The United States needs to maintain its global focus and efforts to stymie the growing cooperation and ambition of \u2018axis of evil states,\u2019 according to historian and journalist Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia. Roberts sits in the British House of Lords.<\/p>\n
\u2018When it comes to the axis of evil states, frankly, it\u2019s not the worst thing in the world to have a forever war, especially if you will not actually fight,\u2019 Roberts, a biographer of several British leaders, including Winston Churchill, told Fox News Digital. \u2018It can be done for an amount which is a really very impressive return on investment.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Roberts, along with retired Gen. David Petraeus, wrote \u2018Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine,\u2019\u00a0an assessment of U.S. foreign conflict involvement examined through the lens of successful strategic leadership. Roberts is currently working on new chapters for the paperback release, which will focus on the war in Gaza and Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2019s ambitions for Taiwan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He argued that the United States, as a global superpower, can and should \u2018walk and chew gum\u2019 \u2013 so to speak \u2013 and that American isolationism would prove \u2018a profoundly dangerous force\u2026 not just for the rest of the world but for America as well, ultimately.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018If the United States decides to essentially shrug off the responsibility of a great global superpower that you\u2019ve been really since the Great White Fleet circumnavigated the world in 1909, a long time ago now\u2026 one can understand that any titan gets weary,\u2019 Roberts said. \u2018However, if you were to embrace isolationism, the ultimate response would be from the alliance of anti-democratic nations that we are seeing is working closer and closer\u2026 ultimately it will rebound terribly on you.\u2019<\/p>\n
The desire for an \u2018America First\u2019 policy has grown stronger as the U.S. faces down two significant conflicts \u2013 first from Russia, now in its third year of invading Ukraine, and from the bubbling tension between Iran and Israel.<\/p>\n
Some Republicans particularly have opposed the continued funding of Ukraine without a clear plan as to how the conflict could end, raising fears of another \u2018forever war\u2019 like those the U.S. maintained in the Middle East over the past two decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n
House Republicans have worked to condition aid for Ukraine, which has surpassed $113 billion as of March 2024. Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va., called for any funding to Ukraine to be balanced out by spending cuts elsewhere and for it to be paired with U.S. border policy changes. The House finally passed the $60 billion funding bill for Ukraine on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u2018We cannot continue to borrow and spend money we don\u2019t have for wars overseas while failing to protect Americans from the Biden border invasion here at home,\u2019 Good told Fox News Digital earlier this month. \u2018At a bare minimum, any package for military aid to Ukraine should be fully offset and must include H.R. 2 with performance metrics to secure our own border.\u2019<\/p>\n
Roberts argued that the U.S., as a \u2018great superpower\u2026 some might argue the only superpower\u2019 can protect both itself and support allies in a conflict that has proven an \u2018extremely impressive\u2019 return on investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The Ukrainians have taken out well over half of the Russian tank fleet,\u2019 Roberts noted. \u2018Now, at any stage in American post-war history, if you offer the president that deal, he\u2019d have snapped it up.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018You\u2019ve got a $825 billion per annum defense budget to spend, [and] less than a 10th of that, take out your opponent\u2019s tank fleet, essentially \u2013 at least, over half of it \u2013 is an amazing return on investment,\u2019 he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018After 20 years of the forever war in Afghanistan before Biden\u2019s, in my view, outrageous scuttle from that country, you\u2019d got it down to the situation where no Americans had died for 18 months, and the whole American cost of this conflict was down to about 20 to $25 billion a year,\u2019 he said. \u2018That\u2019s an amazing thing, to be able to keep the Taliban out of power.\u2019<\/p>\n
However, Roberts stressed that there should remain limits to the U.S. ambitions overseas, dismissing the idea that Washington should seek Russian regime change as \u2018not our duty, not our job, not our responsibility, and certainly not a very sensible thing.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The obvious reason is that it would just stoke anti-Western nationalism in Russia,\u2019 he explained. \u2018No, they can do those things themselves, and I think the point at which they might do that is, as has happened so often in history, when Russian aggression has been shown not to succeed.\u2019<\/p>\n
Roberts lamented, though, that Russia has made strides in Ukraine\u2019s easternmost territories, with a breakthrough on the front and potentially bigger gains to come \u2018if the West doesn\u2019t help Ukraine more.\u2019<\/p>\n
Indeed, more and more analysts and commentators have grown increasingly dismal about Ukraine\u2019s potential successes: The BBC, Politico EU and other outlets in the last week have run articles discussing why and how Ukraine could face defeat this year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says any victory hinges on continued funding from allies to keep pace with Russia.<\/p>\n
Roberts suggested that such doomsday prophecies may prove premature, stressing that \u2018there\u2019s no such thing as inevitability in history.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018So many times in history, you\u2019ve seen one thing about to happen and then the opposite happens,\u2019 Roberts mused. \u2018These breakthroughs the Russians are having in certain theaters\u2026 not major ones so far, but they are fighting with a shell advantage, and that\u2019s because the United States and Europe are not providing the shells.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s certainly not inevitable that either the Ukrainians win or lose that war unless, of course, we stopped providing them with the wherewithal to continue to fight,\u2019 he warned. \u2018It\u2019s them that are putting up in the blood, huge amounts of it, but simply because Russia is a bigger country does not mean that it\u2019s automatically going to win: If that was the case, you\u2019d have won in Vietnam.\u2019<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital\u2019s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
The United States needs to maintain its global focus and efforts to stymie the growing cooperation and ambition of \u2018axis of evil states,\u2019 according to historian and journalist Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia. Roberts sits in the British House of Lords. \u2018When it comes to the axis of evil states, frankly, it\u2019s not the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":18250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}