Should Conservatives Back Ukraine? Two Honest Answers, Weighed Fairly

Few arguments on the right produce more heat and less light than this one. One side accuses the other of appeasement. The other side accuses the first of wanting a blank check and a forever war. Both sides end up shouting at a cartoon, which is a very efficient way to avoid reading what the other side actually wrote.

So let us do the unfashionable thing. We will state each conservative position the way its defenders would state it, put them side by side, and then say which one we find more persuasive and why. Along the way we will grant the loser everything it is owed. A verdict that cannot admit what the other side gets right is a slogan.

Defining the question

First, terms. "Backing Ukraine" is not one thing. It can mean sending weapons, lending or giving money, sharing intelligence, imposing sanctions, training soldiers, or joining the fight. Almost nobody on the right proposes the last of these. The real dispute is over the first three: how much material help, for how long, toward what end, and at whose expense.

The facts underneath are not in dispute. Russia seized Crimea and backed a war in the Donbas in 2014. It launched a full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. In 1994, under the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union, and Russia, Britain and the United States gave political assurances about its sovereignty and borders. The memorandum was a statement of assurances, not a defense treaty, and the Senate never ratified a commitment to fight for Ukraine. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Those four sentences are the common ground. Everything else is argument.

The first honest answer: cheap deterrence

The case for continued aid, in its defenders' words, runs like this.

One. Interests, not charity. A Russia that wins by force teaches every revisionist power that borders can be redrawn if the aggressor is patient and the victim's friends are tired. That lesson is heard in Beijing and Tehran as well as in Moscow.

Two. The price is low relative to the return. Ukraine is fighting the war and asking for equipment, not for American soldiers. If the United States can weaken the military of an adversary without losing a single American service member, that is, on this view, the best bargain in the history of the defense budget.

Three. Deterrence is cheaper than war. The twentieth century taught the lesson twice. The costs of letting an aggressor consume his neighbors are paid later, in larger wars, at higher prices.

Four. Credibility is an asset. Allies and rivals watch what America does when a friend is attacked. Lend-Lease in 1941 was not a favor to Britain. It was an investment in keeping a hostile power from controlling Europe, made when the nation was not yet at war.

Five. Finland's application and Sweden's accession to NATO, in 2023 and 2024, show that the invasion produced the opposite of what Moscow wanted. A stronger alliance is a strategic gain.

That is a serious case. It is the peace-through-strength tradition applied to a live conflict, and it deserves to be taken as seriously as its authors take it.

The second honest answer: limits, priorities and the European bill

Now the other conservative answer, again in its defenders' own words.

One. The first duty of the government is to the American people. Foreign commitments must be tied to a vital American interest, and every dollar and every shell sent abroad is a dollar and a shell not available for the defense of the homeland and the Pacific.

Two. Stockpiles are finite. Munitions, air defense interceptors and artillery shells sent to Ukraine come out of inventories that would be needed in a war with China. Industrial capacity cannot be improvised overnight, so a stockpile spent is a stockpile that takes years to rebuild.

Three. Without a defined end state, aid becomes a commitment without a boundary. If the goal is to retake every inch of territory, the war may have no end. If the goal is a negotiated settlement, then the question is what is being bought and when the buying stops.

Four. Europe is richer than Russia and closer to the danger. The continent's combined economy dwarfs Russia's. If this is a European security crisis, Europeans should carry the larger share, and American money that fills the gap lets European governments postpone their own rearmament.

Five. Escalation is real. A nuclear-armed adversary facing the prospect of defeat is not an ordinary opponent. Prudence is not cowardice.

Six. The Constitution places the power to fund and to declare war in Congress. Aid by an endless series of supplemental bills, or by the stretching of executive authorities, is no way to conduct a policy this large. Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." The restraint camp wants that clause honored in substance and not only in form.

This is also a serious case, and it too has deep roots. Washington's Farewell Address warned against permanent entanglements, and the "not a monster hunter" tradition of John Quincy Adams, covered in John Quincy Adams Said America Does Not Go Abroad Hunting for Monsters, is a conservative tradition.

The two answers side by side

Here is the comparison on five tests.

Look closely at the table. The sides agree on far more than the shouting suggests. Both want Russia to fail. Both want Europe to spend more. Both treat China as the larger long-term competitor. They disagree about whether one theater strengthens or drains the other.

The Taiwan question cuts both ways

Both camps claim Taiwan, so it is worth a closer look. The deterrence camp says that a Russian victory would signal that force works. The restraint camp says that every Patriot interceptor in Ukraine is one not in the Pacific.

Both are describing something real. Deterrence is a matter of belief, and what an adversary believes about American will is shaped by what America does. The 1979 The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 Is Not a Treaty, So What Does It Promise promises arms and a capacity to resist coercion, not a treaty guarantee, and the ambiguity of that promise was always meant to work through the adversary's uncertainty. Our record on keeping that uncertainty credible matters, and a failure to follow through on a smaller commitment makes a larger one harder to believe.

But resources are real too. The industrial base that builds precision munitions and ships is not elastic. The point is developed in The Shipbuilding Gap with China Is an Industrial Story Before a Navy Story, and it is the strongest card the restraint camp holds. If the arsenal of democracy cannot produce enough to supply two theaters, then helping in one has an opportunity cost in the other. The deterrence camp's best response is that the production line, once funded, serves both, and that aid is exactly what finances the expansion of capacity. A munitions plant that is funded to supply Kyiv is a munitions plant that exists when Taipei needs it.

Where the best arguments are weakest

An honest weighing has to say where each side's reasoning strains.

The deterrence side is weakest on definition of success. "Whatever it takes for as long as it takes" is a mood, not a policy. A commitment with no stated end state invites exactly the objection the restraint camp makes. Defenders also tend to wave away the stockpile problem as if the Pentagon were a vending machine.

The restraint side is weakest on the logic of the cheap trade. If American aid keeps a major adversary's army tied down at a cost that is a small slice of the defense budget and no American casualties, then the restraint camp must explain why that is a worse bargain than a larger confrontation later. It also tends to wave away the signal that retreat sends. A Russian success would not end the conversation in Moscow. It would begin the next one.

The restraint side is also sometimes unfair about Europe. The facts show that European governments responded to the invasion with real changes. Germany announced a large special defense fund in a speech to its parliament on February 27, 2022, and Finland and Sweden dropped decades of neutrality. A fair critic says Europe is doing more than before and still not enough.

The verdict

Our judgment is this. The deterrence argument is stronger on the core question, and the restraint argument is stronger on the conditions that should govern the policy. Put another way, conservatives should back Ukraine, with discipline.

Backing it follows from three premises, which we will number because numbers keep us honest.

One. A conquest that succeeds by force creates a precedent that raises the odds of a larger and costlier war elsewhere. This is a judgment, not a fact, but it is the judgment that the twentieth century supports.

Two. The aid is financed and structured in a way that leaves the American armed forces out of combat. That distinguishes it from the interventions that conservatives have rightly criticized.

Three. The strongest alternative, a quick settlement on Russian terms, would reward the invasion and would tell every ruler with a grievance and an army that patience pays.

Discipline follows from the restraint camp's points, and conservatives should demand each one as the price of their support.

• Congress, not the executive, sets the terms. Funding should come through ordinary appropriations, debated in the open, with defined purposes and reporting. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to raise and support armies and to declare war. Aid on this scale should not live on executive improvisation.
• A stated objective. The public is owed an answer to the question of what winning means, whether it is a restored border, a defensible line, or a negotiated outcome that leaves Ukraine sovereign and able to defend itself.
• Accountability for the money. Audits, inspectors general and tracking of equipment are conservative demands wherever public money goes. They do not stop applying at the water's edge.
• A rising European share. American help should be matched by European spending that the public can measure, which ties into the debate over The 2014 Wales Pledge Explained, Where NATO's Two Percent Came From and the larger question of burden-sharing.
• Replenishment first. Any shipment of a scarce system should be paired with a funded plan to rebuild the stock, so that helping one friend does not hollow out the force that deters the next adversary.

What the other side gets right

The restraint camp deserves its due on four points, and the deterrence camp should concede them.

First, the stockpile problem is real. A policy that sends munitions faster than industry can replace them is borrowing against the Pacific. That is not a rhetorical trick. It is an engineering fact.

Second, a strategy needs an end. Open-ended aid with a vague goal invites drift, and drift is how limited commitments become permanent ones. The history of the war in Afghanistan, examined in Why Did We Lose in Afghanistan? Twelve Questions the Record Can Answer, shows what happens when no one can say what victory is.

Third, the Constitution's allocation of powers is not a technicality. Presidents of both parties have stretched their authority on foreign commitments, and the habit does not become harmless because one likes the cause. The right should apply the same test to a policy it likes that it applied to policies it disliked.

Fourth, Europe's burden is a legitimate demand. The alliance was never meant to make America the permanent guarantor of a wealthy continent's security. Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty speaks of "continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid," and the self-help comes first. The text of that treaty is worth reading in full, and Read the North Atlantic Treaty, All Fourteen Articles Take Ten Minutes walks through it.

Answering the strongest objection

The best objection to the verdict is that "disciplined backing" is a way to have it both ways. If the conditions are not met, does the support end? If they are met, is it not simply the deterrence position under another name?

The answer is that the conditions are the point. A policy is made of its terms, and the terms are where conservatism lives: constitutional process, defined purpose, accountability, burden-sharing. A conservative who supports aid and demands those terms is not splitting the difference. He is applying a settled governing philosophy to a foreign-policy question. And if the terms are ignored, the support should weaken. That is how a principle differs from a loyalty.

The case in brief

1. Both conservative answers on Ukraine are serious, and both rest on real interests: the deterrence camp on credibility and the cost of rewarding aggression, the restraint camp on finite resources, the Constitution and Europe's duty.
2. The comparison shows agreement on the goal of Russian failure, on China as the long-term competitor, and on the need for Europe to spend more. The dispute is about whether Europe strengthens or drains the Pacific.
3. The deterrence argument is stronger on the central question, because a successful conquest raises the odds of a larger war, and the aid keeps American troops out of combat.
4. The restraint argument is stronger on conditions: congressional control, a stated objective, audited spending, a larger European share and a funded plan to replenish stocks.
5. Conservatives should back Ukraine with those conditions attached, and should withdraw their support when the conditions are ignored.

What you can do: look up your representative on the oversight page or the representatives page, find the most recent Ukraine funding vote in the record, and write the office a note asking which of the five conditions in this post that vote met.