Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict four years on.

In March 2022, shortly after Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine, Yoram Hazony addressed an international conference of national conservatives in Brussels. The author of perhaps the most influential argument for this branch of conservatism—The Virtue of Nationalism—Hazony is a philosophical influence on U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and numerous Trump administration officials, including those who crafted the new U.S. National Security Strategy. At its heart, Hazony wrote in his 2018 book, national conservatism envisions a world of nation-states in which each “has its own traditions … its own trajectory and … judges its own interests on the basis of its own understanding.”

Hazony’s Brussels speech was both an articulation of the national conservative creed and a cri de coeur for Ukraine as a nation-state under threat. Hazony denounced Russia, which “acts as an empire,” “has never in its history been a nation-state,” and has engaged in “conquering a neighboring independent nation-state.” He praised Ukrainians for the “bonds of loyalty that move them to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their own people. That doesn’t exist everywhere and at all times, in all places. But where it exists … I feel that I want to help them and thank God many people feel this way … and many are helping them.”

In March 2022, shortly after Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine, Yoram Hazony addressed an international conference of national conservatives in Brussels. The author of perhaps the most influential argument for this branch of conservatism—The Virtue of Nationalism—Hazony is a philosophical influence on U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and numerous Trump administration officials, including those who crafted the new U.S. National Security Strategy. At its heart, Hazony wrote in his 2018 book, national conservatism envisions a world of nation-states in which each “has its own traditions … its own trajectory and … judges its own interests on the basis of its own understanding.”

Hazony’s Brussels speech was both an articulation of the national conservative creed and a cri de coeur for Ukraine as a nation-state under threat. Hazony denounced Russia, which “acts as an empire,” “has never in its history been a nation-state,” and has engaged in “conquering a neighboring independent nation-state.” He praised Ukrainians for the “bonds of loyalty that move them to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their own people. That doesn’t exist everywhere and at all times, in all places. But where it exists … I feel that I want to help them and thank God many people feel this way … and many are helping them.”

One might think it natural for conservative nationalists to embrace Ukraine’s cause. Yet Hazony’s conference address did not inspire a standing ovation. Rather it was met with tepid, polite applause.

In June 2022, amid news of mass atrocities by invading Russian forces, Hazony joined eight other prominent conservative thinkers to draft a powerful document titled “National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles.” The signatories were a conservative who’s who, including R.R. Reno of First Things; John O’Sullivan, the former Margaret Thatcher aide and editor of National Review; the late Charlie Kirk; financier Peter Thiel; the Hudson Institute’s John Fonte; Hoover Institution historian Victor Davis Hanson; Roger Kimball of the New Criterion; writer Rod Dreher; and Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College, as well as first Trump administration veterans Michael Anton, Arthur Milikh, and Russ Vought.

Published in the mainly isolationist American Conservative, the text declared that “[a] world of independent nations is the only alternative........

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