Republicans Will Regret Not Helping Ukraine
America has committed many errors of commission, such as Vietnam, but errors of omission have led to bigger wars and more deaths.
Hazy prospects.
Photographer: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
Ask historians to name America’s greatest foreign policy blunders, and you’ll often hear a litany of misbegotten interventions — Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other wars that went awry. But some of America’s biggest failures have been errors of omission rather than commission — cases in which the strategic sin was not doing too much but too little, and in which being overly cautious eventually exacted a terrible price.
Keep this in mind as America’s debate on Ukraine aid reaches its climax: The Senate recently approved a new infusion of assistance, but it faces difficult odds in a fractured, Republican-led House. If Washington doesn’t provide the aid that keeps Ukrainian forces fighting, the fallout will be grave and global, and it will undermine US policy for years to come.