This past February, near the one-year milestone of the war in Ukraine, President Biden announced another $460 million in U.S. aid for the country and Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about the way the “international community has come together.” But the percentage of Americans who favor sending weapons to Ukraine has declined from 60% in May 2022 to 48% in February 2023 and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently called the war a “territorial dispute,” questioning America’s involvement.

As the debate about America’s efforts in Ukraine rages on, Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich argues it’s an immensely important debate and where we ultimately settle will define America’s role in the world.

The emerging debate on whether or not to continue helping Ukraine is really, really important.

There really are kind of three factions. One faction says no matter what, we have to stop Russia because if we don’t stop Russia and Ukraine, next will come Poland or Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. The second faction says, well, I’d like to help the Ukrainians but I so distrust the Biden administration. I think the Defense Department bureaucracy is so incompetent and I think the level of corruption in Ukraine is so great that I’m not sure it’s a good thing to do, even though I’d like to do it. The third group says, it’s a long way off. It’s a war we’re not involved in. Why is that in our interest? Why don’t we keep the money here at home?

Those three factions are going to be debating over the next six months and it’s one of the most important debates in modern America. I belong to the group that grew up in the shadow of World War Two. We believe that failing to stop Hitler, and Mussolini and the Imperial Japanese led to a worldwide war. We also believe that we had no choice except to contain the Soviet Union through a Cold War, which lasted from 1946 to 1989. So we had 43 years of Americans maintaining a worldwide defense system against an empire that was threatening to occupy the whole planet.

Now we’re at a place where you have to ask yourself, let’s say the we allow the Ukrainians to lose. Does Russia then sit on the Polish border and for how long before they decide that they want Poland back too? Or, if we in fact decide we’re going to help them, do we help them just to fight to a tie or do we help them actually win? Which would mean pushing Russia back.

I think this debate is really important — worth your paying attention to, it’s not going to go away. And over the next six months or a year, we’re going to sort out America’s role in the world in a very important way.