Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host Sarah Izger joined by Steve Hayes, David French

and Jonah Goldberg. The first votes of 2022 were cast this week in Texas right alongside the

first state of the union of the Biden presidency as things continue to escalate in Ukraine will get to it all.

Let's dive right in Steve. Let's start with Ukraine. What's the latest and will move to the politics from there?

Well, the latest is that the Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities continues a pace. They have made some progress in the south.

They seem to have taken a town in the south. They're having continuing to have some difficulties moving forward in the north and still have not yet taken the Kiev.

But they're making progress. I think basically the military progress continues. It's slower than people probably would have predicted.

And the devastation is absolutely jaw-dropping. If you spent any time on social media or if you've watched any of the network newscasts or spent any time on cable,

the scenes that we're seeing play out on the ground in Ukraine are heartbreaking, tragic, infuriating, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.

So Steve, you know, for Americans watching, there's a lot of questions on one. What would get us involved?

So for instance, a lot of questions on why we haven't done a no-fly zone, which to me, I think it's important for Americans to understand,

there's no point in doing a no-fly zone. You might as well just declare war on Russia and go in.

If you do the no-fly zone, you will have to shoot down a Russian plane and then we're at war.

So like, it's not realistic to say there's a no-fly zone. The only reason to do that is because we want an excuse to go to war with Russia.

And so then it's like, well, what will it take for us to get truly involved on the ground in the air in Ukraine?

What if they killed Zelensky? What if they did set fire to a nuclear plant? What if Putin made more specific threats to launch nuclear weapons?

At what point is American involvement going to escalate?

It's a great question. I would say for the descriptive reality, the only prospect of American involvement escalating would be if the Europeans get more involved first.

I think we've seen a pattern here from the Biden administration. President Biden's made very clear that he doesn't want us to be involved militarily.

He was reluctant to send the arms that had been requested earlier. He's been behind the Europeans on sanctions and other non-military measures.

And if you look at sort of the way that he's talked about the use of force, if you look at the arguments he made in the Obama administration, remember Joe Biden was one of the holdouts on

launching the attack that took out Osama bin Laden. He's shown himself very reluctant to use military force.

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