For the left’s Ukraine hawks, the real war is against Trump

Across the liberal left, the drumbeat for war against Russia has reached a deafening volume. No longer may one doubt Ukraine’s capacity to win back Crimea, or question whether thousands more troops killed and maimed are worth the cost. Those who do are now deemed Russian proxies or Vladimir Putin stooges.

Never before has the liberal-left manifested such hawkishness. On the contrary, both during the Cold War and after, the left consistently opposed muscular policies of deterrence toward Russia and routinely opposed higher defense spending. As one scholar put it, the left “gave the Soviets every excuse … [and] argued for moral equivalence, that whatever the Soviets or contemporary Russians do, we are doing the same.” Leftists scolded conservatives that “their anti-communist, anti-Russian attitudes would bring war and stop the chance for peace.”

In 1977, this worldview prompted then-President Jimmy Carter’s disparaging call-out of Americans’ “inordinate fear of communism,” which Carter claimed drove America “to adopt the flawed … principles and tactics of our adversaries ….” More recently, after Putin’s 2014 invasion and seizure of Crimea, then-President Obama refused Ukraine’s impassioned pleas for American weaponry. While that refusal elicited strong criticism, no one accused Obama of being a Russia proxy or a Putin stooge.

Tellingly, the Trump administration reversed that decision in December 2017, and commenced supplying Ukraine with anti-tank Javelin missiles, sniper rifles and ammunition.

Appeasement and signals of weakness returned in full force under the Biden administration. In May 2021, after Russian hackers disabled a major U.S. oil pipeline and extracted a $4.4 million ransom, the administration did nothing to deter future attacks. That same month Biden lifted sanctions against Russia’s Nordstream II pipeline, which would render Europe ever more dependent on Russian natural gas. Then Biden's administration froze a $100 million military-aid package to Ukraine.

Compounding this signal of weakness, Biden withdrew all U.S. forces from Afghanistan in September 2021, against military advice to maintain a residual force, and amid reports of the Taliban’s violating the withdrawal agreement. The Taliban promptly seized power and imposed a medieval Islamist regime. Then in January 2022, as Russia massed troops along Ukraine’s borders, Biden publicly expressed doubts that there would be a unified Western response “if it’s a minor incursion ….”

Despite those many giveaways to Russia, no one accused Biden of being a Russia proxy or a Putin stooge. And quite predictably, an emboldened Putin in February 2022 launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While Biden then commenced supplying weapons to Ukraine, by October 2022 more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress publicly demanded that Biden “shift course in his Ukraine strategy and pursue direct diplomacy with Russia to bring the months-long conflict to an end.” Again, no one accused those Democrats of being Russia proxies or Putin stooges.

By April 2024 — with the total of Russian and Ukrainian troops killed or wounded approaching 1 million — left-leaning media platforms like CNBC were declaring the war’s prospects to be at best a stalemate, with a real chance of Russia overpowering Ukraine’s defenses. Yet again, no one accused those outlets of being Russia proxies or Putin stooges

But when Donald Trump returned to the presidency and sought negotiations with Russia to end the war, all that changed. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) insisted that “[t]he White House has become an arm of the Kremlin,” while the British Independent denounced Trump for “behaving like an agent of the KGB.”

In sum, liberals who for decades opposed a robust Cold War, sought lower defense spending, urged cease fires in virtually all global conflicts, and blamed America for tensions with Russia suddenly discovered their inner cold warrior — and found Trump wanting. This despite the fact that it was Trump, not Obama or Biden, who had first armed Ukraine. And this despite the fact that it was Trump who successfully deterred Russian aggression throughout his presidency, while Russia invaded Ukraine during each of Biden’s and Obama’s weaker presidencies.

All this invites the question: Is the liberal left’s born-again hawkishness the product of newfound geopolitical wisdom and compassion for Ukrainian suffering? Or might it have more to do with their long-expressed hatred of all things Trump? One wishes it were the former; but the evidence, sadly, weighs more toward the latter.

Henry Kopel is a former U.S. federal prosecutor and the author of “War on Hate: How to Stop Genocide, Fight Terrorism, and Defend Freedom” (Lexington Books, 2021).