Ukraine: A Cross the US Must Be Willing to Bear

The US must properly aid Ukraine or risk losing all that’s been invested in Europe over the past eight decades.

On any given day, the 9,387 Americans at Coleville-sur-Mer experience whatever weather blows in from the English Channel.

As we write this, on November 22, it is a pleasant day; temperatures are at about 50F and there’s a light wind. But they endure everything from summer heat pierced by the laughter of the children playing just yards away on Omaha Beach, to snow and ice. They’re there when it rains too, because they have no choice.

The 9,387 men of the Normandy American Cemetery lie near where they fell in what was perhaps the greatest American epic of them all — the battle to liberate the European continent from the murderous grip of Nazism. The graves are arranged in a beautiful lawned landscape in long, serried rows where our US warriors are, we must hope, at rest and at peace. Around the edge, memorials to another 1,557 whose bodies were never found.

Their battle is done, but the battle of the living continues. The “Greatest Generation” left us the legacy of a free Europe, and we honor them not only by acknowledging their sacrifice but also by keeping it healthy and alive. As a British memorial to the dead of World War II reads:

When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,

For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.

We are watching now as Ukraine fights for its existence, its very place on a map. Harkening lessons from the largest and most consequential European war, the West must not fail Ukraine.

During World War II, the United States lost 416,800 service members and spent unimaginable sums of money to rid the planet of the twin threats of Germany and Imperial Japan.

To help Europe rebuild and recover, the money that was spent ensuring peace and prosperity on the European continent through the Marshall Plan invested $13.3bn (approximately $150bn in today’s dollars) for western European countries. The plan was a bold initiative not only to reconstruct a war-ravaged Europe (Allied bombing and extensive ground warfare had left large areas as rubble-strewn wastelands) but also to ensure that the US won the peace as it had won the war.

New institutions were also built from the ground up. The United Nations (UN) was a largely US-led creation designed to maintain international peace and security; the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a judicial arm of the UN, was built to promote and encourage respect for human rights; the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to provide for reconstruction and promote international economic cooperation and trade; and the World Bank. The US and its European allies also established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and provided for the defense and military modernization of the continent against the Soviet threat.

The US matched its commitments with people. In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were around 250,000 US troops in Germany to ensure the Soviet Union’s attempts to export its ideology through peaceful or warlike means was a failure. And fail it did.

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The hardheaded might ask, “Yes, there’s a lot of history, but what does our relationship with Europe mean in the 21st century? Asia is the economic powerhouse of the future.”

It’s true that Asia is critical to the future of the US, but Europe still remains a huge source of economic and political importance. Our now-rich and rebuilt allies multiply our strength and make our enemies tremble (if you doubt it, look at the enormous efforts Russia and China make to peel away Europe from the US, both diplomatically and through disinformation campaigns.)

It’s enormous and irreplaceable. According to the European Union (EU), the 27-member bloc and the US together represent the greatest areas of trade and investment in the world.

The US exported $354 billion in services to the EU in 2022, a surplus of $96 billion

The EU exported $555 billion of goods to the US in 2022, a surplus of $164 billion.

Both the US and EU have enormous stocks of foreign direct investment in each other, amounting to around $2.75 trillion each. US investment in Europe is four times higher than in Asia, even without accounting for additional investments in the UK of more than $1 trillion.

Together, the US and EU “have the largest bilateral trade and investment relationship and enjoy the most integrated economic relationship in the world.”

Let us be absolutely clear about what is at stake. The United States, more than any other country, has worked hard to shore up Ukraine since Russia’s all-out war of aggression began 21 months ago.

If this ends, as some would like, it is possible that despite its heroic efforts, Ukraine will be defeated or forced into a peace on humiliating terms that involve its forced dismemberment.

This would be a terrible outcome because Russia cannot be trusted to keep its word. Russia’s acts of aggression during the past two decades demonstrate that its word cannot be believed. The attack on Georgia in 2008, annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the subsequent war in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, were clear precursors to the full-scale invasion of February 2022.

Any settlement looking like a victory for Putin would badly harm transatlantic security and embolden dictators across the world. If we allow it to happen, we will certainly pay a higher cost further down the road as Russia’s armies camp out on NATO’s borders.

The threat is crystal clear. Russia shows an established pattern of encroachment on other countries and the larger part of Europe. If Russia wins this war in Ukraine, it will not stop. It looks to destabilize many of NATO’s current members and its partners, including in the Balkans, the Baltics, Moldova, Poland, the Czech Republic, and other countries that Russia views either as the former Soviet Union or its Eastern Bloc members. It openly stated its ambitions in Putin’s chilling demands of December 2021.

This is a time for determined US leadership. We must galvanize our allies and partners towards a decisive Ukrainian victory, asking the question, “What does Ukraine need, and how can we rapidly deliver it?” This is a goal well within our reach.

To lose our investments by allowing the Kremlin to win would be a betrayal to all who laid down their lives during World War II and all those committed to establishing a democratic Europe free from both Nazism and communism.

If we could ask the boys at Coleville-sur-Mer what they hoped for in the future, we think most would have wanted the Europe we now have. Free, peaceful, a place where people can live fulfilling and prosperous lives. That is the legacy of America’s fight.

Are we to throw away their sacrifice now, nearly 80 years later? To me, that would be a terrible betrayal.

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Stephen Twitty is a Distinguished Fellow and a member of the International Leadership Council at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He is the founder of Twitty and Associates LLC. He has had a series of senior US Army command roles and received numerous awards, notably the Silver Star Medal, the third-highest award for valor, for gallantry in combat in Iraq.

Ivanna Kuz is a Senior Program Officer with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) where she works on Ukraine, Black Sea security, NATO, and the future of European security. Prior to joining CEPA, Ivanna worked at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.