd, and impossible to reconcile with the values progressives have long claimed.
For decades, progressives have spoken about solidarity with vulnerable people, resistance to authoritarianism, defense of democracy, and opposition to colonial domination.
Ukraine is a democratic state that was invaded by an autocratic Russian neighbor determined to extinguish Ukraine’s sovereignty, erase its national borders, and place the Ukrainian people under the subjugation of the Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. If progressives can’t support the Ukrainian cause, then progressive principles are merely shallow slogans on a web site or YouTube channel fundraising page.
Let’s start with the basics. The Russia-Ukraine war is not the U.S. war in Iraq.
This is not another neo-conservative adventure in regime change, nation building, or preventive invasion. Ukraine has not asked Americans to fight its battles. It has asked for Americans to fight its war. It asked for weapons, intelligence, and economic support so that Ukrainians could defend their own homes, families, and democracy. There is a great irony in hearing people who routinely condemn colonial conquest shriek and recoil at the prospect of assisting a nation resisting such a conquest.
Some of my own colleagues on the left have argued that military aid “prolongs the conflict.” But this argument overlooks a basic reality: wars do not end simply because the victim stops resisting. If Ukraine lacked the means to defend itself, the outcome would not be peace. It would be brutal conquest.
The history of Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory, starting with the Crimea invasion and annexation in 2014, includes documented abuses against civilians. In Crimea as well as the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, there have been countless reports of Russian troops carrying out rape, torture, and murder.
There is no reason to believe that Ukraine’s surrender to occupying Russian forces would produce a just or lasting peace.
