When It’s Not about Ukraine

Have you noticed that the advocates of arming Ukraine or further involving the United States and other NATO countries in defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity rarely ever talk about Ukraine itself?

We’re told that we can’t allow Russia to have a sphere of influence. What does that mean? Is that something we can decide? Let’s go through some of the basic questions about Ukraine.

Doesn’t Ukraine have a border with Russia? Yes, they have over 1,200 miles of land border. Don’t a significant number of Ukrainians speak the Russian language? Yes, nearly all of them, in fact, though the people who report Russian as their first and primary language is just over a third. And is that one-third of people who have Russian as a mother tongue concentrated geographically? Yes, near that land border. Is that because of historic migration? Yes. So Russia and Ukraine do a lot of trade? Yes historically, but less so recently, in part because Russia’s economy has turned dramatically inward. Does this make Ukraine’s politics particularly unstable? Yes. Doesn’t this have to do with warm-water ports? Oh yes. Russia’s access to Crimea and to the naval port at Sevastopol is a matter over which they’ve engaged in great-power war before now. It allows Russia to project power into the Middle East and prevent invasions from Turkey or through Ukraine.