Opinion | Can Ukraine win without Western boots on the ground?

The April 19 front-page article “Putin’s rhetoric of proxy war hits chord” presented arguments for and against characterizing the supply of arms to Ukraine in that light. The unspoken underlying question is whether Moscow’s war of choice can be effectively countered without Western boots on the ground.

The United States sat out the first few years of both 20th-century world wars, hoping arms supplies alone would suffice to counter unconscionable aggression. It was then, and is now, a fatally flawed strategy. The only remaining question (which is unlikely to be addressed in the shadow of a looming election) is whether the United States will enter the fray directly. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forays into Crimea and eastern Ukraine were ostensibly undertaken to protect ethnic Russians. The parallels to Adolf Hitler’s seizure of the Czech Sudetenland to protect ethnic Germans are hard to miss.