As President Biden visited Poland after his surprise Monday trip to Kyiv, two clashing views of the war in Ukraine have solidified among Republican presidential hopefuls.
According to the first school of thought, represented by the likes of Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (who has not announced a run thus far), the administration is too timid and slow in its support for Ukraine. As Haley put it, we do not need to put troops on the ground or write the Ukrainians blank checks. “They have the passion to fight for their own freedom,” she argues. “Give them the ammunition to do it.”
On his appearance on “Fox and Friends” during Biden’s Ukraine visit, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis struck a markedly different tone. While alluding briefly to the president’s weakness on the global stage, DeSantis pivoted quickly to lambast Biden for caring about “borders halfway around the world” — while neglecting “our own border here at home,” the fentanyl crisis and a host of other domestic troubles.
Those are valid concerns. Yet America is the birthplace of a can-do attitude in matters big and small. The United States has become the world’s only superpower by demonstrating it can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can deal with our domestic challenges while also playing a mature, responsible role internationally.
Make no mistake. There would be no greater gift to the Biden re-election campaign than a Republican Party and a presidential challenger who would allow themselves to be labeled opponents of US aid to Ukraine or as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots.
Ill-advised remarks such as DeSantis’ — alongside posturing from some House members including Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who cosponsored a resolution this month calling on the government to stop all military and financial assistance to Ukraine and “urge all combatants to reach a peace agreement” — play into the Democrats’ hands.
Already, the presence of a small but vocal anti-Ukraine caucus among House Republicans provides a welcome cover to the administration. Instead of having to confront serious questions about its strategy and track record during (and before) the conflict, it is able to get away with a slow-rolling of aid to Ukraine and equivocation, blaming the “bad cops” on the GOP fringe.
What is more, the sentiments DeSantis expressed are political malpractice, pure and simple, akin to the Democrats’ embrace of patently insane progressive causes out of touch with America’s public opinion, such as “defunding the police.”
True, there is a sizable isolationist wing in the Republican base. Around 40% of Republicans believe the United States is helping too much — roughly the same proportion as those who believe it is not doing enough or that the level of assistance is just right.
But catering to that wing, disproportionately represented among the very online and politically active “trads” and “natcons,” is a guaranteed political loser. Only 26% of Americans at large, after all, believe there is “too much” help. Sen. J.D. Vance’s tight race in Ohio, following Rob Portman’s retirement, should be a warning. His predecessor, a stalwart supporter of Ukraine (and now a distinguished AEI fellow) won his 2016 election by 21 points.
By expressing his indifference about the war, Vance misread the room terribly — or rather his state, featuring massive Ukrainian-American and other Eastern European communities.
Sometimes, conventional wisdom becomes conventional because it is, well, wise. That is the case of the traditional Republican outlook exemplified by a vast majority of the Senate GOP, most prominently by its leader Mitch McConnell: The United States must help Ukraine not out of charity or idealism but due to “cold, hard, practical American interests.”
He noted, correctly, that China is watching intently how the West plays this. The Chinese government is very interested in how united our stand is and what deals we are willing to accept.
It is about preventing “even further economic chaos that would roil key American trading partners and hurt American workers and families directly,” McConnell said in a speech following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s December visit to Washington; about wearing “down the arsenal that is available to Putin” and about sending “a stark warning to other would-be aggressors like the People’s Republic of China.”
For any American who listened dispassionately to Putin’s unhinged “state of the nation” speech Tuesday, in which he blamed his war of aggression on the “Kyiv regime” and NATO and regurgitated his vague nuclear threats, it should be easy to conclude that Russia’s sound defeat in Ukraine is firmly in our interest — and he or she would be right.
If, through an outburst of contrarianism, the GOP decides to stand in the way of that defeat, it will fully deserve the electoral consequences.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Twitter: @DaliborRohac