On this second anniversary of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, Professor Timothy Snyder, a preeminent historian of central Europe, calls on Americans to buck up. This is no time for weakness; weakness is Donald Trump, his captive GOP enablers, and their swindles.
American newspapers instruct us that Biden is old. If he’s old (goes the thinking), he must be weak; and if he is weak, then we are permitted to give up. But Biden is not weak. He is not running away from prison, or from anything else. He does not act from fear. He gets work done. His record is one of the strongest in the history of the American presidency. And he went to Ukraine with zero military protection. That was courageous. No other president has ever done that.
... It is absurd, in such a world, where so much is at stake, where so much is to be won, to speak of our “fatigue” either with the struggle in Ukraine or the struggle for our own democracy. Doing so is the prologue to a story of weakness, which ends with the victory of the weak man. When we fall in line behind the fearful, when we forget the “spirit of freedom,” we help the weak men create a politics of fear. When we obey in advance, we invite the weak man to take power over our souls, which then means power over our politics.
In 2024, a year of war and a year of elections, a year that will test decency and democracy, the weak man wants to see his fear in our eyes. We will need the courage to admire the courageous, and to say something that might feel risky. For example: we believe in our values, and we believe in our strength. Ukraine can win this war, Biden can win this election, and democracy can thrive.
Michael O’Hanlon from the DC thinktank the Brookings Institution evaluated Ukraine's situation.
Ukraine remains stronger than you might think
... Much has been made of Ukraine’s disappointing 2023 counteroffensive. But given the strength of defenses on both sides, its failure was no huge surprise. Defense is simply stronger than offense at this stage of the war and, because of this, Ukraine might be able to hang on to most or all of the 82 percent of the pre-2014 territory it now holds, even with constrained military supplies. Yet, as the recent loss of Avdiivka demonstrates, Ukraine might struggle in the event of a complete cutoff of U.S. assistance. The pace of setbacks could accelerate with little warning; like Ernest Hemingway’s quip about bankruptcy, defeat could occur gradually, then suddenly.
... there is no reason for fatalistic thinking about Ukraine. It might very well hold on to at least 82 percent of its territory and eventually gain a strong security link with the West, especially if the United States again leads in addressing the Russian threat to Ukraine. At the moment, however, the U.S. Congress is playing with fire in threatening to end U.S. assistance to Kyiv. Ukraine is resolute in this struggle, but so, alas, is Russia, and if Putin winds up winning this war, NATO’s own security might soon be at risk, too.
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Oddly, the Ukraine struggle against Russian invasion makes me think about my mother. During the 1930s, she looked on at what was happening in Europe -- at the Nazi takeover of Germany, at the attacks on Jewish Germans, at Hitler's absorption of Austria and Czechoslovakia -- and became a vehement American interventionist. She might be called a "premature anti-fascist." Yet she was a Republican. From her point of view, the worst of isolationists were her fellow Republicans and Hitler apologists like Charles Lindbergh. The threat of fascism made for strange alliances.
That threat does the same today.
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