As a Ph.D. student seeking to secure a degree in Political Science, I was also facing the threat of being drafted into the U.S. Army during the timeframe that this country was fighting in Vietnam. Although the latter did not happen, I continued to think about justifications for being involved in the conflict. The basic premise, that America’s national security was at sake, was generally tough to maintain. Vietnam was far from our shores and our major enemies, the Soviet Union and China, were not directly involved. But, since I was spending my days at the UCLA library enmeshed in scholarly works about American foreign policy, I learned the importance of a U.S. assurance that those countries who were promised American protection from aggression, received what was offered. Not to do so, it was argued (and I agreed), could too easily result in a more chaotic and lawless world in which threatened countries would have to fend for themselves, unable to trust their friends and allies for protection. In essence, the credibility of the U.S. was at stake. Inevitably, should it falter, America could become the primary victim.

Today, much the same argument is offered about American involvement in protecting the Ukraine from continued Russian aggression. Despite reasoning to the contrary coming from the Trump/DeSantis wing of the Republican Party, there is no question in my mind that the threats to America and its allies are real and, if dismissed by decision-makers, would have a detrimental effect upon our national interest. China, for example, seems waiting for an opportunity to seize Taiwan, an offshore island off its coast. Home to the Chinese Republic, Taiwan’s security has been publicly linked to that of the U.S. on more than one occasion. Any invasion by Communist Chinese forces is fairly certain to be met by an American military response. From there, who knows how the situation might spiral?

Although the Ukraine is not yet a member of NATO, American security guarantees to its NATO/Eastern European neighbors could lead to a much wider European war involving NATO members in armed conflict with the Russians. In addition, existential threats to Israel from Iran, or to South Korea from its north, or significant violence in other parts of the world, could also test American resolve. A failure to respond to any corresponding aggression could significantly diminish American security by creating ad-hoc alliances and a free-for-all as threatened countries sought protection. Nuclear weapons, for now relied upon as weapons of last resort, would surely be viable options in such situations, especially by threatened countries already in possession of them.

While South Vietnam technically remained absent from America’s security umbrella until U.S. involvement massively escalated in the mid-to-late 1960’s, the French had been defeated there in the mid-1950’s by North Vietnamese and Southern insurgent forces. The U.S. entered the picture as a perceived security vacuum drove American policymakers into believing that China and the Vietnamese communists would threaten our Asian allies if we allowed South Vietnam to fall to its enemies. In this instance, the then recently fought Korean War was used as the most applicable historical analogy. But, by the early 1970’s, the lack of American will to prolong the Vietnamese conflict, with its thousands of casualties, was missing. Extended negotiations proceeded as it became convincingly clear that a loss of Vietnam would be unlikely to result in existential harm to the interests of the United States and its allies. Today, the situation resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is similar, yet distinctly different in terms of valid American security interests.

Europe, to no one’s surprise, has always been directly tied to American security. Two world wars, countless political/military confrontations, and a Cold War, validate its importance. The creation of NATO in 1949, and the formation of similar-type alliances worldwide (each embedded with mutual security guarantees), enhanced this reality. Consequently, once the Russians carried out this first land invasion in Europe since the end of World War II, it was inevitable that the United States would strongly react. While all sides, at least so far, have not indicated any realistic intention of using nuclear weapons, mistakes could happen, with a cataclysmic result. This alone makes the commitments of NATO and the U.S. impossible to ignore. Should any country misperceive our intentions, and global war ensues, you can surely believe that Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Tucker Carlson, et al, will be pushing each other aside as they attempt to enter the fallout shelters.