I realize we’re here because the Democratic Party decided to surrender all of it’s credibility in recent times trying to be a pluralistic political party in a time of simplistic, contrarian thought, but hear me out- we actually owed a better fate to Ukrainians. We owed them better morally. We owed them better as a matter of policy. We owed them better based on promises and obligations. Late last week our resident edge lord Vice-President made sure to make clear, right next to his boss, that we withdrew from all of that. I’m sure the corks popped in the Kremlin.

First, a bit about the country they are abandoning. The Ukraine as a country and culture is one of the oldest, pre-dating Russia even by about 400 years. It is the second largest nation by land in Europe, and has it’s own language. There’s exactly no reason to think they should actually be a part of Russia. They were absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1919. In 1941 they were overrun by the Nazis. Over 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were murdered. Over 2 million Ukrainians were enslaved in Germany. The Nazis withheld food from the country. Some Ukrainians cooperated with the Nazis, mostly in exchange for food, so after the Soviets regained control, they punished Ukrainians. After losing 5 million in the war, and having 10 million left homeless, Stalin sent hundreds of thousands of “disloyal” Ukrainians to Siberia and other work camps. Much like Putin today, Stalin accused Ukrainians of generally being Nazis. He closed down the Greek Catholic Church. His policy of Russification moved Russians in to replace Ukrainians and pushed people to speak Russian. Greek Catholics were “reunified” with the Russian Orthodox Church. Ukrainians artists and writers were persecuted. While things got somewhat better under Khrushchev, his decision to give Crimea to the Ukraine was a big part of why today’s war is happening. In 1959 he forced schools to start teaching in Russian, as he began his own Russification efforts. Following Khrushchev’s removal, Brezhnev cracked down even further on Ukrainians, installing his protege Shcherbytsky, who lead the Ukrainian Soviet until 1989. It was a period of economic deterioration, nuclear crisis (Chernobyl), a crack down on human rights activists, and Russification. The horrors of the Soviet period badly damaged Ukrainian political and cultural life.

Now that the history lesson is mostly over, here’s the important part. In 1994 the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest memorandum with Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The Ukraine agreed to surrender their vast nuclear weapons cache from the Soviet Union, in exchange for the nuclear powers protecting and respecting their sovereignty. It was supposed to mark a clear end of Cold War era hostilities. In 2014, Russia broke the agreement in Crimea. Last week, we all but gave them the green light. Using excuses like Zelensky didn’t wear a suit and didn’t thank us profusely enough, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance verbally assaulted Zelensky and notified Moscow that we will not honor our agreements to our allies anymore. To be fair, I don’t think we should give Barack Obama a pass here- he chose to not engage Russia in any significantly agressive way after they invaded Crimea in 2014, which also violated the Budapest memorandum. To be clear, if Ukraine had said no and kept their nuclear weapons, no one would be invading them today. They did so under an agreement with us. We’re going to break that agreement now. One could argue we already have.

I doubt Ukraine surrendering some land to Putin’s Russia means the United States is in physical danger. At least not right now. The signal is out though to other American allies in the region- they can’t depend on us. If Putin comes for them, they’re on their own. Putin, who was stationed in Europe when the Berlin Wall fell, probably will. He doesn’t believe Slavic nations in Eastern Europe should be independent. Obviously those nations don’t agree. So now the threat of him creating some neo-Soviet version of the Russian Empire is real. In Berlin, Warsaw, and capitols all over the Eastern Bloc, the alarms are going off. They’ll start ramping up for potential war, and a few of them will even try to build nuclear bombs. This hellish reality will roll back nearly 30 years of peace in Europe.

It’s almost like everything America won with the end of the Cold War will be rolled back at once. But without the word “almost.”