American Interests and Values Align in Ukraine

In America Misses the Power Objective, Mr. Francis Sempa contends that “the ideology that drives U.S. policy in Ukraine is eroding our strategic position abroad.” This article respectfully disagrees with that contention and with Mr. Sempa’s proposed alternate courses of action vis-à-vis U.S. foreign policy towards Ukraine and Russia.  Ideology—or, more exactly, values—is an essential part of U.S. foreign policy. Our values provide internal and external strengths to our national security. Furthermore, our interests and values should be considered different sides of the same coin and not as irreconcilable forces in constant competition. 

According to his article, geopolitics has been the lodestone of American foreign policy for most of U.S. history, even by liberal statesmen such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, who “chose geopolitics over liberal values, even as they have cloaked the choice with value-laden rhetoric.” However, according to Mr. Sempa, this changed as a result of the early 20^th century Progressive Movement that “promoted the idea that human nature was perfectible” and Democratism that led to ideas such as “human rights were universal and that American foreign policy should work to bring about an earthly Utopia.” One of the consequences of America’s “unbounded democratism” has been to push Russia into the arms of China, according to Mr. Sempa, who suggests that the United States should consider “ending or at least softening its hostility to Putin’s Russia in order to lessen China’s strategic threat.” In concluding, he comes down clearly on the side of power over values with a quote from the famed geopolitical thinker Nicholas Spykman: “The statesman who conducts foreign policy can concern himself with values of justice, fairness, and tolerance only to the extent that they contribute to or do not interfere with the power objective.”

I disagree with these perspectives for three reasons.

First, the shift of the correlation of power between NATO and Russia to the advantage of the former is due to Ukraine’s decimation of the Russian army. However, with time, this advantage could be reversed, especially if the war does not lead to internal Russian reforms that lessen its imperialist ideology. Second, while China is the greater threat, some of its strengths such as BRI are exaggerated as is the closeness of Russian-Chinese relations. Finally, even if we wanted to, there is no way to “soften” our relations towards Russia to lessen the Chinese strategic threat without betraying allies and values, which are assets and not burdens even when seen through the lens of geopolitical power.

NATO Has Gained the Advantage…For Now

I have argued twice before in Real Clear Defense that supporting Ukraine is consistent with our self-interest – keeping the global balance of power in America’s favor – and our values.  One of my arguments has been that if Russia had conquered most of Ukraine and incorporated it into its Federation – along with a supine Belarus – this would have increased its manpower, industrial capacity, and natural resources to a level that would again make it a security threat on par with the former Soviet Union. Therefore, as the 21^st century continued, the United States would face not one imperial superpower in China and regional power in Russia but two superpowers willing to overturn the current world order in Europe and the Pacific. That specific threat has faded thanks to Ukrainian resistance and Western military and economic aid. Critics should remember that Western aid has not been a one-way street and has already resulted in mutually beneficial results especially when one considers concerns just a few years ago that NATO could not stop a Russian invasion of the Baltics. 

However, the war’s outcome is still uncertain. If there are no post-war reforms in Russia that change its imperial nature, Russian strength could again revive to threaten NATO members. The Russian military recovered after the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War One, and after initial massive defeats in World War Two. It could do so again. Furthermore, Russian intentions to transform the European security order in its favor should now be crystal clear. This is why despite the security benefits NATO now enjoys due to Ukrainian sacrifice, the United States cannot afford a long-term security disengagement from Europe.  

Let’s Not Exaggerate the “Strategic Partnership” Between Russia and China

While China is the more capable threat to U.S. interests, lessening support to Ukraine does not translate into increased American capability in the Western Pacific and could even encourage future Chinese aggression. Military assets provided to Ukraine (tanks, armored vehicles, 155mm artillery shells, etc.) are not the assets (anti-ship missiles, naval mines, torpedoes, etc.) needed to defend Taiwan in a maritime conflict. Furthermore, defense funds that would have been needed in Europe if Russia had quickly conquered Ukraine, can now be reoriented towards Asia.  Certainly, the West’s support to Ukraine will be part of any Chinese Communist Party risk versus gain calculation for attacking Taiwan just as a failure to continue supporting Ukraine will be considered as well.

We should also learn from our last geopolitical struggle with the Soviet Union to not overestimate an enemy’s capabilities. The belief that China’s BRI program is uniting huge portions of the Eurasian landmass against the United States does not seem supported by facts on the ground. After the Sri Lanka debt trap, countries such as Pakistan, Malaysia, Burma, Bangladesh, and others cancelled or scaled back BRI projects to avoid the same snare. There has also been a backlash against corruption and Chinese graft associated with BRI and even Chinese leaders refer to BRI less and less in their public speeches. It is hard to find anywhere in Central or South Asia where BRI or other Chinese initiatives have aligned a major regional power or bloc of nations against the United States.  

Another exaggeration is that Russia and China have formed a strategic partnership that is gaining strength. Presidents Xi and Putin may have announced just before the invasion of Ukraine a partnership “without limits” but the past year’s events have shown that it is a finite partnership with definite limits. To date, China has restricted material support to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Despite last year’s increase in trade between Russia and China, it is just three percent of China’s overall foreign trade and is dwarfed by China’s trade with the United States and the European Union. Sino-Russian economic relations are neo-colonial in practice. China receives raw materials from Russia and provides finished industrial goods in return. Furthermore, their relations underneath the surface are marred by economic and geopolitical conflict in Central Asia. In October 2022, President Xi openly declared Chinese support for Kazakhstan’s national independence and sovereignty in a direct rebuke to Russian threats against that nation’s territorial integrity. Sino-Russian relations are further complicated by the lingering legacy of the unequal treaties of the 19^th century when Tsarist Russia seized over a million square miles of formerly Chinese territory north of Manchuria. Possibly the best description of the real state of relations between Moscow and Beijing was coined by the scholar Bobo Lo when he called it an Axis of Convenience.

It is also an exaggeration to say America “pushed Russia into the arms of China.”

As noted, and as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated, the relationship is not as robust as Moscow would like the world to believe. It certainly is not as close as the relationship between Moscow and Beijing at the height of the Cold War, a relationship which America survived.  Closer relations between the two countries are more of a factor of each nation’s growing autocracy than anything the United States has done. American foreign policy did not unite Russia and China; birds of a feather simply flock together.

Accommodating Russia Will Only Weaken America’s Geopolitical Position

How exactly would Mr. Sempa’s suggested accommodation with Russia work and lessen the Chinese strategic threat to the United States? Would the United States have to stop aiding Ukraine? Would it have to coerce Kyiv to trade “land for peace?” Would it have to agree to Moscow’s diktat of December 2021 and withdraw all nuclear weapons from Europe and its troops from countries accepted into NATO after May 1997, a quarter of a century ago? What other areas of the world would have to be sacrificed to Moscow’s desired sphere of influence especially when one considers the Russian saying that, “appetite grows from eating.” Even if the United States was to do all these things, would Russia really align with NATO against China?  Could we trust that these unilateral concessions would achieve their desired geopolitical realignment? After all, Putin would not lie to us, would he?

Doing any of the above would be a betrayal of our own interests, values, and allies that would make Munich pale in comparison. After the revelations of murder, rape, and pillage in Bucha and other liberated territories in Ukraine, how can we demand that Kyiv agree to leave 20 percent of its territory under Russian control? What guarantees are there that Putin would not revive the war once Russia rebuilt its army? Would he promise security “assurances” as in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994? Land for peace will bring no peace and, later, Ukraine will likely lose even more land.

If the United States was to acquiesce to Russia having an unbridled sphere of influence amongst the former Warsaw Pact countries and now independent former Soviet Republics, it would destroy NATO, a Moscow goal for decades, the very structure protecting our interests in Europe.  NATO, which fulfills a very Realpolitik mission of deterring and containing Russia, is a values-based organization. The specific values are those of liberal-democratic societies: government by the consent of the governed, human rights and liberties, and economic freedom. NATO protects the oft proclaimed “rules-based order” of which the first rule is borders are not changed by force.  The essence of NATO is geopolitical stability thanks to the collective willingness of member nations to form an alliance to protect common values.   

Liberal-democratic values are a strength in national security affairs. Internally they generate domestic support for a foreign policy when it is consistent with those values. Externally they attract like-minded states to ally with the United States. It is Russia and China who are without allies outside a few other despotic states (Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela) whose combined Gross Domestic Products are generally surpassed by many larger American states. To reject those values for an experiment in geopolitical balancing would be to jettison our allies (however truculent at times) to depend on the good will of our enemies.

Conclusion

Yes, there have been unwise American policies.

Iraq was the greatest strategic mistake of the century (so far) because it failed to match an achievable end with suitable ways and available means. However, to attempt to distill American foreign policy down to a simple formula of a power objective would be equally unwise because it would neither be desirable or sustainable. Our values provide America strength by attracting allies and ensuring domestic support for overseas sacrifices. Despite Spykman, moral values are not about facilitating the attainment of power because power is not an end to itself. Power is achieved to protect those things we hold most dear: our safety, our prosperity, and our values.  American foreign policy is guided by our interests and reinforced by our values. When we ignore those values, security does not automatically follow.

The retreat from Afghanistan was justified under realist grounds, i.e., to concentrate resources against peer competitors like China. However, our Afghan presence was in our own self-interest after 9/11 so that land would never again become a haven for violent Salafist terrorist groups.  Since our withdrawal, this has reoccurred and we are back to square one with our counterterrorism efforts. Furthermore, some say that our unseemly retreat was a factor in motivating Putin to attack Ukraine (just as many fear defeat in Ukraine will motivate Xi to attack Taiwan).

But our interests do not have to be in opposition to our values. Our values provide strengths that pure realism cannot. An adherence to a foreign policy based merely on the considerations of raw power would be one in which Roosevelt decided to balance with Hitler against the larger threat of Stalin. Why America does not conduct foreign policy like this, and should not, is clearly answered in Mr. Sempa’s own article when he quoted Henry Kissinger’s words, “a foreign policy that ignores one or the other of these motives [interests or values] will eventually lose the support of the American people and therefore become politically unsustainable.” Yes, tradeoffs are sometimes necessary and we regularly work with nations we would rather censure. There is always a constant balancing act going on in foreign policy decision-making. However, in no way has this balancing act eroded our strategic position abroad. The United States, allied with most of the world’s most prosperous nations and partnered with many others, is in a far better geopolitical position than Moscow or Beijing, whose values and actions repel their own neighbors far more often than their power attracts. 

American values are as interwoven into the foreign policy-making process as are considerations of interest and power. They have their long roots stretching to a mountaintop in Sinai, a hillside in Galilee, a field in Runnymede, England, and a small meeting chamber in Philadelphia. In other words, they are about rule of law, social justice, limits on power, and consent of the governed. Those values, lived at home and attractive to people abroad, along with a strong military and a robust economy, are the sinews of America’s international strength.

To conclude, I would like to quote from a short essay of a Chinese scholar written on the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine.  His words should remind us that the values discussed in this article are not limited to the West. Part of his remarks for which he has been persecuted are: 

A just cause attracts much support, an unjust one finds little. International politics consists of not only “interests” and “power” but also righteousness” and “principle.”  We oftentimes remark that a “weak nation has no diplomacy” and that “there exists no permanent friends or allies, only permanent interests.” Yet many nations, small and weak, are not only well-situated but also maintain friends with those countries that shoulder moral responsibilities in today’s world. And on the contrary, superpowers such as the Soviet Union, besieged on all sides, would inevitably collapse…A nation – no matter how big or small – ought not to go against the development of human civilization.

Philip Wasielewski is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.  He recently retired from a 31-year career in the Directorate of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency and is also a retired colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.