The war on Ukraine has brought up thorny questions for not just the Left but anyone interested in peace and a stable security order. On the one hand, the moral lay of the land here isn’t complicated: a sovereign country is being invaded by a larger neighbor, an invasion that seems to be the singular act of an autocrat. Supporting Ukraine as it defends itself is unambiguously the right thing to do.

The question is how to do it. Socialists, progressives, and even liberals all have a well-founded skepticism toward Western military intervention as a solution to the world’s ills, not to mention a keen awareness of the risks of nuclear escalation. Yet the current situation demands that something be done to both alleviate Ukrainian suffering and put pressure on Moscow to end its war.

It’s with the fraught history of liberal interventionism and blowback in mind that the Left has tried to chart a careful course on Ukraine. With negotiations that could have averted the war rejected by Washington at the start of the year, Ukraine and the world were plunged into a situation that has no satisfying answers. Jacobin has offered up a suite of nonmilitary responses to the ensuing war while warning of the potential long-term destabilizing effects of pouring weapons into the country, not to mention the dire need to prevent the conflict from turning into a nuclear war. In a climate of jingoism, we’ve been heavily criticized for this position.