Conservative Debate on Ukraine Support

Charles Cooke decided to give listeners to The Editors what they said they wanted, which was more of me and Noah Rothman debating Ukraine. So we took about an hour of the Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast to do just that. One of the nice things about this debate is that Noah and I are allergic to name calling and genuinely get along.

I noticed something about our debate, too. Each of our conclusions about Ukraine rests on a series of disagreements about other factors. We have corresponding disagreements about whether the U.S. has really threatened Russian access to its naval resources, the level of Putin’s ambitions in Europe, the fragility of the European order, America’s ability to effect a positive outcome under the limits of democratic constraints, the viability of Ukraine as a member of Western institutions, etc. But, we can have a productive debate because our disagreements rest on a fundamental agreement about how American power works. While we ended on what felt like a note of profound disagreement, I reviewed the exchange and found we were describing the exact same thing from opposed angles.

Charles Cooke decided to give listeners to The Editors what they said they wanted, which was more of me and Noah Rothman debating Ukraine. So we took about an hour of the Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast to do just that. One of the nice things about this debate is that Noah and I are allergic to name calling and genuinely get along.

I noticed something about our debate, too. Each of our conclusions about Ukraine rests on a series of disagreements about other factors. We have corresponding disagreements about whether the U.S. has really threatened Russian access to its naval resources, the level of Putin’s ambitions in Europe, the fragility of the European order, America’s ability to effect a positive outcome under the limits of democratic constraints, the viability of Ukraine as a member of Western institutions, etc. But, we can have a productive debate because our disagreements rest on a fundamental agreement about how American power works. While we ended on what felt like a note of profound disagreement, I reviewed the exchange and found we were describing the exact same thing from opposed angles.