Lessons from the Ukraine War--On Freedom

Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in International Law, Harvard University

When I read about or see on TV Republicans like House Leader Kevin McCarthy question further military aid for Ukraine, which is not in the current Republican budget proposal (or its outline), I wonder to myself what has happened to our belief in Freedom.

This core value of the old Republican Party was deeply held by Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush who oversaw the lead-up to and collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the spread of Liberty, of Freedom, to the subjugated peoples of Central and Eastern Europe who had lived under Soviet-controlled totalitarian regimes since shortly after the end of World War II.

Can we really understand and feel what it meant to the individuals in those countries to suddenly experience Freedom or its imminent promise?

Is it simply that the cult of Donald Trump has erased all Republican values such as the belief in truth, in the rules and procedures of democratic government, and in the very goal of Freedom itself?

Or is this apparent turning away from the value and goal of Freedom the product of other forces as well?

Do Republicans today, and American voters in general, have any appreciation of what is involved in living under a dictatorship where there is no Freedom?

Memories from Eastern Europe have faded, some 24 years after the Berlin Wall came down. Veterans of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War have passed or are passing from the scene, and with them memories of their own motivations and those of fallen comrades who died believing they were fighting for Freedom.

Their spouses and children who also lived through these wars and the terrible uncertainty of not knowing if their husbands or fathers would be coming home have also passed or are passing from the scene.

Memories of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, which began with a coup d’état 50 years ago, or that of the military junta in Argentina which was responsible for killing or “disappearing” some 30,000 innocent people have apparently disappeared from contemporary American consciousness.

And today there are so many dictatorships, including Russia and China, that it has become hard to feel any sympathy for individuals who live in countries where there is no Freedom. Our sympathies and sensibilities have become overwhelmed. We have become numb. And the response of many has been to simply look away.

To be sure, for a time Americans felt sympathy for the civilian victims of Russian aggression in Ukraine and the refugees it produced. But TV coverage has waned, and memories are short.

What is it like, not only to be a victim of gross human rights abuses as in Iran or Afghanistan or in Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation, but also just simply to live in a country where there is no rule of law and no Freedom?

Americans, some 247 years after the American Revolution, seem to take Freedom for granted. 

They can express political views and organize to effect political change. They can speak freely about any subject. They can sue their government and U.S. and foreign citizens and corporations in courts that adhere to the Rule of Law.

Freedom means that students can study what they want and choose the kind of work they want to do. Americans can freely choose who they want to marry or live with and raise a family.

They can live anywhere they want. They can travel freely anywhere they like, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Freedom of thought means they can espouse any idea, and read any book. Freedom of religion means they may follow any creed.

One could write a book, as many have, on the multitudinous dimensions of liberty and Freedom, and what its absence has been like in many countries across the world and across the centuries.

We should meditate on the meaning of Freedom, and always remember what its absence has been like, in Nazi Germany, in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, in Russia, in China, and in the many dictatorships that have existed and still exist in the world today.

Frankly, I can’t understand how Republican leaders like Kevin McCarthy can care so little about Freedom. I can’t understand the thrust of his questions about and objections to providing Ukraine with the military and economic aid it desperately needs to ensure that Freedom will prevail in that country, and beyond.

Just as the Americans bore the torch of Freedom in the wars of the twentieth century, the Ukrainians are bearing that torch now, at immense personal sacrifice, not only for themselves but also for all of us.

Are we to believe that the Republican Party, in its current incarnation, doesn’t care about Freedom, that it doesn’t care enough about Freedom to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s military aggression and barbarism in the conduct of the war?

In the end, are we going to abandon Ukraine like we abandoned Afghanistan?

Donald Trump has never criticized Vladimir Putin. If elected in 2024, he will surely lead us down the road of appeasement.

Where will that road lead?

Will it lead to Freedom?

***

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