The Ends Justify the Means

I reject the argument that we shouldn't support the Ukraine because the danger from the Russian military is so great to us. This isn't the first time in the history of US intelligence that we've got the strength of the Russian military wrong. I think the relationship with Putin was beyond saving. He had started to form a vision of historical destiny and Russia's legitimate claims of wrongs that had been done to it since the 15th century. There was no pushing him backwards from that. And we should have recognized it. We should have known that the best messaging we could have given to Putin to prevent a war was the fact that we would robustly defend the Ukraine.