The idea of comparing Volodymyr Zelensky to Jefferson Davis is a provocative one. Try to imagine what either man would make of the parallel, if it could be explained to him, and it’s hard to think of either one finding it flattering. Certainly Zelensky’s liberal American cheerleaders would be scandalized to hear their hero compared to a Confederate. 

Yet the comparison is apt. There was only ever one way the South could have won the war over secession, and that was if it were a short one. Once the conflict settled into a yearslong grind, the structural advantages of the North were bound to be decisive. It had more men, more money, and more industry.

Ukraine is in the same position relative to Russia. It is smaller, poorer, and less populous. A run of battlefield victories in recent months has filled the Ukrainians and their American advocates with the same euphoria that infected the Confederates after Chancellorsville, an illusory sense that they could win this thing. As Ted Galen Carpenter explains in his cover feature, this optimism is a dangerous mirage.

Speaking of the dangers of prolonging the conflict with Russia, Peter Tonguette has a reflection in this issue on The Day After, the nuclear apocalypse drama that is said to have nudged President Ronald Reagan toward arms control. That may or may not be true, but the movie itself has not held up well, for reasons that Peter explains.

TAC endeavors to host the most important and vital conversations on the right. One pressing debate within conservatism at the moment is over the issue of trade and industrial policy. To what extent should government take sides in what kind of economy it wants the country to have? Samuel Gregg of the American Institute for Economic Research says hardly at all. You can read his case in our features section and at greater length in his fine new book, The Next American Economy.

Julius Krein of the journal American Affairs offers a spirited dissent in our Arts & Letters section. Also in that section are Dan Hitchens on the caricaturist James Gillray, John Wilson on the novelist Charles Portis, and Nic Rowan on memoirist Mark Judge.

Sumantra Maitra has rapidly become one of the most prominent voices in Washington for foreign policy restraint. His academically informed analysis presents the most sophisticated possible case for tethering our foreign policy to America’s vital interests. We are delighted to announce that he has joined us here at TAC as a senior editor. His inaugural piece for the print magazine in this issue, a reflection on the vain hope that India would be America’s sidekick in a global war between nice democracies and naughty autocracies as opposed to an independent state with strategic interests of its own. Welcome, Dr. Maitra.