We have been engaged in nation-building most of my life, trying to bring democracy to failing nations whose people had little understanding of liberty, much less any interest in becoming a “free people.” But the plight of the Ukrainians seems eerily familiar to our unique history, a haunting similarity to our beginnings.In 2014, tens of thousands of Ukrainians stood in Kyiv’s Independence Square in defiance of the long arm of Moscow’s authoritarianism. Determined to throw off the shackles of communism, they donned their new coat of democratic nationalism and tied their fate and fortunes to the trappings of free people. Grasping liberty by the hand, they purged the Russian-installed puppet master and began their journey, gathering inalienable rights for all Ukrainians along the
