America’s status is intertwined with Ukraine’s fate

Donald Trump’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Feb. 28 indicates that the 47th president plans to hand the United States its most humiliating defeat since Japan conquered the Philippines, our largest colony, in 1942.

Too few Americans realize Vladimir Putin’s three-year invasion is just the latest phase in a struggle that the Russian strongman has waged against us since he took power in 2000. If the United States abandons Ukraine, it will jettison its world standing and grow less able to check foreign threats to its security and economic health.

Putin toiled originally as a career officer of the KGB — the ruthless security organization dedicated to the preservation of the Soviet Union (USSR), or what Ronald Reagan called the “Evil Empire.”

America and the West triumphed in the Cold War in 1991, and the Soviet Union dissolved before the year’s end, which resulted in independence for the 14 republics, in addition to Russia, that comprised the Soviet Union, along with several other states the Red Army overran during World War II. Those events left Putin seething with rage, and he swore vengeance on the U.S., which he held primarily responsible for the USSR’s collapse.

Ukraine’s war is America’s war, and both nations’ welfare depends on the outcome.

Russia’s leaders judged that they were locked in a perpetual war with the United States and NATO. Russia lacked the military and economic might to risk a direct showdown with superpower America, but Putin found a viable strategy in “gray zone” or hybrid conflicts. This approach included espionage, sabotage, covert attacks on computer networks, propaganda aimed at undermining faith in democracy, and unconventional operations by forces Russia pretended were not acting under its orders.

One of Putin’s chief goals is to demonstrate that the U.S. lacks the resolve to sustain its allies. In 2008, Putin tested the West by invading Georgia to intimidate that former Soviet republic from joining NATO.

Six years later, Putin deployed Russian special forces and various surrogates to seize the Crimean Peninsula, which belonged to Ukraine. He proceeded to nibble away at eastern portions of Ukraine until he launched a full-fledged invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

Putin’s decision to wage an open war was a colossal blunder. The Russian army turned out to be poorly trained and poorly motivated, mauled repeatedly by outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainians.

This provided President Joe Biden with an opportunity to weaken his country’s archenemy at bargain rates. According to the BBC, 95,000 people fighting for Russia have died, with potentially more than 20,000 additional deaths for those serving in militias in the Donbas republics. Ukraine claims that more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the start of the war and that there have been 390,000 injuries on the battlefield. Not one American soldier has died.

Russia is badly hurt and cannot long endure such punishment, provided Ukraine’s friends stand firm.

Unfortunately, President Trump is in the process of throwing away a cost-efficient American victory, along with this country’s coveted position as leader of the free world.

World War II taught the United States that it needed allies to project its power to the far corners of the globe and reduce American casualties by sacrificing their own sons and daughters on countless battlefields. What MAGA adherents call “America First” will result in America alone, a decaying superpower with few or no friends and diminished access to the distant markets on which our prosperity depends.

Ukraine’s war is America’s war, and both nations’ welfare depends on the outcome.

Regardless of whether one believes the conspiracy theory that Trump is a Russian asset, Americans need to rise up and demand he cease acting like one — and do what is necessary to promote the cause of freedom and a safer world.

Gregory J.W. Urwin is a military historian and former president of the Society for Military History. He has authored nine books and was a historian-consultant for the 1989 film “Glory.” He lives in Doylestown Township and has taught at Temple University since 1999.