When the now-martyred Alexei Navalny was a sarcastically witty student in this first author’s 2010 Yale class, he asked how my lessons on charismatic leadership apply to challenging collective cowardice. Winston Churchill’s 1938 book, While England Slept, presciently sounded the alarm on how Nazi Germany built up its war machine under the nose of England’s failed appeasement policies.
Decades later, Churchill’s clarion call is sadly relevant once more. But this time it is America who is asleep as Russian President Vladimir Putin seizes the moment. Last week, and just in time for the two-year anniversary of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Navalny died while in a prison colony above the Arctic circle. (“We don't know exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that the death of Nalvany was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did,” President Joe Biden said at the White House.) Russian forces then captured the Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, Putin’s most significant territorial gains since the earliest days of the war.
Putin is going on the offensive—and how could he not think that the U.S. is asleep. The GOP-led House of Representatives has stalled $60 billion of military aid for Ukraine for months; Ukraine is running perilously short on ammunition, outgunned by Russia and at danger of........