WASHINGTON • As Ukraine begins its spring counteroffensive, a 60% majority of Republicans say we should stand with Ukraine until Russia is defeated, according to a Harvard Caps-harris

Poll conducted in March. But GOP support is softening.

Many wavering Republicans are frustrated by the lack of a clear strategy for victory from the Biden administration. They hear Ukraine skeptics on the right arguing that the war is costing too much, depleting our military readiness, increasing the risk of nuclear confrontation with Russia and distracting us from the larger threat posed by Communist China. Some are beginning to ask whether U.S. support for Ukraine is really in the nation’s interest.

It’s a fair question. Most conservatives are not isolationists; they are reluctant internationalists, willing to support U.S. leadership on the world stage — as long as they are convinced our national interest is involved. Altruistic arguments of solidarity with the Ukrainian people are not enough; they demand an “America First” case for supporting Ukraine.

Here it is, in several clear points:

1. A Russian victory would reinforce a narrative of American weakness and embolden our enemies.

Ask yourself: Did President Biden’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine? Of course it did. And Putin watched Biden’s subsequent capitulation on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, and his reluctance to send Ukraine lethal military aid as Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s border. The Russian leader concluded that Biden was weak.

Now, imagine if Biden had followed the advice of those on the right who oppose aid and had refused to arm Ukraine. Putin would have taken Kyiv. And many of the same conservatives who are now criticizing the president for doing too much would have said: Biden is catastrophically weak. If the Afghanistan debacle emboldened Putin, how much more would U.S. weakness in Ukraine embolden Chinese dictator Xi Jinping? The risk of war over Taiwan would skyrocket. And, unlike the war in Ukraine, it could very well involve U.S. troops.

Think of Xi’s calculation: If the United States won’t stand fast for Ukraine, an internationally recognized sovereign state, how likely is a stalwart defense of Taiwan, which is not? And if the United States is not willing to spend money to defend Ukraine, is it really going to risk American lives to defend Taiwan?

Xi seeks a Chinese-led global order that favors the world’s autocracies. In pursuit of that goal, he made a bet on Putin, and has met with him some 40 times since assuming power in 2012. China’s “no-limits” partnership with Russia “is a signature personal policy of Xi Jinping,” former Trump deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger tells me. “Putin’s defeat would do a lot of damage to Xi’s credibility” by making it clear the Chinese leader backed a loser.

Defeating Putin in Ukraine would strike a blow to the very heart of the emerging Sino-russian alliance, and restore the United States’ reputation for strength and reliability.

2. A Ukrainian victory will help deter China. If the Afghanistan debacle emboldened Putin, how much more would U.S. weakness in Ukraine embolden Chinese dictator Xi Jinping? The risk of war over Taiwan would skyrocket. And, unlike the war in Ukraine, it could very well involve U.S. troops.

Think of Xi’s calculation: If the United States won’t stand fast for Ukraine, an internationally recognized sovereign state, how likely is a stalwart defense of Taiwan, which is not? And if the United States is not willing to spend money to defend Ukraine, is it really going to risk American lives to defend Taiwan?

Failure to save Ukraine would decimate our credibility in defense of Taiwan, thus making war more likely. Our Asian allies certainly know that the outcom

3. Defeating Putin would weaken the Sino-russian partnership.

Xi seeks a Chinese-led global order that favors the world’s autocracies. In pursuit of that goal, he made a bet on Putin, and has met with him some 40 times since assuming power in 2012. China’s “no-limits” partnership with Russia “is a signature personal policy of Xi Jinping,” former Trump deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger tells me. “Putin’s defeat would do a lot of damage to Xi’s credibility” by making it clear the Chinese leader backed a loser.

Defeating Putin in Ukraine would strike a blow to the very heart of the emerging Sino-russian alliance, and restore the United States’ reputation for strength and reliability.

On the other hand, if Putin wins in Ukraine, it would lead to the expansion of Chinese economic influence in Europe. Skeptical of U.S. strength, Europeans would likely return to doing business with Russia.

The same doubts would drive our Asian allies to accelerate their own trade and investment with China. The United States would be weaker, less prosperous and less secure.

4. Support for Ukraine will restore the Reagan Doctrine.

For most of the past two decades, U.S. foreign policy has followed the Bush Doctrine. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we would not wait to be struck again. We would fight terrorists abroad so we did not have to face them here at home. The doctrine helped prevent catastrophic attacks in the United States but, eventually, the constant combat footing exhausted America’s will to sacrifice the lives of U.S. troops. Sensing the exhaustion, Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump — both skeptics of the Bush Doctrine — reduced the United States’ military footprint abroad.

Ronald Reagan was in a similar position when he was elected president in 1980. The Vietnam War had soured Americans on sending U.S. troops to fight in distant lands. So Reagan found anti-communist partners willing to fight our common enemies. They needed U.S. weapons, training and intelligence, as well as financial, diplomatic and humanitarian support. By providing assistance, Reagan helped freedom fighters from Central America to South Asia throw off the grip of an expansionist Russia — and won the Cold War.

5. Victory in Ukraine will save the United States billions of dollars.

Russian adventurism is a drain on U.S. resources. By decimating the Russian military threat, Ukraine is reducing the amount of money the United States will have to spend defending Europe — without risking American lives to do it.

Russia might never regain the strength it has spent against Ukraine. Its military has suffered more combat deaths in Ukraine than in all of its wars since World War II — combined. The British defense ministry estimates that 97% of the Russian army is now committed to Ukraine. For every Russian tank, plane and infantry division the Ukrainians eliminate, the United States will have to spend that much less to deter Russian aggression in the decades to come.

6. Support for Ukraine allows us to test new weapons and defense concepts that will increase U.S. military preparedness.

The New York Times reports: “Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come.”

7. Arming Ukraine is revitalizing our defense industrial base.

Money that Congress has allocated to arm Ukraine is not being spent in Ukraine. It’s going primarily to Americans — either to replace weapons sent to Ukraine from U.S. stockpiles, or to build the weapons we send to Kyiv. “When we’re talking about giving assistance to Ukraine . . . these [weapons systems] are produced by American or Allied and partner countries,” explains Seth Jones, the director of the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are produced by General Dynamics, by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, by Boeing in some cases. . . . And they’re being built in most cases in the United States.”

Aid to Ukraine creates jobs in the United States and energizes its defense industrial base, which had dangerously atrophied after the Cold War. Jones recently conducted a series of U.s.-china war games and found that the United States, without stepped-up production, would run out of precision weapons within a week after fighting began.

Moreover, the weapons being sent to Ukraine will not dull the United States’ readiness to defend Taiwan. The U.S. military strategy there is to deny an aggressor the ability to cross the 100-mile wide Taiwan Strait for a landing. This isn’t a job for howitzers, HIMARS or armored vehicles; it’s a job for F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, B-2 and soon-to-be-deployed B-21 bombers, nuclear submarines and long-range anti-ship missiles. “We’re giving none of those capabilities to Ukraine,” Fred Kagan, director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, tells me.

8. The Russian invasion has strengthened U.S. alliances.

Putin intended his invasion to weaken NATO and to break U.s.-led alliances, so that his country could restore its imperial borders, and so China could have free rein in the Pacific. Instead, it has done the opposite.

Sixteen NATO allies (more than half the alliance’s members) increased defense spending in 2022, while an additional seven countries have pledged to raise defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product in the near term. Indeed, as a percentage of GDP, the United States is tied for ninth in spending on Ukraine, behind Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Britain. Bulgaria and Finland each contribute nearly the same percentage of GDP as the United States.

Putin’s catastrophic miscalculation prompted Sweden and Finland to abandon decades of neutrality and join NATO.

The lesson of the 20th century is that putting “America First” requires us to project strength and deter our enemies from launching wars of aggression - so that U.S. troops to don’t have to fight and die in another global conflagration.

The invasion in Ukraine was a failure of deterrence. Only by helping Ukraine win can we prevent further deterrence failures.