No, Professor Allison, Americans Owe Ukraine Nothing
By Francis P. Sempa
February 24, 2024
Harvard professor Graham Allison, famous for his theory of the “Thucydides Trap,” which posits that a rising global power will challenge the existing global leader for preeminence, writes in The National Interest that the United States owes Ukraine and its courageous people much more than the $75 billion in military and non-military assistance we have provided in the last two years for Ukraine’s weakening of Russia’s military threat to Europe for at least a decade. All of that, Allison cheers, “[w]ithout the loss of a single American soldier.” Never mind the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have suffered and died as a result of a war that Allison and others in the U.S. and Europe apparently want to continue until Russia leaves Ukrainian territory. And Allison chides Republicans in the House of Representatives who oppose “essential assistance to Ukraine” for trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Victory, according to Allison, is fighting Russia until it will negotiate with Ukraine to end the war. How many more Ukrainian lives will have to be sacrificed for securing the independence of its eastern provinces and Crimea? From his safe and secure perch in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Allison calls upon Congress, much to the glee of the military-industrial complex, to pour billions more into the fight against Russia so that Vladimir Putin’s “military threat to NATO” can be further diminished.
None of this, of course, fits within Professor Allison’s “Thucydides Trap” formula. Russia is not the rising power that threatens America’s leadership of the “rules-based international order” --whatever that is. China, not Russia, is the world’s rising power, and it is China, not Russia, that poses the greatest challenge to American security. Russia’s “military threat” to Europe and NATO has been exaggerated to justify the ongoing efforts to fuel the Ukraine war. How is a country whose armed forces are having a difficult time holding on to Ukraine’s eastern provinces and Crimea going to overrun Western Europe? Allison and other Ukraine war champions appear to be locked in a Cold War mindset where Europe and the United States need to keep watch on the Fulda Gap for Russian tanks attempting to sweep across Europe to the English Channel. Presumably, even Vladimir Putin knows that scenario is a fantasy.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/02/24/no_professor_allison_americans_owe_ukraine_nothing_1014047.html
