Nikolas Gvosdev hopes that the U.S. hasn’t been leading on Ukraine’s government with misleading statements of support:

My concern is that while many members of the Ukrainian government may have an excellent grasp of the English language, they may not be able to translate accurately American political speech. “You will not walk this road alone” is not code for a security guarantee, the provision of effective military assistance or even a guarantee that Russia’s ties to Western economies will be severed, and in fact may not mean much more than we “will feel your pain.” An effective translation matrix would be to add to any open-ended, broad, or vague public commitment of support the proviso “as long as it doesn’t cost much” or to indicate that “support” may mean a rousing speech in the United Nations but not the imminent arrival of the 101st Airborne in Kyiv. The translation matrix should also contain reference to the peculiar American system of separation of powers—that members of Congress can make promises to their heart’s content that are absolutely not binding to the United States one whit—a mistake Georgians learned to their regret.

Would-be U.S. client always seem to expect more than they are ever likely to receive. This is all the more odd when we consider the history of how the U.S. has made use of proxies and clients over the years only to leave them to their own devices once they were no longer useful. There are several reasons for this repeated misunderstanding. One is the constant misapplication of the name “ally” to almost any country that has good relations with the U.S. This allows the client government to maintain the fiction that it is an ally of the United States when it is not, and it allows Washington to pretend that it is providing a level of support to another country that it isn’t willing to back up in a crisis. We tend to call any state that lends us any aid an ally, no matter how insignificant that aid might be, and we allow the would-be client to imagine that its efforts on our behalf are helping it to acquire meaningful protection for the future. This is at best an unintentional misunderstanding and at worst a deliberate con to gain short-term help. Either way, it always leaves the would-be client in an awkward position. The client takes for granted that the promises made to it meant something real when in fact they were pledges that were never meant to be put to the test. It would be better for all concerned if the U.S. stopped making empty promises to weak states that it doesn’t really intend to honor. This would at least give these states the opportunities to make decisions with a clear understanding of what support they could realistically expect from Washington rather than being left in the lurch.