Uninvited II Panel: Ukraine Uprising Could Herald 'End of the Post-Cold War Arrangement'

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD–The potential for a new world order in which Russia is the main superpower is a potential outcome of the current Ukrainian crisis, a national security panel at Breitbart News’s Univited II National Security Action Summit agreed Thursday.

At a talk sponsored by Breitbart News, the Center for Security Policy, and EMPAct America, a number of experts agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy needed to be contained for the good of the United States and the greater world community. 

American Foreign Policy Council President Herman Pirchner began the discussion with a look into the Ukrainian protesters and their motivations. The Ukrainian crisis “is very much a generational problem,” he explained, with many young people looking towards more Westernized nations like Poland and the Baltics and hoping to be included in their prosperity. This did not mean that there was no support for Russia in Ukraine, or that individuals did not speak the language or adhere to some cultural norms, but the economic pull of Western neo-liberalism was there.

Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Ariel Cohen expanded upon that desire and the threat of Russia overriding it and changing the world map in a way that endangers America. Cohen, who was born in Crimea, warned that a victory for Putin in Ukraine could mean “the end of the post-Cold War arrangement and possibly the end of the post-World War II arrangement.” A move that allows Russia to work the way it currently is in Crimea would launch a competition between a number of nuclear-armed nations to stop each other and create a “more chaotic and dangerous environment,” he concluded.

Sebastian Gorka, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, agreed but emphasized America’s moral imperative to intervene. “Why should we care about Ukraine?” he asked simply. “Because we are Americans.” The issue of helping freedom-loving people was one of “morality, and what this nation stands for,” he asserted. “If we don’t care about Ukraine, 1776 means nothing.”

The Claremont Institute’s Claire Lopez spoke more about the nature of the Putin regime that has been in power for a decade. “We are up against a KGB thug,” she explained, one that runs a “KGB-controlled and directed kleptocracy.” The invasion of Crimea, she added, was no surprise after the invasion of Georgia in 2008, in which Russia never retreated out of Abkhazia or South Ossetia. “If we don’t make a stand,” she argued, “this won’t happen again.”

Breitbart’s own Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak concluded the discussion emphasizing how completely the Obama administration had left that part of the world to their own devices. The United States is “the only stabilizing force in the world,” he argued, “and we don’t always have to be fighting wars to do it,” something that escapes the Obama administration and many in Congress. Pollak also noted that Ukraine was not alone as a nation fighting for pro-America values and being left behind: “Why are the conservative media ignoring Venezuela?” The current state of affairs, a “hollow foreign policy still committed to internationalism,” would result in danger for Western values, he concluded.