On March 11, Emma Ashford featured in a debate organized by IQ2 with former Ambassador Kurt Volker on the conflict in Ukraine, which was distributed to all NPR affiliates.

“Ukraine is undoubtedly an important country, a wonderful country full of wonderful people, but it is not strategically important to the United States or to our NATO allies in the way that other countries in Europe have been over the years. So Ukraine is not as important, for example, as Germany was during the Cold War. Our commitment to Ukraine…says nothing about our commitment to our NATO allies. It’s important to remember Ukraine was not in NATO prior to this crisis, and that was for a number of reasons,” Ashford argued.

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