The Bipartisan Iraq War Revisionists Are Dead Wrong On Ukraine

Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis expressed skepticism about the United States’ open-ended commitment to the war in Ukraine, causing members of the Washington establishment to cheer. However, Senator Lindsey Graham dismissed DeSantis’s statement and Texas Senator John Cornyn repeated the Neville Chamberlain dig against Federalist CEO Sean Davis. Despite attacks from the jury of left-leaning, pro-war GOP, and Never Trump talking heads on the networks, opposing an endless and unwinnable war in Ukraine is both good policy and good politics.

This issue arose in the same month as the twentieth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a catastrophic error that some of the same people attacking DeSantis are trying to rewrite the history of the last war they promoted.

Republican leaders like Graham and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are treating the opportunity to fight Putin as if this is another Cold War proxy battle or a post-9/11 moment. The invasion of Ukraine was, no doubt, a brutal act of aggression, but treating Russian President Vladimir Putin as if he were another Hitler, as Iraq War revisionists cannot resist, and the notion that Moscow’s goal is a Hitlerian-style conquest of Europe is absurd.

Therefore, DeSantis is right in saying that fighting for Ukraine’s territorial claims is not a vital national interest of the United States. Pretending, as Ukraine war hawks in both parties do, that Putin’s forces could conquer NATO countries is wrong, especially after their dismal performance in the last 12 months. It is possible, however, for Washington to blunder into a direct confrontation with Moscow that poses World War III-like nuclear Armageddon that should be avoided at all costs.

That’s why a wise leader might understand that treating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as if he were Churchill is at odds with the truth. It makes sense to seek a peaceful resolution to a war that has now become a “territorial dispute” that neither side can probably win outright. That would also allow the United States to devote its resources to prepare to contain a far more lethal threat from Communist China.

It’s important to note that Americans have veered back and forth between a willingness to see every potential threat as another Munich-style test of will and courage and the desire to avoid any foreign entanglements. Leaders must decide whether a willingness to engage in wars is a necessity, as it was when Chamberlain failed to act against Hitler in 1938, or whether it is a function of hubris and a misjudgment of the stakes involved, as it was in Vietnam and Iraq.

Since 1945, Americans have been struggling with this balance, and DeSantis’s question is an excellent starting point. Is the willingness to back Ukraine for, as President Joe Biden has pledged, “as long as it takes,” really in the national interests of the United States? As demonstrated by the catastrophic consequences of the invasion of Iraq, fighting sometimes leads to such outcomes. Thus, Americans should have learned that lesson in Iraq. Those Iraq War revisionists who think DeSantis’ sober analysis of American interests is disqualifying are drawing false conclusions from history they refuse to understand.