Since February 24, 2022, Ukraine has been under Russian assault. For more than two years, President Joseph R. Biden supplied Ukrainians with arms and Intelligence.        

Then voters elected Donald Trump President in 2024.  

Suddenly, the future of Ukraine—and those countries making up the 75-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—looked very different.

Numerous commentators have noted that Trump is a “transactional President.” Meaning that he doesn’t enter any enterprise unless he believes there’s something in it for him. 

Thus, defending a nation simply because it’s a democracy is a waste of time—unless he can gain something from it.

Ukraine vs. Russia

Trump wants access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which are key to manufacturing high-tech products like computer chips and military equipment.

The reason: In April, 2025, China announced export restrictions on some of these minerals in retaliation for Trump’s placing tariffs on Chinese goods.

In asserting the United States’ sphere of influence, Trump sees himself as the leader of a country that’s expansive and claims new territory,

As a result, he has attacked America’s longtime ally and neighbor, Canada with tariffs. He’s even threatened it with possible military invasion.

Vladimir Putin is another politician who believes in spheres of influence.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin has yearned for its reestablishment. He has called that breakup “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century.”

Vladimir Putin

Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Russia has long resisted Ukraine’s move towards European institutions—especially entry into NATO. 

Since late February, 2014, he began moving Russian troops into Ukraine and its autonomous Republic, Crimea. Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula and backed separatists who captured large swathes of eastern Ukraine. 

On December 3, 2021, the Washington Post reported: “The Kremlin was planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops” against Ukraine.

And where there is activity by Russians, American Rightists are eager to turn such events to their own political advantage.

All of which overlooks a number of brutal political truths.

First, all great powers have spheres of interest—and jealously guard them.

For the United States, it’s Latin and Central America, as established by the Monroe Doctrine.

And just what is the Monroe Doctrine?

It’s a statement made by President James Monroe in his 1823 annual message to Congress, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. 

The Monroe Doctrine has no legitimacy except the willingness of the United States to use armed force to back it up. When the United States no longer has the will or resources to enforce the Doctrine, it will cease to have meaning.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy threatened Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev with nuclear oblivion unless Soviet nuclear missiles were withdrawn from Cuba.

For the Soviet Union, its spheres of influence include the Ukraine. Long known as “the breadbasket of Russia,” in 2011, it was the world’s third-largest grain exporter.

Russia will no more give up access to that breadbasket than the United States would part with the rich farming states of the Midwest.

Second, spheres of influence often prove disastrous to those smaller countries affected.

Throughout Latin and Central America, the United States remains highly unpopular for its brutal use of “gunboat diplomacy” during the 20th century.

Among those countries invaded or controlled by America: Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

The resulting anger has led many Latin and Central Americans to support Communist Cuba, even though its political oppression and economic failure are universally apparent.

Latin and Central America 

Similarly, the Soviet Union forced many nations—such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—to submit to the will of Moscow.

The alternative?  The threat of Soviet invasion—as occurred in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Third, even “great powers” are not all-powerful.

In 1949, after a long civil war, the forces of Mao Zedong defeated the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-Shek, who withdrew to Taiwan.

China had never been a territory of the United States. Nor could the United States have prevented Mao from defeating the corrupt, ineptly-led Nationalist forces.

Even so, Republican Senators and Representatives such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy eagerly blamed President Harry S. Truman and the Democrats for “losing China.”

The fear of being accused of “losing” another country led Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon to tragically commit the United States to “roll back” Communism in Cuba and Vietnam.

Now Republicans—who claim the United States can’t afford to provide healthcare for its poorest citizens—want to turn the national budget over to the Pentagon.

They want the United States to “intervene” in Syria following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government in late 2024

This would insert the United States into yet another war in yet another Islamic country—after our disastrous forays in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Before plunging into conflicts that don’t concern us and where there is absolutely nothing to “win,” Americans would do well to remember the above-stated lessons of history.  And to learn from them.