America Is Having the Wrong Election – WSJ

There s a lot of ruin in a nation (as Adam Smith once put it). There s a lot of ruin in Russia. Russia is a real state, with a real military tradition. Its badly treated soldiers perform rather than melting away. Its factories maintain a flow of war supplies. Its recruiters wangle bodies to throw into the ranks.

The ice may be thinning under him, but Vladimir Putin still benefits from reserves of trust from his people.

These unoriginal discoveries about Russia point to a certain outcome for Ukraine if the West is not involved or not sufficiently involved.

It seems worth mentioning that the $25 billion the Biden administration proposes to spend on the southern border plus the $60 billion it seeks to spend on Ukraine amount to just 1.3% of the federal budget. Laughable, except perhaps under today s circumstances, would be any idea that Washington can t do both simultaneously, plus the other 98.7% of federal activities.

The U.S. is the world s top economic performer right now; NATO represents 24 times Russia s gross domestic product, and that s before you add Japan and South Korea.

From any clear-eyed view, the pygmy Mr. Putin is trying to bluff the collective West with a one-year Russian military spending increase of $35 billion. That s a quarter of what Americans spend annually on pet supplies. It s also an increase Mr. Putin can t repeat next year, much less year after year into the future.

But listen to what certain voters are saying through their GOP representatives if only because it s driving events: They won t trust a government that allows its own border to collapse to pursue its aims in Ukraine, however urgent governing elites think those aims are.

via www.wsj.com

Holman Jenkins.