Europe is America's first line of defense in the Atlantic. I'd rather keep the Russians as far east as possible where America's role is limited to providing material and financial help rather than expending the lives of American troops to hold the line. That's a major reason I support Ukraine strongly. You may think I'm overstating the threat. But that's only because we've kept that threat away for so long. Let's look at the Atlantic threat.
I know, George Washington said to avoid foreign entanglements in Europe:
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? ...
In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. ...
Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. ...
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. ...
Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. [emphasis added]
But times have changed since that advice was given. Remember that the French Revolutionary Wars were raging across Europe at the time. A weak America once had interest in good relations with all--keeping its head down and avoiding making eye contact with the elephants stomping around in Europe for their own reasons--lest we be drawn into their wars. And even with the technology of the day, able to cross the Atlantic to punish America for making the "wrong" choice.
The September 11, 2001 terror attacks brought that fact home even as we falsely believed we'd reached the end of history and threats to America after the collapse of the USSR.
Today our situation is neither detached nor distant from threats. Threats can be upon us before we can make temporary alliances to fight them.
And by all means, avoid making policy on passions. I may defend the
morality of a course of action. But I always base the action on American
interests. The former is a means of achieving the latter.
I mean, if you want to take Washington literally, does his warning mean we should feel free to encourage entanglements in Asia just because he did not mention that? You have to admit that times have changed since we were a country on the edge of the Atlantic.
We found that a dominant power in Europe--or even small powers unrestrained by friends in Europe--could project power across the Atlantic to reach America.
With more power, America found that it could influence events in Europe rather than just be jostled around as near-helpless collateral damage or worse in European rivalries and conflicts.
You may think I invoke a ridiculously hypothetical threat. But it is a longstanding American objective, as described by George Friedman*:
[America] created barriers to block enemy powers from moving assets toward Atlantic or Pacific ports. It was understood that the immediate threat might be trivial compared to the long-term threat. Therefore, it was essential to engage Germany as early as possible – to contain the long-term threat while it still entailed combating ground forces and before the sea threat had fully materialized. This was also critical in the Pacific against Japan.
Let's look at the history of those threats.
The French and Indian War. Actual attack from Europe.
The American Revolution. Actual attack from Europe.
The Quasi-War with France. Actual attack from Europe.
The Tripolitan War. Actual attacks on American shipping enabled by European complicity. America sent forces abroad to defeat this threat.
The War of 1812. Actual attack from Europe.
The Civil War. Threat of attack or diplomatic and economic warfare from Europe to support the Confederates.
The Spanish-American War. Actual war against a European state, primarily over their colonies in the Americas. With some forces sent to the western Pacific.
World War I. Threat of attack. Before the war Germany had military contingency plans to attack New York City and occupy it. And Germany tried to push Mexico into fighting America to pin America down at home. America went to Europe to defeat the threat.
World War II. Actual attack. German U-boats struck along our coast and throughout the Atlantic. If that had been to cut off our trade after Germany controlled western Europe, that would have been devastating. Germany even tried to develop long-range bombers to strike America. And South America would have been ripe for Nazi penetration if it ruled western Europe. America went to Europe (and Asia, of course, with Japanese attacks on American soil) to defeat the threat.
The Cold War. Threat of attack. The primary threat was nuclear weapons. But the Soviet navy posed a threat to Atlantic sea lines of communication. Controlling western Europe would have made the threat much greater. And Soviet inroads into Latin America threatened to tie us down at home. This time America stood on foreign ground to keep the threats far from America.
The 9/11 terror attacks. Actual attack. Heck, some of the training and preparations were done in Europe. And in America and Afghanistan, of course. America went abroad to fight the threats.
And if you really want to get back to the beginning, would the original settlers of the Americas have preferred to have their first line of defense in Europe rather than going about their business and looking up to see sails on the horizon getting bigger and bigger? And yeah, that was an actual attack on those who controlled the Americas then.
Keeping threats away from America relies on a friendly Canada and Mexico. That is the foundation of projecting power across the oceans.
Then we can keep threats away from our shores across the Atlantic and Pacific.
Keeping threats away from South America is another issue. A friendly Mexico helps with that. The Monroe Doctrine was an effort to keep Europeans from creating that kind of threat. France attempted to take over Mexico while we were busy with the Civil War. Initially, the British and Spanish cooperated in what started as a debt-collection mission.
But the Atlantic threat is my focus right now given disagreements over helping Ukraine defeat Russia's invasion. As Friedman notes:
In Ukraine, there is an element of this strategy. Russia, if it were to defeat Ukraine, would be at NATO’s border and could attack westward. The U.S. is practicing a strategy of preemption at a relatively low cost in terms of U.S. casualties to prevent the very unlikely move of Russia to the Atlantic coast.
Dismissing the threat from the Atlantic is only possible because we've been so successful since World War II in preventing a threat from Europe extending its reach across the Atlantic in a persistent manner. And dismissing the potential threat from Russia this century ignores that Russia would be much more powerful if it can seize or dominate significant portions of Europe's economic, financial, technological, demographic, and military power.
And of course, preventing a threat from growing in Europe includes stopping the proto-imperial and anti-American European Union from stripping away the prefix and dismantling the America-led NATO to eject American influence in Europe. No good for America or European people can come from an EU future.
So yeah, holding Europe is a figurative wall that protects America so the Atlantic isn't our first line of defense. And the farther east we hold the line, the less expensive it is to prevent a threat from rising in Europe. Ukraine is willing to hold that line for their own reasons--independence from an obviously brutal Russia and membership in the free and prosperous West. But they need our help. Our interests coincide for now.
I'd rather extend that line east by getting Russia to join the West. But as long as the Russians are embracing their paranoia, I want Russia as far east as possible.
Washington's advice on foreign policy was very relevant to 18th century America. Not so much, now. But he does have a point. I have no passionate attachment to Ukraine. I don't own or fly a Ukrainian flag. I swear, Democrats own more Ukrainian than American flags. That's unhealthy.
But I do think we must reject Fortress America. It is in our national defense interest to help a willing and competent Ukraine defeat a threat to America before it can grow. Russia is a smaller threat now than in the Cold War. And I'd like to keep it that way. The cost to America is not that great given the alternative.
I guess I'd rather we pay more attention to George Washington's advice on domestic policies.
UPDATE: Sure, NATO doesn't need Ukraine to be a member. Not right now. But NATO certainly needs Ukraine to be free of Russian control.
Russian control would challenge NATO's ability to hold the eastern line in the south. So if the alternative to Ukraine inside NATO is Russian control of Ukraine, NATO needs Ukraine as a member.
And if Ukraine in NATO is enough of a whack of the clue bat to get Russia to abandon dreams of empire in the west and pivot to face the real threat to Russia, that would help the West and Russia.
Also, saying NATO didn't need Ukraine to defeat the USSR in the Cold War requires you to accept that NATO didn't need everything east of the Elbe River, too. But this is no reason for NATO to happily retreat to the Elbe. The cost to win so deep inside Western Europe the first time was astronomical, no? Is that the argument being made? We can all just relax and jack up defense spending to 5 or 6% of GDP again to keep the Russians from advancing a hundred miles to the Rhine River and destroy the West?
The bottom line is that this argument is just another form of the "Let the Wookie win" genre.
*I found the Friedman article long after I scheduled publication of this. I had to add quotes from it. Now that I schedule posts forward a couple weeks, or so, I often find articles relevant to a post already written. Sometimes I incorporate them. Sometimes I put them in Weekend Data Dump which foreshadows the post.
NOTE: The illustration was generated by DALL-E.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
