I Am Not Pro-Ukraine or Pro-Russia. I Am Pro-West.

 That distinction outlined in the heading seems increasingly difficult for people to understand. In the current political climate, refusing to adopt one of the competing orthodoxies is often interpreted as cowardice, ignorance or secret allegiance to the other side. But foreign policy should not be a football match in which we are required to wear one team's jersey. My primary loyalty is to the Western political tradition: constitutional government, individual liberty, national sovereignty, free expression, the rule of law and the preservation of democratic institutions. Those principles should inform how we judge both Ukraine and Russia.

My attitude toward Ukraine is complicated, and deliberately so. Jewish history makes it impossible for me to romanticize Ukrainian nationalism. Jews have suffered terribly at the hands of Ukrainian nationalists, particularly during the Second World War. The horrors of Babi Yar are seared into the history of European Jewry, and the record of Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany and the darker elements of the Bandera movement is something that should never be sanitized or forgotten. The historical legacy of Banderism makes me deeply uncomfortable with attempts to portray Ukrainian nationalism as an uncomplicated struggle for freedom.

But history does not give Russia a license to invade Ukraine.Whatever sins Ukraine has committed, whatever corruption exists within its political system, and whatever legitimate grievances Russia may have regarding NATO expansion or Western policy, Ukraine remains a sovereign country. I cannot simply ignore that fact because parts of Ukrainian history are repugnant to me.

Russia's invasion was wrong. That conclusion does not require me to become “pro-Ukraine.” It requires me to believe in the principle of national sovereignty. If we accept the proposition that a larger and more powerful country is entitled to invade its neighbour whenever it believes its security interests are threatened, then we have abandoned one of the most fundamental principles upon which the modern international order rests.

Did the West make a mistake expanding NATO? Yes and no. There is a legitimate argument that the relentless expansion of NATO eastward after the collapse of the Soviet Union contributed to the deterioration of relations with Moscow. We should not pretend otherwise. From the Russian perspective, watching a military alliance that had been created largely to contain the Soviet Union move progressively closer to Russia's borders was hardly going to be welcomed in the Kremlin.

I understand that argument. But I also understand the argument on the other side. The countries of Eastern Europe had lived behind the Iron Curtain. They had experienced Soviet domination firsthand, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, many of them understandably wanted guarantees that they would never again be abandoned to the geopolitical ambitions of a larger neighbour. The West had already made the mistake once: after the Second World War, Eastern Europe was effectively handed into the Soviet sphere of influence. The people who had lived under communism had every reason to be suspicious of another arrangement in which their security depended upon Moscow's goodwill.

So was NATO expansion wise?Perhaps not in every instance. Perhaps the West could have handled the process more intelligently and with greater sensitivity to Russian security concerns.But there is a difference between saying that NATO expansion was strategically provocative and saying that it justified invasion. The first is a legitimate foreign-policy argument. The second is not.

Neither side gets a moral free pass. I have no particular affection for the Zelensky government. Ukraine has serious problems with corruption, oligarchic influence and political dysfunction. Volodymyr Zelensky is not some immaculate democratic hero simply because he happens to be opposing Vladimir Putin.

But the alternative is hardly more attractive. Russia is corrupt. Its political system is authoritarian. Its ruling class has accumulated enormous wealth and power while ordinary Russians have been asked to accept increasing restrictions on political dissent. The idea that Putin represents some kind of morally superior alternative to the Ukrainian leadership is difficult to take seriously.

One does not have to admire Zelensky to recognize that Putin represents the greater threat.

And that is where I part company with those on both the isolationist right and the Western left who seem determined to reduce the conflict to a morality play in which their preferred villain explains everything.

The world is not that simple.

One of the strangest developments of the current political era has been the willingness of some Western conservatives to look upon Vladimir Putin with something approaching admiration.

Why? Because Putin opposes “wokeness.” and  talks about traditional values.Yes he criticizes progressive social politics and presents himself as a defender of Christianity and Western civilization against cultural decadence.

This is an extraordinary basis upon which to assess a foreign dictator.. Conservatives, of all people, should understand the danger of confusing rhetoric with reality. Putin can condemn transgender ideology, mock Western political correctness and invoke Christianity until the cows come home. None of that makes him a friend of the West.

The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Indeed, sometimes the enemy of my enemy is simply another enemy who has discovered which buttons to push.

This is where the rise of Duginism deserves particular attention. Aleksandr Dugin and the broader ideological currents associated with him represent something fundamentally different from traditional Western conservatism. Dugin's vision is not a defence of classical liberalism, constitutional democracy or the individual rights that underpin Western civilization. It is a rejection of much of that tradition in favour of a civilizational and geopolitical order in which Russia occupies a dominant role.

That should concern Western conservatives enormously.

You cannot defend the West by embracing an ideology whose fundamental assumptions are hostile to the liberal political order that made the West what it is. The irony is almost comical. Some conservatives have spent years warning that progressive activists are attempting to dismantle Western institutions, only to turn around and romanticize a Russian state whose geopolitical project is explicitly aimed at weakening Western unity and influence.

Putin does not have to believe everything his Western admirers believe. He only has to understand what they want to hear.And he does.Stop being seduced by the rhetoric This is the part that I think deserves the greatest emphasis. Words are cheap.

A politician can talk about Christianity without being a Christian democrat. He can talk about traditional values without believing in individual liberty. He can condemn progressive ideology without supporting free institutions. He can criticize Western decadence while simultaneously working to weaken the very civilization he claims to admire.

We should judge governments by what they do, not merely by what they say. Putin's Russia is not the defender of the West simply because Putin dislikes some aspects of contemporary Western culture. Russia is a geopolitical competitor with interests that frequently conflict with those of the United States and its allies. Moscow has spent decades attempting to undermine American influence and Western cohesion in various ways, and the fact that the Soviet Union has been replaced by a different ideological formulation does not mean the strategic competition has disappeared.

The packaging has changed.The objective has not necessarily changed with it. That is why Western conservatives need to be particularly careful. Our political enemies do not always look like our political enemies. Sometimes they discover that the easiest way to influence a political movement is to tell that movement exactly what it wants to hear.

Putin's anti-Woke rhetoric should therefore be treated with the same skepticism we would apply to any other political propaganda.Being pro-West does not mean being blindly pro-American. It does not mean believing that NATO is infallible, that Ukraine is virtuous, that Zelensky is a hero or that every decision made by Washington is wise.

It means recognizing that the Western political tradition, despite its enormous flaws, has produced something worth defending - Individual liberty,representative government. freedom of speech, religious freedom, constitutional restraints on government, the rule of law and the principle that governments derive legitimacy from the consent of the governed.

Those principles are worth defending against progressive excesses. They are also worth defending against authoritarianism masquerading as conservatism.I can condemn Ukrainian nationalism without endorsing Russian imperialism. I can acknowledge that NATO expansion contributed to Russian insecurity without believing that Russia therefore had the right to invade Ukraine. I can criticize Zelensky without becoming a Putin apologist. I can oppose Woke ideology without pretending that Vladimir Putin is some kind of champion of Western civilization.

There is no contradiction in any of that. In fact, I would argue that it is precisely what a genuinely Western perspective should look like.The West does not need to choose between Kyiv and Moscow as competing objects of worship. It needs to decide what principles it is prepared to defend.

Those  principles should not change simply because an authoritarian leader learns how to say the right words.The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Sometimes he is simply an enemy who has figured out that we are listening.