Do we know where we are going?

The Ukrainians are so brave and so largely admirable. We're so sick of feeling mired in ugly politics -- and literally sick of being sick. Might we be bumbling into war and more war? 

Economic historian Adam Tooze examines the last time the United States utilized what our congress called Lend Lease to aid European good guys in 1939-41. His article is vital history and raises what must be raised. Looking back, we're glad FDR accomplished political wizardry in order to assist Britain. But there is nothing simple about this kind of aid.

In openly declaring our intention to adopt all measures short of war to ensure Russia’s military defeat and in invoking Lend Lease in doing so, we must surely ask ourselves that question, what is our theory of Putin? And beyond Putin what is our model of the escalatory dynamics at work in 2022?

In swathing ourselves in historic garments, are we inviting Putin to do the same? Are we inviting him to fully inhabit the role of the maniacal dictator who can only be crushed out of existence? Are we, as in 1941, crossing the point of no return? Are we, consciously or not, assuming further escalation?

In so doing, are we assuming that escalation will have the same kind of “happy end” that World War II eventually had for the United States in 1945? The kind of “happy end” that makes Lend Lease into a myth shrouded in good feelings - a grand chapter. in the “American story”?

Or, are we, in fact, hoping that 2022 unfolds as 1941 did not? That Putin is not suicidal? That this time the escalation remains confined to Ukraine and Russia? That this becomes, as some American strategists envisioned Lend Lease in 1941, a calculated exercise in using the dogged resistance of a client - then the British now Ukrainians - to attrit a geopolitical antagonist?

Some of our leaders, including ones I'm inclined to credit like Nancy Pelosi, seem a little high on Ukrainian sacrifice and prowess these days. May we not commit to fight a war with Russia to the last Ukrainian ... can Joe Biden find the tight rope and stay balanced? I will say, he seems more prepared for this than anyone we've had in the White House in the last couple of decades.