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If the United States allows a country to be crushed in an illegal invasion, it will raise grave questions about the credibility of defense and strategic agreements that underpin the entire Western world.

The current commander in chief is squarely in the internationalist tradition of US presidents since World War II who saw the country as a bulwark for freedom, democracy and the rule of international law. Trump's "America First" creed, however, springs from traditional US isolationism. It spurns democracy and alliances in favor of pursuing narrow national interests and transactional deal making with global tyrants and demagogues. This schism between these outlooks likely means that even if the current impasse over Ukraine funding is eventually resolved, it's merely a taste of a long-running national feud to come.

In a broader strategic context, there are growing fears about what a loss of US aid to Ukraine would mean when its counter-offensive has stalled and when Putin is managing to reconstitute Russian forces battered by the war, partly through the help of other US adversaries like Iran and North Korea. One lesson of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, which did not prompt the West to arm Ukraine, is that if Putin is not stopped he will keep going.

The loss of Ukraine would not just reverberate in Europe. In Asia, where the United States is confronting the implications of a rising China, a conclusion that the US deserts its friends could change Beijing's calculations as it weighs whether to use military force to capture Taiwan. And a weakening of American resolve could prompt allies in the region and in the Middle East to doubt their security guarantees and consider whether to seek their own nuclear safety net.

How the impasse over Ukraine aid could have critical global ramifications | CNN Politics

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