Will the US Abandon Ukraine?

2024 election tested American character, faithfulness and commitment to ideals

Donald Trump expressed skepticism if not downright opposition to Ukraine aid during the 2024 campaign, so it should be no surprise that he’s choosing weakness over strength and abandoning Ukraine now.

I pointed out in 2023 that the 2024 election would fit historical patterns when questions were asked about the American character. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, interviewed by journalist Stewart Alsop at the close of World War II, doubted whether the US had the attention span or fortitude to support long wars or decades-long nation-building projects like the British and other historic empires that hugely influenced the world. Luckily, US involvement in WWII lasted only from December 7, 1941 until September 2, 1945, when the war in the Pacific officially ended. The European Recovery Program, known as the Marshall Plan, was also relatively short. It lasted from April 1948 to December 1951.

“America, it is a great and strong country, like a workhorse pulling the rest of the world out of despond and despair,” Churchill observed. “But will it stay the course?"

Churchill, who died in 1965, might have been surprised that the US truly stayed the course of the Cold War to see the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. He probably would not have been surprised that the US abandoned Vietnam in April 1975, just 11 years after President Lyndon Johnson escalated American involvement under false pretenses in August 1964.

I hated the “stay the course” mantra when Alsop used it in his 1971 Newsweek columns to justify continued American involvement in Vietnam. I felt the US had sacrificed enough — 58,000 men — in Vietnam.