• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, February 27, 2025

I write this having just returned from nine days in Ukraine. It was an interesting time to be there, to say the least, given the rhetoric coming from our country and the horrific predicament that rhetoric created for Ukraine, our ally in their defense of the Russian full-scale invasion three years ago.

The U.S. will certainly be an important and powerful player on the world stage for a long time to come. We are an economic power. We are a military power. However, we are no longer the leader of the free world.

We lost that title when we falsely called the democratically elected president of Ukraine a dictator, and accused Ukraine of starting the unprovoked invasion of its lands by genocidal Russian troops.

We lost when we voted against a United Nations resolution that we originally helped draft, and decided to vote with dictatorships Russia, Iran, North Korea and China instead of the rest of the free world. And we lost when we shook down Ukraine for access to its mineral resources with nothing in return, telling them that was the only way that they “had the right to continue to fight.”

Ukraine does not need the United States’ permission to protect its lands, its people, and its democracy. Yes, weapons and funds supplied by the U.S. have been essential in its defense -- all of which was provided as grants, and all in our own best interests. If Ukraine falls, Russia wins, the rest of Europe is threatened, and China is emboldened to take Taiwan and push back the U.S. from influence and advantaged trade with the Pacific Rim.

Fortunately, Ukraine has a leader in President Zelensky, who has true courage and can thread the needle when he has to. This week, he did the minerals deal that the U.S. demanded so as not to not lose the Patriot missiles or Starlink systems that, if withdrawn, would cause Ukraine military and civilian casualties to increase 10X. We’re talking about tens of thousands of incremental deaths. Zelensky does what he must to protect his people.

Further, in a speech in Munich and then an event in Kyiv, he rallied all of the European leaders (and Canada, too) to provide more than $25 billion in incremental military aid for his country this year. He has shown himself as not just the emerging leader of Europe, but of the new order of the free world. He is doing this in the name of his country, and critically in the name of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.

President Zelensky is doing all this in contravention of aggression from the world’s dictatorships, who dangle “deals” and money to pull away Ukraine’s heretofore most important ally.

We Americans need to recognize that our rhetoric and actions didn’t just leave Ukraine hanging on its own, with almost a million Russian soldiers on its territory, and tens of thousands of its children kidnapped and in Russian custody. We left the entire free world hanging on its own, too.

Whether or not we can recover our role in the free world is a big question, but it starts by finding out if we still care about the ideals that built the free world as we know it. If we don’t care, we certainly won’t have that leadership role ever again.