The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations

by John McCain

We had arrived in Mariupol soon after the Obama administration announced new sanctions against Russia for interference in the 2016 election. Russia had not announced retaliatory measures yet. We would later learn that was because President-elect Trump’s incoming national security advisor, retired lieutenant general Mike Flynn, had urged the Russian ambassador in Washington not to impose new sanctions, presumably implying that once the new administration was in office they would reconsider the sanctions the White House had just announced. If that was indeed what happened, it was a terrible thing to do. A ruthless adversary had tried to sabotage our elections, aggravating our political divisions and worsening our government’s dysfunction. Sparing Putin any serious penalty for his assault on our democracy doesn’t just encourage further aggression, it tells the victims and potential victims of Russian aggression in Ukraine and Georgia, the Baltics, Poland, Moldova, and Montenegro, and in Russia itself, that the United States, the greatest power in the world, couldn’t be relied on to defend its own democracy. It’s a colossal strategic mistake, and a stain on our honor. In the last decade, I’ve traveled to all the countries named above, save Russia, and many others in the neighborhood. They are all scared of what Russia plans for them, and though they will never say it publicly, worried that the U.S. won’t help defend them when it comes. Putin’s kleptocracy has left the sluggish...