THE US Senate overwhelmingly approved last Thursday (May 19) a US$40 billion emergency military and humanitarian aid package to Ukraine, bringing to around US$54 billion the total American spending on the war. That amounted to the largest foreign aid package passed by Congress since the end of the Cold War.
The vote reflected a remarkable bi-partisan support on Capitol Hill for what is expected to be a long and costly struggle against the Russian invasion. It took place following a trip that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican Senators made to Ukraine to express support for its beleaguered president Volodymyr Zelensky, with only a small group of lawmakers opposing the American assistance to Ukraine’s war effort.
But that the 11 Senators who voted against the aid package were all Republicans, and that 57 Republicans were the only members who opposed the spending package when it came up for voting in the House of Representatives two weeks ago, was seen by some as a reflection of rising isolationist tendencies in the GOP, the concern being that that could gain momentum as the war goes on.
Most of the Republicans and conservatives who oppose aiding Ukraine and for that matter, any direct or even indirect involvement in the Russo-Ukraine war, are allied with the ultra-right “America First” wing of the GOP that is spearheaded by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Some of these opponents of US involvement in the Ukraine conflict have also in the past praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and his arch-conservative agenda, and in particular, his opposition to gay rights, immigration, and abortions.
But it would be a mistake to caricature any American critic of US policies in Ukraine as an “isolationist” and a fan of President Putin.
In fact, some leading Trumpists have called for an assertive US policy toward China including providing direct support for Taiwan if it got invaded by China. They have also backed former President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran even if that could lead to a US military confrontation with the Islamic republic. Those positions cannot be associated with isolationism.
Moreover, while President Trump himself has been tagged as an isolationist and did engage in a stirring bromance with President Putin, Trump supported large increases in the American defence budget and withdrew the US from critical nuclear agreements with Moscow. He actually ended up providing more military assistance to Ukraine than did his Democratic predecessor in office.
In fact, contrary to the lazy intellectual exercise favoured by pundits, the debate on American foreign policy has never been between isolationists and internationalists.
Some opponents of US military intervention in the war in Europe in the late 1930s -- members of an organisation named, well, America First -- supported an activist US military approach vis-à-vis Japan in Asia.
Republicans under the leadership of Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge voted against US membership in the League of Nations after World War I not because they were against American engagement in the world. They argued that the League would commit the US to an expensive organisation that would reduce the American ability to defend its own national interests.
Similarly, a large group of Republicans, led by Ohio Senator Robert Taft who had run unsuccessfully for the presidential nomination of his party, didn’t oppose America’s post-World War II involvement in world affairs. But they rejected the pursuit of US foreign policy through such international organizations as the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that could intrude on independent US foreign policy decision-making.
Yet many of these same Republicans were also resolute anti-Communists who were willing to risk military confrontation with Communist China, including the possible use of atomic weapons during the Korean War.
And the many Americans who ended up turning against the US military interventions in Vietnam and Iraq did so because they were isolationists. They concluded that those policies were too costly and ran counter to US national interests.
From that perspective, the evolving debate on the role of the US in the Ukraine war, or for that matter over America’s post-Cold War foreign policy, reflects disagreements on the definition of US national interests and on the means to achieve them.
Hence the majority of Democratic and Republican leaders as well as most liberal and conservative intellectuals believe that, like during the Cold War, protecting US national interests requires helping maintain the balance of power in Europe and Asia. That should include employing American military power and with the support of US-led security alliances and in the name of universal values like peace and freedom, to contain any major aggressor who is trying to challenge the geo-strategic status quo in those parts of the world.
Some of those on the political right opposing that kind strategy describe themselves as “nationalists” and insist that they would support US military interventions in pursuing more limited and well-defined national interests and if necessary, would do that unilaterally and without the pretence of advancing a large-scale global agenda.
That explains why a self-proclaimed nationalist (Trump’s former national security advisor, Republican John Bolton, comes to mind) would be willing to use US military power in response to aggression by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, you name it, to defend what he regards as legitimate US national interests.
But the nationalists would add that such an approach doesn’t necessarily have to be part of a campaign to promote liberal democracy worldwide and do “nation building”.
It’s safe to say that these positions reflect the current foreign policy consensus among Republicans on Capitol Hill and most GOP leaders, including those planning to run for president in 2024.
At the same time, President Joe Biden and his foreign policy and national security aides, along with most members of the Democratic Party establishment, agree that standing up to Russia and supporting Ukraine serve core US national interests.
But contrary to the nationalists, these supporters of US military interventions in Ukraine and elsewhere insist that such a strategy needs to be achieved through multilateral means and the support of the UN, NATO and other international organizations, and that it should be seen as advancing a universal project -- pitting democratic governments against their authoritarian rivals. Hence defending Ukraine and Taiwan goes beyond just protecting geo-strategic interests.
Hence the current bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington over Russia/Ukraine -- or for that matter China/Taiwan -- remains solid with the challenge coming mostly from peripheral groups on the political right and left.
The Republicans and conservatives opposed to the US support for Ukraine remain a small and incoherent minority. That some Trumpists, including the former president himself, oppose providing aid to Ukraine but have called for increasing support for Taiwan and Israel, reflects a striking example of cognitive dissonance.
There are also some critics on the political left who question, for example, US partnership with the Arab Persian Gulf states, who challenge American support for Israel and Zionism, and who call for engagement with the Ayatollahs in Iran, and are associated with marginal think tanks like the Quincy Institute. Like the Trumpists on the political right, these leftists have had no impact on US foreign policy.
But then recall that on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, the idea of ousting Saddam Hussein, transforming Mesopotamia into a democracy and remaking the entire Middle East, had enjoyed the same wide bipartisan support now seen in the activist US policy in Ukraine.
Indeed, in 2003 like in 2022, those interventionist US foreign policies were seen as advancing legitimate US strategic interests by a large majority of the American people who were willing to pay the costs of an American activist approach.
The public support for the Iraq war started to drop when the human and economic costs of the intervention started to rise and more Americans were beginning to question whether US interventionist policies in the Middle East were serving US national interests, especially at a time when the nation was dealing with huge economic and social problems.
That suggests that the current US policy in Ukraine, where the goals have been transformed from defending Ukraine to delivering a military blow to Russia, could be sustained as long as America would be willing to pay what are expected to be rising costs of this approach, at a time when the economy continues to bleed and when they are also being asked to contain China, and especially if the US would be forced to deploy troops to intervene directly in the conflict.
If that happens, that would not mean that the size of President Putin’s US fan club is growing or that more Americans are becoming isolationists. It would mean that Americans have reached the conclusion that these policies aren’t serving the national interests.