The United State is never going to give Ukraine enough aid to defeat Russia

Warhawk pundits are living in a fantasy - and giving false hope to Ukrainians.

A few days ago, Hasan Piker was kind enough to invite me onto his show to talk about Ukraine. It was a very long interview — we’re talking two hours long — but it was probably the most thorough overview of my thoughts on this to date, so if you have some time to kill check it out.

As always happens whenever my Ukraine takes get any kind of attention, this one was predictably met by a tidal wave of criticism from our warhawk pundits and activists. Note who is conspicuously absent from that list: warhawks in the government. That’s because one of my most controversial takes was one that even elected Democrats and apparatchiks of the US imperial state know is obviously true.

The United States is never going to send Ukraine enough military aid to defeat Russia.

It isn’t going to happen. It isn’t even going to come close to happening. Warhawk pundits and activists constantly talk about it as if it’s a real possibility, and unfortunately this has baited antiwar activists into spending the last two years treating it as if it’s likely, too. Which means that instead of a debate about the real world that plainly works to our advantage, we have a completely academic debate against a defensible but absolutely unrealistic outcome.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was completely indefensible. Ukrainians have every right to defend themselves from Russian forces who have repeatedly show absolute murderous contempt for civilian lives and the laws of war. None of this, as I have argued in the past, actually implies that the United States must send Ukraine military aid — especially if we believe this will only make matters worse. But this is a hard truth to accept, and it is understandable to me if ordinary Americans, watching the suffering of Ukraine, feel a misguided urge to intervene.