Twenty years ago, one of the defining distinctions between Left and Right was whether one believed in appeasing or confronting the evils beyond America’s shores. Tragically, the dominant rhetoric surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made clear that this is no longer the case.

Back then, galvanized by the September 11 attacks and George W. Bush’s strong initial response against al-Qaeda, conservatives were overwhelmingly unified, with the only real exception being the isolationist fringe of libertarians and paleoconservatives behind doddering demagogue Ron Paul. But that began to change when, after swiftly toppling Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration refused to commit enough troops to stabilize the occupation of Iraq until after years of unnecessary chaos and bloodshed cost Republicans control of Congress in 2006.

Because the backlash was largely (and understandably) an emotional response rather than a sober reevaluation of specific bad assumptions (like that modern democracy could be easily grafted onto theocratic Islamic cultures) and strategic decisions (such as that a light force would be sufficient to pacify the post-Saddam insurgency), a segment of the Right didn’t just turn against a disastrous president’s costly misjudgments; it ran to the opposite extreme of what Bush seemed to represent, and to varying degrees embraced isolationists’ core narratives that America taking any interest in foreign conflicts was the root of all evil, and that trading a global footprint for closed borders would suffice to protect us from threats beyond our shores.

While isolationism is not yet the majority among elected Republicans, its uneasy standing is actually taken in some quarters as vindication of populists’ narrative that they represent the “true conservatism” of Republican base voters against an out-of-touch party establishment dominated by sinister “neocons” (a term tossed around in much the same way as leftists use “fascist,” unmoored from its actual historical or ideological meanings). While isolationists’ application of that disconnect to foreign policy is an oversimplification, it must be admitted that the disconnect itself is very real, driven by the lack of any real reckoning for the actual wrongs Bush committed, as well as GOP leaders’ obstinate disregard for the base’s concerns and priorities on unrelated issues such as immigration.

And then, of course, there’s the Donald Trump factor. For the most part he didn’t govern as one, but the 45th president’s rhetorical pandering to isolationists (from peddling the debunked meme that Bush lied about Iraq’s efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction, to accusing his own generals of wanting “endless wars”) helped solidify their views’ association with so-called America-first populism, thereby turning what was once a fringe into a faction with enough sway that even Ron DeSantis’s first instinct was to tell them what they wanted to hear about Ukraine rather than reiterate the substantive understanding of the conflict he expertly articulated while in Congress.

Add it all up, and we have a political climate in which part of the Right is afflicted with a zeal to avoid conflict so overpowering that it will latch onto any crackpot, contortion, or conspiracy that affirms their desire—even when, as with Ukraine, nobody of consequence is actually advocating U.S. military action, or when there’s a case to be made that aiding others who are fighting now might prevent our having to personally fight in the future.

Joe Biden—the same president whose Russian “reset” emboldened Vladimir Putin to act, who only started talking tough after his natural impulse to downplay a potential “minor incursion” caused consternation among European leaders, who has urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to signal willingness to negotiate with the invaders, and who has prolonged the war by excessive fear of escalation, not zeal for it—is preposterously accused of trying to instigate World War III for convoluted reasons vaguely tied to a New World Order. At the same time, the murderous, oppressive KGB tyrant with dreams of restoring the Soviet empire is, even more grotesquely, recast as some sort of Christian bulwark against wokeness and globalism.

All of this is egged on by voices like former primetime sensation-turned-Twitter video gadfly Tucker Carlson and his recurring “expert” guests like Army Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.), whose cartoonishly-sycophantic predictions of easy Russian victory and insistence that the West is “demoniz[ing]” Putin invite natural speculation as to what ulterior motives might really be driving him.

Drumbeats have consequences. In January 2023, Pew Research found that the share of Republicans who think America is doing “too much” for Ukraine grew to 40%, from just 9% in March 2022. That only rose slightly by mid-June (44%), but Gallup found that number had reached 50% by the end of the month, and the most recent polls, CNN/SRSS in August and CBS/YouGov in September, find 71% opposed to additional and 56% believing the administration should be “doing less.” Whatever else the GOP may be, it’s hard to say with a straight face that it’s Ronald Reagan’s party anymore.

Despite what isolationists think they know about the conflict, for less than two percent of 2022’s federal spending and no risk to American troops, aiding Ukraine has substantially depleted and embarrassed the military of a major enemy, one who has no intention of stopping with Ukraine, and if victorious could hold hostage the world’s already-strained semiconductor supply (Ukraine exports 90% of America’s neon gas, which is vital to making them), among other resources. And anyone who doesn’t think North Korea, Iran, and China (which, contrary to what you might have heard on the internet, was allied with Russia since the start of the invasion) will be taking notes on how much America lets Putin get away with is deluding himself.

Finally, while it is admittedly remote, there is a nonzero chance that forcing Putin to back down would so weaken him at home that his war-weary comrades feel emboldened to oust him themselves. But whether overthrown or simply contained, either outcome of successfully helping defend Ukraine would demonstrate that the chief lesson isolationists took away from Iraq—we either roll over for evil or send young Americans to kill and die indefinitely—was always a false choice.