Hawley should promote more than Churchill’s museum — his ideas matter, too | Opinion
Perhaps because he is a man of rather thin legislative accomplishment, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley seems a little too proud of the fact that the Senate unanimously passed his bill making The Winston Churchill Museum in Fulton a national landmark. The fact that it raises the stature of the little institution is badly needed at a time when Hawley, Donald Trump and the rest of them in Washington have forgotten what Churchill said in the little Missouri town with President Harry Truman by his side.
To give Hawley staffers their due, they did manage to get the most famous line in the speech right in their press release. “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” Churchill said in a rhetorical flourish that would describe the next half-century of history.
But while that sentence merely describes history, the rest of the speech is filled with advice on dealing with the nation that pulled that steel drapery across the line between Western Europe and the rest — Russia. It is advice that Hawley should urgently bring to the attention of the Trump administration, which badly needs to hear it.
“A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future or what are the limits if any to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies,” Churchill said.
Indeed, we still don’t know what Vladimir Putin’s end game is in his war against a peaceful Europe, but we know it extends far beyond Kyiv to Warsaw and the Baltic Stettin that Churchill mentioned, Bucharest and Tbilisi. And while communist proselytizing has largely died off, it has been replaced with an equally destructive wave of disinformation with the same end, disunity in the Western alliance.
“From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness. For that reason the old doctrine of a balance of power is unsound,” Churchill told the crowd.
These words are still true. As Trump’s America has withdrawn troops from Romania, vacillated on the Baltic states and sought a peace that looks more like surrender in Ukraine, Putin can’t help but see weakness and a lack of resolve. Then as now, they invite Russian expansionism.
If the Western Democracies “become divided or falter in their duty … catastrophe may overwhelm us all,” Churchill warned in a plea for the United States to remain at the side of Europeans who faced a threat that had started World War II as Nazi Germany’s violent coconspirator in shattering the peace.
The historical moment in which Churchill spoke was much the same as today. “The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. With primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. … Opportunity is here now, clear and shining ” for the United States to stand up and defend democracy and freedom, Churchill argued.
Perhaps Trump won’t listen to Churchill’s voice of reason, or the tutelage of history, but perhaps Hawley can appeal to Trump’s vain concern for his place in history: “To reject (this opportunity) or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the after-time.”
If Ukraine and more of Europe fall to Putin’s Russia and a new Iron Curtain descends on the continent, Trump will be remembered as the weak and selfish man I fear he is.
If Hawley truly values the history made in Fulton, Missouri, decades ago, he will give voice to the whole message from Churchill and help lead our nation to “prove ourselves equal to this severe requirement,” that we now must face a second time.
David Mastio is a national columnist for The Kansas City Star and McClatchy.
This story was originally published January 2, 2026 at 5:09 AM.
