The White House has signaled it is handing Ukraine's future to European powers, stepping back from an active role in shaping the war's endgame, according to reporting via Real Clear Politics.
The question now before Europe is a hard one: Can a fractious alliance — fractured by domestic politics, energy dependence, and old rivalries — find the will to sustain a democracy under assault while holding its own corrupt oligarchs to account?
Eisenhower warned in his 1961 farewell address that entangling the republic in permanent foreign commitments bleeds treasure and judgment alike. But disengagement is not the same as wisdom. The Founders understood that when great powers abandon the field, lesser interests fill it — and the men who pay the price are never the ones who made the call.