Invasive Illiberalism: David Boaz and the Russo-Ukrainian War

   

In February 2024, David Boaz gave a speech at LibertyCon International 2024 hosted by Students for Liberty on “The Rise of Illiberalism in the Shadow of Liberal Triumph.” As it would turn out, it was his final speech. He passed away on June 7, 2024, after a private battle with cancer.  It was during this speech that David observed, “bringing power under the rule of law…(is) what our friends in Russia and China and Egypt and Ukraine and Hong Kong fight for in challenging circumstances that we never face. It's what we fight for.”[1] This was quite an important statement given the shift in public sentiment over what, if any, responsibility the United States has regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War.

A report from the Pew Research Center notes that public support for US aid to Ukraine has declined to roughly 44%, with 53% being of the opinion that America has no responsibility at all. Additionally, while 75% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans expressed no confidence in Vladimir Putin to behave properly regarding international affairs in 2024, only 43% of Republicans hold such a negative view of Putin in 2025. The curious thing about this partisan divide is that Republican rhetoric holds Ukraine’s ambitions towards joining NATO at least partially responsible for its invasion. I find this view absurd and it was one that Boaz has something to say about – as only 45% of Republicans believe that the United States benefits from NATO, compared to 77% of Democrats. This partisan view of NATO existed even when a higher proportion of Republicans took a dim view of the treaty organization.

Upon Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor in February 2022, the Biden Administration adopted a policy of sustained but cautious support for Ukraine. The theory behind the Administration’s actions was to obstruct Russia’s military expansion while simultaneously avoiding any direct conflict between America and its NATO allies and Russia. In many ways, this fits with Boaz’ belief in a foreign policy towards Russia that avoids encouraging Ukraine and Georgia to seek NATO membership, acknowledges that Russia, as a regional power, will assert the right to its sphere of influence, and generally steers away from the direction of engendering another cold war.[2]

While it would seem that this would mark the current Administration’s handling of the war more in line with libertarian thinking, it’s more complex than that. In recounting his 1981 visit to the Soviet Union, The Cato Institute’s co-founder Ed Crane observed that while belief in Soviet propaganda was on the wane by that time, Russian nationalism and identitarianism were on the rise. In particular, a good deal of veneration for Czarist Russia seemed to have gained ground among the young men and women he observed in Leningrad.[3] This sense of nationalism even extended to the Soviet apparat who, even if they would not openly admit it, expended a great deal of money the Union could hardly afford in the renovation of Czarist-era museums and palaces that had been damaged during WWII.

During that period of time in which Crane’s visit took place, a young intelligence operative was working at the KGB’s First Chief Directorate in Leningrad. In June of 2022, that former operative, now the President of Russia, began to describe his nation’s invasion of Ukraine as an analog to the mission of Peter the Great to expand Russian territory to encompass lands both men believed Russia had a historical claim to. Indeed, Putin began to reveal Ukraine as the foundation for his imperialist positions in his 2021 essay in which he implied historical dominance over present day Ukraine and Belarus via their descent from Ancient Rus.[4]  While all three nations originated from Ancient Rus, Kiev was the capital of that kingdom. It is Moscow – and Minsk – that owe their existence to Kiev, not the other way around.

In the meantime, Putin played his NATO shenanigans towards the end of 2021, demanding that the organization withdraw to its pre-1997 borders (before the accession of Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland), as well as committing to no further expansion, in order to buy itself time before invading Ukraine two months later. Moscow had also strengthened ties with China, Turkey, and much of the Global South prior to the invasion, in part, to serve as the beginning of a multipolar world order which lessens American influence and returns Russia to the sort of hegemony which it enjoyed during the Cold War. All of this made the Biden Administrations’s push to contain Russia without exacerbating Moscow’s tensions with NATO moot, as tensions with NATO were simply a pretext to do what Putin wanted to do anyway.

Prior to Donald Trump’s victory for his second term, he consulted with retired Lt Gen Keith Kellog and former National Security Council Chief of Staff Frederick Fleitz to determine a strategy for ending the war. This plan would have called for a ceasefire based on the prevailing battlelines that existed immediately prior to peace talks. The US was to continue supplying arms to Ukraine if it agreed to both ceasefire and talks, and increase arm supplies and aid if Russia did not. Ukraine would have to agree to delay its plans to join NATO for a period of time, in exchange for not having to formally cede annexed territories to Moscow, although they would remain under de facto Russian control.

Of course, ceding 20% of their territory in exchange for little or less was always going to be a nonstarter for Ukraine, and Trump, in typical Trumpian fashion, has been all over the place in his policy towards Kiev. But I submit that none of that really matters. Recall that, according to Boaz, a libertarian foreign policy towards Russia could entail acknowledging Russia’s sphere of influence, dissuading the accession to NATO of Ukraine and Georgia, and avoiding actions that would lead to another cold war. Putin sees Ukraine as the starting point for his territorial ambitions and would most likely have invaded with or without NATO as a convenient pretext. Putin wants a return to some semblance of the Cold War power structure. This genie has left the bottle.

So, how do we adjudicate a foreign policy in a situation in which such reasonable limits have been upended? Well, one solution is to decide to play no role at all; to decide that the victims of imperial aggression are on their own.  That was certainly the position of The Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014; Bandow even went so far as to minimize America’s security obligations under the Budapest Memorandum of which It was a signatory. Of course, one could argue that if any of the signatories of the Memorandum had pressed their claims in 2014, we wouldn’t be here today, or that if Kiev hadn’t agreed to give up its nuclear ambitions in exchange for those (de facto ineffectual) guarantees, an invasion would have been much less likely.

Another point of view, one which I believe Boaz would agree with, would be to continue to extend support for Ukraine short of direct military intervention. As previously observed, Boaz fervently believed that power should be brought under rule of law. Ukrainians are currently fighting against an invading aggressor to achieve this. The libertarian idea, he notes, is the foundational human right to live one’s life as one chooses so long as they are not infringing upon that very same right of others.[5] More than a discussion about the strategic importance of conquered Ukrainian territories to control of the Dnieper River and Black Sea ports, or natural resources such as rare earth elements, or shifting global alliances which may disabuse American interests, aiding the Ukrainian struggle for freedom is simply the right thing to do, especially given that not doing so is antithetical to the foreign policy aims Boaz identified as critical.

I look forward to further conversation with my esteemed colleagues as this is hardly a complete discussion. I am honored to have been chosen to participate, and pray that I have added something of value to this ongoing debate.

Boaz, David. 2008. Cato Handbook for Policymakers. 7th. Washington, DC: Cato Institute.

—. 2008. The Politics of Freedom: Taking on the Left, the Right, and Threats to Our Liberties. Washington, DC: Cato Institute.

—. 2024. "The Rise of Illiberalism in the Shadow of Liberal Triumph." LibertyCon International 2024 . Washington, DC: Students for Liberty.

Crane, Edward H. 2002. "Fear and Loathing in the Soviet Union." In Toward Liberty: The Idea That Is Changing the World, edited by David Boaz, 165. Washington, DC: Cato Institute.

Putin, Vladimir. 2021. "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians." President of Russia. July 12. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/page/224.

[1] (Boaz, The Rise of Illiberalism in the Shadow of Liberal Triumph 2024)

[2] (Boaz, Cato Handbook for Policymakers 2008)

[3] (Crane 2002)

[4] (Putin 2021)

[5] (Boaz, The Politics of Freedom: Taking on the Left, the Right, and Threats to Our Liberties 2008)