But it is not even a close call about who is preferential for America and Ukraine. US voters should elect Clinton and Ukrainians have every reason to hope they do.
Trump – generally ignorant in foreign policy – is shaping up as a huge fan of dictators, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and will likely try to sell out Ukraine in exchange for better ties to Moscow and, we suspect, whatever business agreements his businesses and partners can get from the Kremlin as a payoff for such a tradeoff.
Trump’s Republican National Convention, which ended on July 21, signaled disturbing capitulation on Ukraine. The Republican Party had a clear plank in its platform to support supplying Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons to prevail against Russia’s war. The language got watered down to “appropriate assistance,” which could mean nothing at all. Unfortunately, this change also puts the Republican position in line with that of U.S. President Barack Obama, who has refused to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons.
However, we believe that Clinton – despite and perhaps because of her failed “reset” of U.S.-Russia relations as secretary of state – now recognizes Putin as one of the greatest threats to world peace and international law.
We believe that she as president will form a bipartisan alliance to ensure that Ukraine has adequate military and financial resources to defeat Russia and that she will lead Western allies in toughening sanctions against the Kremlin. She would also strongly support NATO allies that came under attack, something that Trump wavered on in a July 20 interview with The New York times.
Ukraine can help its American friends prevail by becoming stronger and doing more to defend itself, both militarily against the Russian threat but also in defeating the corruption that weakens society and saps the economy.
