Volodymyr Zelensky has a problem with Donald Trump, but he has a bigger one with George Washington. Ukraine and most of Russia’s other neighbors consider the Russians to be their permanent enemies. Even when Russia was at its weakest and most liberal and democratic, during the Yeltsin years, states historically within reach of Moscow’s power demanded NATO membership. Russia could never be made safe for Poland or the Baltic Republics, or indeed for Ukraine or Georgia. Russia, not Communism, had to be contained, not for a generation but forever.
America’s Founding Fathers were not foreign-policy idealists. They knew that weak states are prey for strong states. This is why it was so important to create the strongest America possible, a “more perfect union” under the Constitution. Our domestic institutions and the scale of our republic enable us to live in peace and curb, as far as possible, the tendency of all states to desire conquest. Even so, our neighbors have often viewed America as acquisitive and overbearing. If even a country as good and well-founded as America can seem threatening, a nation as despotic and insecure as Russia traditionally has been is an obvious danger to its neighbors.
Idealistic liberals believe there is an American answer to this European, and particularly Eastern European, problem: simply turn Russia into America. For some 20 years, liberals believed that the problems of Iraq or Afghanistan could be solved by forcibly turning those countries into American-style liberal democracies. All that was needed was enough money, time, and Western troops. No liberal now dares say that what America did for Iraq it could do for Russia. Yet that is what liberal theory still assumes. American aid to Ukraine and “guarantees” for the Baltic Republics, Poland, and others will not bankrupt us or lead to World War III because sooner or later Russia will be just like us. We just have to keep spending, and someone has to keep fighting and dying, until that happens.
To their credit, Ukrainians, Poles, and others fearful of Russia do not believe this fairytale. No regime change will ever make Russia safe. All that can be done is to make Russia as weak as possible. That is a never-ending project, but Latvians and Ukrainians don’t have to worry that their wealth and military strength aren’t up to the task because Americans will be perpetually responsible for serving as Russia’s enemy and jailer. Only a dismembered Russia, carved into pieces as small as its neighbors, would be neutralized as a menace.