“The New Imperialists” Map Collection
This is the future home of the map collection of the forthcoming book The New Imperialists.
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Publications
AFPC June 2025 Ukraine Delegation Trip Report
From June 27 - July 5, 2025, the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) supported a high-level delegation to Ukraine. The bipartisan group—including senior experts from the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—traveled to Kyiv, Dnipro, Odesa, and Warsaw. Herman Pirchner, AFPC President, led the 9-person delegation. The delegation, organized and staffed by AFPC Vice President for External Relations Annie Swingen, met with Ukrainian government officials, military leaders, civil society representatives, and international partners (a full list of delegation meetings is available at the end of this report). The discussions were wide ranging, but mostly focused on the current state of Ukraine’s war effort, the country’s evolving national identity, and the outlook for continued Western support. What follows is a summary of the delegation’s key findings.
Why Ukraine Keeps Fighting
As the war in Ukraine heads toward its third anniversary, the question on the minds of many Americans is, why do the Ukrainians keep fighting? The conventional wisdom argues that after nearly three years of killing, the war must end — something possible only through the surrender of Ukrainian land occupied by Russian forces. Yet polls consistently find that nearly 70% of Ukrainians oppose ceding land for peace. Why? Because giving up land means surrendering to life under Russian occupation. Ukrainians know from history what that means; to prevent it, they are willing to endure the deaths of thousands more of their soldiers and the destruction of many of their cities and towns.
Why Russia’s elites have tolerated Putin’s intolerable behavior
Holding back support of aid to Ukraine for fear of worse to come from Russia is a surefire way to ensure that Moscow presses its advantage and engages in still more rogue behavior.
Trip Report: Ukraine (Poland and Moldova) January 20-29, 2023
AFPC has visited Ukraine routinely over the years, but none of our trips there (or elsewhere, for that matter) has been anything like our wartime visit to the capital Kyiv and port city Odesa January 20- 29.