The war in Ukraine has garnered extraordinary emotions among many veterans of the U.S. intelligence and military communities.
It is the classic David vs. Goliath, good vs. evil, struggle absent from our two decades of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. The absence of moral clarity in those conflicts has troubled and haunted many of us who served in them — many of us who saw our friends maimed or killed and who still have trouble processing the worth of the sacrifices made. I have struggled more with my service in Iraq, a war that rested on false premises that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, than with my service in Afghanistan, where I remain intensely proud of the work we did to degrade al Qaeda but where we lost our way and likely stayed too long. Make no mistake, the last two decades have been messy. Many seen and unseen scars remain for those who served.
Yet, in large part, this is why you now see so many U.S. military veterans wanting to travel to Ukraine to fight. For full disclosure, I don’t believe it is wise to make that journey outside of government authority. The risk is that Americans’ capture by Russian forces would put an extra burden on other U.S. personnel who would have to focus on recovering those captured and relegating the priority mission of helping Ukraine. But I do understand the deep emotional attachment the Ukraine fight offers.
It resonates especially strong for those former members of the intelligence and special operations communities who have spent years helping to train, nurture, and fight with indigenous forces or newly established militaries. We live alongside our foreign partners, in small numbers, reliant on them for protection and in some cases for food and shelter. In turn, we bring unique capabilities to our common fight. The key point is that when it comes to practicing unconventional warfare around the world, it so often comes down to personal relationships with our foreign friends: Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, Somalis, the list goes on. But we did not “win” in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or Somalia. Is Ukraine going to be different?
Many of us think so.
This is a conflict in which we can help our friends prevail. There is a great sense of joined moral clarity and military purpose. Ukrainians fight fiercely, defending their homeland. They are subject to horrific atrocities but never take a knee. Their leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, is now a Winston Churchill-like figure, inspiring from the front. His phrase “I don’t need a ride, I need ammo” was brilliant on so many levels. It inspired Ukraine. It inspired the world. It inspired Americans. It made us think of Ukraine as Texas and Mariupol as the Alamo. I speak with many of my retired colleagues on a daily basis. As one of my closest friends told me recently, “We are all Ukrainians now.” And we want to be with them.
I wish I was a young CIA case officer, getting ready to head to Europe. As a former CIA operations chief overseeing all of Europe and Eurasia, I used to tell our new officers that they had a chance to both witness and sometimes shape history. I imagine our officers today have this precise feeling of responsibility and opportunity. But imagine you have spent the past few years advising counterparts in the Ukrainian national security establishment. Your friends are now in the fight for their and their family members’ lives. You want to be with them.
We believe in their righteous cause.
We know that our Ukrainian brothers and sisters need us now more than ever. It feels immoral not to be on the front lines with them. So we hope that policymakers take more action in Ukraine’s support. Let us send more weapons, provide more training, provide tactical intelligence. Basically, let’s do what we have been doing but increase the scale of that activity exponentially. We must not become paralyzed by the fear of escalation as the civilian carnage grows. Most of all, we want to be sent back inside Ukraine. After all that we have been through ever the last 20 years, let us finally win a clearly righteous fight for freedom.
Marc Polymeropoulos is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. A former CIA senior operations officer, he retired in 2019 after a 26-year career serving in the Near East and South Asia. His book Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA was published in June 2021 by Harper Collins.
