Parsing The Right's Case Against Aiding Ukraine

Recently I ran across two essays that outline what I take to be the right-wing case against aiding Ukraine. I have some suspicion that neither is completely ingenuous, but I'll take their points at face value. The first is by Michael Walsh, 'Not Worth the Bones of a Single Grenadier' at a site called The Pipeline, which seems to carry National Review types like John O'Sullivan. He begins with an argument we'll see again: Bismarck was right about the Balkans, but he might as well have been speaking of the Ukraine, a troubled land (its name means "borderland"), oft-conquered, rarely independent, generally restive, and almost always miserable. Like the Kurds, the Ukrainians are for reasons of geography basically a people without a country. . . But the same might be said about half of Europe; Poland wasn't a country at all throughout the 19th century; Belgium didn't emerge until 1830 and has been twice invaded since then by Germany, which i...