Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night was a political triumph. It was easily the most impressive speech given to Congress and the American public in years. And it was persuasive, if the audience’s repeated ovations are any indication.
Zelensky’s goal was obvious. In thanking the Congress and the Biden administration, he hoped not only to show his nation’s gratitude but to ensure continued American support for its fight with Russia. The subtext was that, ideally, America and its NATO partners would do more than continue the current flow of weapons and ammunition. They would increase them and include more advanced weapons.
But Zelensky wisely put those requests on the back-burner. Far better to make them only in private meetings, like the one he had earlier with President Biden. In his public speech, he focused on his country’s determination to fight for complete victory, his gratitude for strong US support and the high price his people were paying. His most touching references were to Ukrainians celebrating Christmas by candlelight, some in bomb shelters, because Russia had deliberately destroyed their electricity. That point will undoubtedly echo in Europe, where Russian gas supplies have been cut. He also stressed Iran’s partnership with Russia, making clear that his country’s enemies were also America’s.
Zelensky was wise, too, in repeatedly thanking both parties and both the House and Senate. The only sour note was hidden in the audience, where four right-wing Republicans refused to clap. The rest of America’s elected representatives stood to cheer Zelensky time after time, showing there really is bipartisan, bicameral support for Ukraine’s fight. The hard question is how long that will last and how many advanced weapons America is willing to send. That’s why Zelensky needed to be so persuasive.
Beyond the applause lines, Zelensky’s speech made a larger point that President Biden should have made to the American public long ago but never has. Zelensky explained why the war matters not just his own country but for the “West” and the free world. His point is that Russia’s unprovoked aggression, its denial of Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign country and its genocidal treatment of ordinary Ukrainians is more than a breach of the West’s peaceful, rules-based order. It is intended to destroy that order, with its premise that rich, powerful countries respect each other’s borders and interact solely through economic and cultural exchanges, not military invasions. (Asia now faces the same threat from Communist China, under Xi Jinping.)
That peaceful, interdependent order was established under American auspices after World War Two and extended to Eastern Europe after the collapse of the 1989 Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union in 1991. It’s reasonable to debate whether the US and its NATO partners were too provocative in extending possible alliance membership to Ukraine and Georgia. It’s reasonable to ask whether that offer posed an unnecessary threat to Russia. But that debate has been superseded by the more immediate, life-and-death issue of how to respond to Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade his neighbor and, he hopes, destroy the NATO alliance by dividing its members about how to respond.
Putin has failed in all those aims… so far. Zelensky’s impressive speech was designed to ensure their permanent defeat and to explain why that matters so much to America and its European allies. In speaking to Congress, at least, Zelensky came, he saw, he conquered.
