America is celebrating its 250th anniversary of independence and Ukraine recently marked its Constitution Day, 30 years after shedding its Soviet past. America’s and Ukraine’s breaks from foreign occupiers — centuries apart – are reminders of how everyday citizens who embrace their civic duties and fight for freedom can bring about lasting security for themselves and the allies supporting their struggle.
Fast forward to 2026, five years since Ukrainian democracy’s own existential struggle began with Russia’s full-scale invasion. Unimaginable when the war started, Ukraine has become a global innovator in drone technology, withstood the Kremlin’s relentless propaganda campaigns, and endured as a democratic society against Russia’s authoritarian aggression. The country’s civil society proved to be its secret source of strength, helping Ukraine defy the odds.
Ukraine’s wartime resilience reveals a neglected truth of modern statecraft: democratic civil society is not peripheral to national security, but a core strategic asset. Soft power initiatives and support to civil society are not “aid.” They are, in fact, security investments that return dividends to those societies and to U.S. national security and prosperity.
Ukraine’s Key Strength: Civil Society
Ukrainian civic groups raised billions of dollars in private funds to locate, purchase, and deliver everything from armored vests to helicopters. When the government lacked resources, speed, or expertise, civil society stepped up. Like Clara Barton did for troops of the American Revolution, Ukraine’s civic groups — many of them women-led — brought critical equipment and skills directly to the front, introduced new battlefield medical protocols, saved countless lives, and helped sustain troop morale. E-governance experts shifted to the world of drones, new digital public infrastructure, and military software, driving perhaps the largest revolution of the 21st century battlefield. Ukraine’s “whole of nation” approach to defense innovation leveraged the private sector and universities alongside military and government actors.
Too often, national security strategy surrounding alliances and partnerships focuses only on military-to-military cooperation. Ukraine’s story of total democratic resilience is not just a story of tanks and missiles but one of the power of everyday citizens and non-governmental organizations. Entrepreneurial, brave Ukrainian civic actors authored this story. Yet, the support of foreign allies and partners like the United States and Europe gave them scale, funding, and the know-how to serve as the “rapid rear” to Ukraine’s military on the frontlines and as protectors of its democracy.
Democratic Partners are More Stable, Prosperous, and Stalwart
In times of instability and conflict, autocracies like Russia and Iran seek to suppress civic movements and keep citizens in the dark. Democratic societies, on the other hand, seek to unleash people and organizations for positive impact. This makes democratic countries like Ukraine, South Korea, Taiwan, and others dynamic U.S. allies in the face of authoritarian adversaries next door.
A wide-ranging, global evidence review from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy shows that free countries are, in fact, the most stable societies and a true security asset for themselves and their allies. The natural “release valves” of dissent channeled into legitimate forms of redress and free media environments allowing open, even bitter, debate all create the foundations for long-term stability, which is a necessary ingredient for healthy alliance relationships grounded in political support that successfully navigates government changes. Even in the middle of war and martial law, Ukrainian groups have accomplished the daunting tasks of maintaining political pluralism and holding the government accountable to its anti-corruption commitments in U.S. and European military purchases. In recent weeks, Ukrainian civil society groups have galvanized public attention to recent, dramatic personnel changes at the top of Ukraine’s military establishment.
Democracies foster prosperity not just for themselves, but for democracies intertwined with their open markets and trade flows. The Atlantic Council’s long-running Freedom and Prosperity Index shows that democratic economies outpace autocratic ones by an average of 8.8 percent of GDP per capita over two decades. Capitalist allies can invest in and trade with one another in ways that accelerate healthy competition and reap the economic benefits of adhering to the rule of law. Aided by U.S. foreign assistance and pressure to liberalize, South Korea moved from autocracy to democracy and to a top 15 global economy that invested $114 billion in the United States from 2021 to 2024.
Total democratic resilience practiced by allies like these can also serve as powerful deterrents to the strategies of Xi and Putin. Ukrainian civil society’s capacity to reposition towards a wartime footing surely contributes to the fact that Putin has yet to exercise such direct aggression against smaller countries with resilient democracies like Moldova and the Baltic States. In Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, non-governmental “citizen elves” discredit Russian propaganda. Building on public trust engendered by Estonia’s strong democratic culture, municipalities and landowners along that border have joined their national military to construct a new Baltic Defense Line. On the other side of the globe, Taiwan’s community-led defense initiative serves as a deterrent against PRC aggression alongside U.S.-sold submarines and artillery.
Lastly, resilient democratic societies boldly stand up to autocratic aggression from their neighbors, and some have long been leaders and funders of democracy support in their own right. Finland and Sweden, ranked among the most democratic countries in the world, both jumped headfirst into NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and have become models for meeting or exceeding NATO defense spending commitments. Taiwan, aided by longtime U.S. moral, diplomatic, and financial support to its highly innovative civil society, has now become a global leader in countering China’s authoritarian influence, a hub for civic activists in exile, and a modest funder for prodemocracy advocates in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Today’s Challenges Demand U.S. Democracy Support
Sitting at the intersection of civil society support and national security policy, respectively, the two of us have seen first-hand how investing in freedom-loving people and their ideas can create stronger, more secure allies and foster new democratic leaders. The congressionally funded nonprofit National Endowment for Democracy (where one of us, Kevin, works and Andriy served as a fellow in 2026) has partnered with civic and political leaders who have gone on to receive 17 Nobel Peace Prizes. Heads of State such as the U.K.’s Margaret Thatcher and New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern benefited early on from experiencing American democracy and policymaking knowledge on State Department-sponsored visitor exchange programs.
In these instances, pro-democracy civil society ultimately has, in partnership with other democratic allies, become a powerful asset in wartime and peacetime struggles against foreign, authoritarian aggression. American and European investments and diplomatic support have given these civic groups the capacity and scale they needed to adapt in the most difficult of conditions and to counter common adversaries.
Today’s shadow, gray-zone warfare of sharp power and transnational repression practiced by Russia, China, Iran, and others makes strengthening the civic sector imperative. Investments in U.S. alliances and partnerships can’t just be supported by weapons; they need American funding, moral leadership, and diplomacy directed towards scaling and encouraging whole-of-society approaches for these security partners under threat.
250 years ago, foreign allies like France supported the collective struggle of Americans for their freedom, both on and off the battlefield. Now, Ukraine and other democratic societies fending off modern-day authoritarian aggression deserve American support, too.
