New Phase in the US Politics of the Russia-Ukraine War
Josh Kovensky takes a look at the Republican Party’s current dovishness - or at least lack of enthusiasm for aid to Ukraine:
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, something surprising happened: Donald Trump went mostly silent on the topic.
At the same time, the American public and political class were united in support of Ukraine’s fight. Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, but substantial aid packages passed with large bipartisan majorities. Some Republicans sought to criticize the Biden administration for not acting swiftly enough to aid Ukraine.
Now, that’s all gone away. Republican senators are demanding that a supplemental aid package Ukraine desperately needs to continue its defense be conditioned on finding a way through one of the most intractable issues in American politics: the border. MAGA House members portray Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in Washington this week to make the case for more assistance, as a warmongering beggar. The arch-conservative and very influential Heritage Foundation, a onetime bastion of hawkish GOP interventionism, is reportedly holding a meeting this week with allies of Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán’s government to discuss opposition to further aid to Ukraine. Heritage itself signed a cooperation agreement this year with the Danube Institute. The head of the Budapest-based, Orbán-aligned organization described the agreement as showing that “Hungary has allies in the United States.”1 [my emphasis]
I’ve tried to be restrained in my use of terms like “Putinist” for people taking what look like pro-Russian foreign policy positions.
Because foreign policy is about picking which countries to side with on what issues and how much. Advocates of a “realist” foreign-policy view like John Mearsheimer have been arguing for years now that as China becomes a stronger power that the US has power-balancing incentive to improve relations with Russia.
Also the entire world has a vital interest and has had since 1945 in developing enforceable international agreements to minimize the number of nuclear weapons and reasons for countries to use them. Plus, there’s the whole we’re-burning-up-the-planet-with-our-fossil-fuels problem, which also requires international cooperation to fix. So, yeah, the US has definite common interests with Russia.
But then there’s the Nationalist International featuring rightwing goons from Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon to Viktor Orbán and Jair Bolsonaro who pretty much take Putin’s corrupt autocratic oligarchical form of government as some kind of model, along with various dreadful ideologues past and present popular among Putin’s supporters, as models to follow. So, yeah, a lot of these creeps are political Putinists and some of them are willing to cheer for Russia’s foreign policy, too, just because Putin is their idol of the moment.
And the Republicans’ current attitude on aid to Ukraine looks an awful lot like knee-jerk deference to Russia out of some combination of laziness, a weird admiration of Putin, and mindless obstructionism. To all of which my basic reaction is:
What this definitely is not is a new pro-peace, anti-militarism turn from the Republican Party. Like the original America Firsters, the Trumpista Republicans are following an extreme nationalist viewpoint that operates on unrestrained enthusiasm for the famed military-industrial complex. Trump certainly didn’t focus on slashing military budgets when he was President. It was even under Trump that the US started providing weapons to Ukraine. He only threatened to withhold it because he wanted to blackmail Ukraine into making up dirt about Hunter Biden, the topic of Trump’s first impeachment.
Ukraine is in a terrible situation. The Russian invasion of 2022 was straightforward aggression against a sovereign state. Russia had practical motivations for it. But it was a clear violation of international law. And the fact that they had already invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014 and annexed additional portions of Ukraine was already an effective blocking motive preventing Ukraine from formally joining NATO.
So there were both formal and practical reasons for supporting Ukraine. If we compare supporting Ukraine to supporting Bibi Netanyahu’s war against the civilians of Gaza, the Ukraine support is a model of international virtue. Ukraine’s appeals to the world for support are reminiscent of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s appeal to the League of Nations for support against Mussolini Italy’s invasion of his country, which was then also known as Abyssinia, in the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-36.
That war was a seriously nasty affair, a brutal colonial war featuring gruesome war crimes by Mussolini’s forces.2 The League of Nations condemned Italy’s aggression and imposed economic sanctions. But neither Britain nor France nor the Soviet Union saw themselves in a position to provide much military support, much less to directly intervene on Ethiopia’s side. And there was reason to believe that it was an aggression which would likely be followed by others:
A powerful indictment of Italy’s “indefensible aggression,” meanwhile, came from W. E. B. Du Bois. Italy, he wrote, had proceeded with its invasion “in spite of the League of Nations, in spite of her treaty of arbitration, in spite of efforts at conciliation and adjustment”—and its actions perpetuated a colonial system of “economic exploitation based on the excuse of race prejudice.”
… As Du Bois put it, “if Italy takes her pound of flesh by force, does anyone suppose that Germany will not make a similar attempt?”3
The NATO countries including the US today also have to weigh various risks and opportunities and set priorities for Ukraine aid. Ukraine and its supporters understandably invoke a “domino theory” of how letting Russia get away with this aggression will encourage further aggression. But despite American policymakers’ addiction to the Munich Analogy, it’s not obvious that even taking over all of Ukraine would mean that Russia would then start moving into Poland or Finland or the Baltic states. And despite the rhetoric, Putin’s government is not stating that it intends to take over all of Ukraine.
In fact, having to deal with assimilating a war-raved Ukraine and the years of partisan warfare that would come with it would not be an entirely appealing prospect for Russia. And, unlike the case Ukraine, Poland and Finland and the Baltic nations are actual members of NATO. As long as that’s the case, Russia knows that invading actual NATO members would mean beginning a direct war with American and other NATO nations.
It worth recalling that the Biden Administration has stated its aims in supporting Ukraine as defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and weakening Russia’s military. But at this point, there seems to be a broad consensus that even with considerable external support, Ukraine has little chance in the immediate future of retaking large parts of the occupied territory. But they have strong patriotic incentive to continue the conflict. And Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy will have to make a judgment how willing his voters are to accept an agreement that freezes the conflict.
The US has to calculate whether the benefit it sees in weakening Russia with continued conflict against the risks involved, including a possibility of escalation of the war, at a time when it is facing a nasty situation in the Middle East that could very well become a wider war in an area where its interests are more immediately affected than in Ukraine, and when its formal strategic goal is to focus its attention and resources on containing China.
And however little moral considerations may count in the calculations, there really is a question for both the US and Ukrainian governments whether continuing the war at this moment is worth the cost in lives and suffering it will take from the Ukrainian people. And the choice obviously doesn’t rest entirely with the US and the Ukrainians.
I don’t see much reason to believe that the Trumpified Republican Party is giving serious attention to these kinds of real-world considerations in their politicking right now around Ukrainian aid. They are focusing on making the government look dysfunctional and generally jacking around the Democratic Administration.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has new article in Foreign Affairs, an article which of course we have to assume is essentially an official Ukrainian position paper. It’s written in a “plucky” tone, i.e., we’re-gonna-whip-them-Rooskies-for-sure. But its core is a pleas for unlimited military assistance and diplomatic backing.
Some skeptics counter that although such goals are just, they simply aren’t achievable. In fact, our objectives will remain militarily feasible as long as three factors are in place: adequate military aid, including jets, drones, air defense, artillery rounds, and long-range capabilities that allow us to strike deep behind enemy lines; the rapid development of industrial capacity in the United States and Europe as well as in Ukraine, both to cover Ukraine’s military needs and to replenish U.S. and European defense stocks; and a principled and realistic approach to the prospect of negotiations with Russia. …4
And of course there’s the domino theory:
Authoritarian leaders and aggressors around the world are keeping a close watch on the results of Putin’s military adventure. His success, even if partial, would inspire them to follow in his footsteps. His defeat will make clear the folly of trying. …
If the frontline were frozen now, there is no reason to believe that Russia would not use such a respite to plan a more brutal attack in a few years, potentially involving not only Ukraine but also neighboring countries and even NATO members. Those who believe Russia will not attack a NATO country after celebrating success in Ukraine should recall how unimaginable a large-scale invasion of Ukraine seemed just two years ago. [my emphasis]
Since Russia had a significant partial success almost a decade ago in seizing Crimea, it’s worth asking which military events have happened based on this assumption. And Azerbaijan-Armenia, maybe, although that conflict goes much further back than 2014. Venezuela’s weird threat to seize part of neighboring Guyana? Possibly, though like pretty much everything about Venezuelan policy, that’s largely driven by oil considerations.
Obviously, the Russo-Ukraine War is being followed by countries around the world. But a serious estimation that, for instance, Russia might have immediate ambitions to attack a NATO country would argue that NATO should concentrate even harder on preparing for the possibility of a direct Russian invasion than on more aggressively aiding Ukraine.
One of the follies in the actual process of expanding NATO is that the US and its allies treated it in practice a lot like a “freebie,” as though they would never have to seriously worry about Russia actually trying to seize a NATO ally. If NATO strategists seriously think Russia wants to soon seize territory of an alliance member, that might be reason to give Ukraine just enough support to keep Russia fighting in Ukraine for as long as possible while NATO addresses the new threat environment. We’ve heard so many domino theories over so many decades that it’s easy to forget that it might not always produce what those using them want to happen.
Bottom line: No amount of pluck and optimistic rhetoric on Ukraine’s part is going to change much about the driving factors in this war and the risks and possibilities of the available options.
Kovensky, Josh (2023): How The GOP Finally Went All In Against Ukraine. TPM 12/13/2023. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-the-gop-finally-went-all-in-against-ukraine> (Accessed: 2023-13-12).
Asserate, Asfa-Wossen & Matioli, Aram, eds. (2006): Der erste faschistische Vernichtungskrieg: Die italienische Aggression gegen Äthiopien 1935-1941. Köln: SH-Verlag.
Fascist Italy Invades Ethiopia: The Conquest That Preceded World War II. Foreign Affairs 08/21/2022. <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/lists/fascist-italy-invades-ethiopia> (Accessed: 2023-13-12).
Kuleba, Dmytro (2023): There Is a Path to Victory in Ukraine:The Delusions and Dangers of Defeatist Voices in the West. Foreign Affairs 12/14/2023. <https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/path-victory-ukraine-dmytro-kuleba> (Accessed 12/14/2023).