Vladimir Putin’s assault in Ukraine is a part of a larger scheme to destroy the West, according to a US national security advisor who spoke with the Express. Appeasing the Kremlin is out of the question.
Since September 11, 2001, David Stuckenberg, a veteran pilot in the US Air Force, has completed over 150 combat missions. The 42-year-old has over ten years of experience in national security and hopes to go into politics.
He decided at the last minute to run in the Republican primary, and although though Donald Trump easily won his party’s nomination, he hasn’t ruled out another run for the presidency in the future.
Regarding foreign policy, Mr. Stuckenberg vehemently disagrees with Trump’s isolationism and the Republican Party’s Maga wing. He contends that at a time when the very survival of the Western order is threatened by formidable adversaries, the US cannot afford to turn its back on the globe.
“We’re looking at the imminent demise of the Western order if we do not step up to the plate and that’s the truth,” he stated to Express.co.uk.
“We are facing something that we’ve probably never experienced before, you know, certainly in our lifetime, and that is the ability to be overcome by forces far greater than than we imagined.”
Putin’s Russia is one of those evil forces; it views its war in Ukraine as part of a larger ideological and existential struggle with the West. Putin’s invasion of its neighbor has been described as a holy battle against “absolute Evil, embodied in Western civilization, its liberal-totalitarian hegemony and in Ukrainian Nazism” by ultranationalist Russian philosopher Aleksander Dugin.
Andrey Kelin, the ambassador of Moscow to the United Kingdom, recently reaffirmed this view by characterizing the West’s military assistance to Ukraine as an extension of their “civilizational confrontation with Russia, in which the end justifies the means.”
Mr. Stuckenberg is certain that should Putin win in Ukraine, his goals will have no boundaries and he will not be able to be stopped in the future. “Tyrants become titans, they don’t stop expanding,” he stated. “You know, they’re always ambitious. Equal resolve is the only thing that can counteract it.”
“Ukraine ultimately is the front line of what is a revisionist power driving essentially to end the Western order, which is sovereign territories, international boundaries, respect for diplomats,” he stated. “Every rule has been broken by them. And what deterrent is left, I would wonder, if the only consequence for breaching the rules is success? And there isn’t one.
While Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has declared he will resolve the conflict in Ukraine in less than a day, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has stated that if elected, Trump will not “give a penny” to Kyiv.
Additionally, maga republicans contend that the US would be better off using its limited resources to support domestic programs rather than throwing money at a far-off war with minimal bearing on the country. However, US investment on Ukraine is minuscule when compared to US outlays on past wars, like Vietnam and Iraq.
In Iraq, the average annual cost of war was approximately 0.7% of GDP, compared to approximately 1% in Vietnam. The United States currently spends 0.2 percent of its GDP on Ukraine. Without military assistance from the US, Ukraine will most likely suffer a crushing defeat that will only lead to more instability.
Mr. Stuckenberg thinks that US isolationists run the risk of not understanding the lessons of the past since history is repeating itself.