A debate on how the U.S. should be thinking about its responsibility in this crisis.
 | By Anabel Bacon Editor, Opinion Audio/The Argument |
As we were putting together this week's episode of Times Opinion's podcast The Argument, our team kept an anxious eye on news coming out of Ukraine. Late last week, we had recorded a conversation with our colleagues Bret Stephens and Farah Stockman about the crisis. But as the tension with Russia appeared to escalate over the weekend, the central question of the debate — if Russia invades, what does America, the self-appointed defender of the "free world," owe Ukrainians? — felt less and less hypothetical. |
Ukraine isn't a NATO member, so legally, the United States isn't bound to defend it. But ethical obligations are a different beast, and it's those murkier commitments that we wanted to dig into with Bret and Farah. "Those moral obligations are important," Bret argued, "not simply for morality itself, but because as goes Ukraine, to some extent goes liberal democracy elsewhere in the world." |
But with the specter of America's two decades in Afghanistan looming large, the question of American intervention — the many different shapes it can take, as well as whether our involvement is welcome in the first place — is a fraught one. As Farah told us, "We can be overbearing in the way that we help. And we can inadvertently do more harm than good." |
For now, the diplomatic levees in Ukraine are holding. But last night, the United States and Britain forcefully disputed Russia's claims that it was drawing down troops on the Ukrainian border. A senior Biden administration official said that more than 7,000 additional Russian combatants have been deployed there in recent days. |
And at the center of all of this, there are 44 million people waiting to find out if they'll wake up to Russian tanks rolling across their border. As they hold their breath, I keep returning to this Times photo essay of Ukrainian communities along the Dnieper River. "The last time I watched the news I had two desires," a woman named Oksana told the Times. "The first was to run out to the store and buy supplies of buckwheat and sugar. And the second was to grab all my documents and leave the country." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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