Where does such a bias come from? First, national security coverage largely relies on official and military sources that, like a man with a hammer who always sees a nail, are likely to favor intervention. When the president withdrew troops from Afghanistan, many of the people criticizing his decision on TV were the very national security professionals who were involved (and thus invested) in perpetuating that war. This reliance on official sources by the U.S. press is a concept academics call “indexing,” and it limits the range of debate. There are alternative models. French news, for example, relies more heavily on civil society voices, so it tends to consist of a wider range of perspectives…

Second, national security reporting is especially dependent on government sources, since it often requires access to active combat zones and sensitive information. Relationships with such sources can make or break a career, and publicly opposing a military position can endanger access.

Third, in an attempt to make complicated geopolitical topics intelligible to a wide audience, journalists and analysts tend to force global events into clear moral frameworks with clear-cut heroes and villains. (Ukraine never seems so democratic as it does when it’s under attack.) These frameworks lead to calls for the United States to do the right thing. This is exemplified in the comments of Republican Sen. (and rumored presidential aspirant) Ben Sasse following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Congress: “The administration talks about this like it’s somehow some nerd lawyer discussion, not like it’s a moral battle between good guys and bad guys, and we need the good guys to win.” Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul put it rather starkly: “If you don’t want to give more weapons to Ukraine to stop Putin from killing babies in Ukraine, what do you recommend instead? Be specific.”