The battle for the soul of the GOP is joined.
The battle for the soul of the GOP is joined.
T he Biden administration’s foreign policy has been a disaster. By implementing former president Donald Trump’s plan to desert Afghanistan, President Biden not only delivered 20 million Afghan women and girls into Taliban slavery and handed control of Central Asia to the Russia–China axis, he sent a signal of weakness that invited anti-Western aggression everywhere. Within a month of America’s self-imposed rout from Kabul, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin began assembling forces to invade Ukraine.
Biden not only refused to deter Russian forces by sending arms to Ukraine, but he publicly assured Putin that the U.S. would not intervene if he attacked. Then, with the war underway, Biden decided to help Ukraine by sending arms, but only in limited numbers by the slowest means possible, with no training done in advance to prepare future options. With decisive combat pending this spring, the administration decided to send all of 30 Abrams tanks to Ukraine — but not even take them out of the thousands we have stationed right now on the continental U.S. Instead, new ones will be built, with delivery scheduled for next year. The administration could readily meet Ukraine’s desperate need for long-range missiles by sending 300-kilometer-range ATACMS, which pack a 500-pound-warhead punch, some 4,000 of which are available now. But instead, the administration has decided to send inferior GLSDB missiles, which offer half the punch and half the range, and which, most critically, have not yet been produced in quantity, and consequently won’t be available in time for the action. The administration also has stalled on delivering anti-aircraft defenses and still is refusing to provide Ukraine with the F-16 fighters it vitally needs.
Vladimir Putin says his invasion of Ukraine is a war against the Western alliance. Biden’s policy would let him win.
Under ordinary circumstances, such fecklessness of a president to fulfill his most important duty would lead to political disaster. But Biden has been able to get away with it because many of the most vocal Republicans have attacked Biden’s weak efforts to defend the West against Putin as being too strong.
Leading the pack of Putin Republicans has been Trump himself, who has recited the Kremlin line that America forced Russia to invade, while publicly denouncing Biden’s decision to send even the pitiful tank reinforcement he has proposed. Following their leader, Putin Republicans in Congress, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.), have called for stopping all U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine, a step that would guarantee a Kremlin victory. With such outright defeatists set up as his nominal opposition, any half-hearted measures that Biden might take to defend the West can only look superb by comparison.
But now, finally, the Reagan Republicans are speaking up. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on February 7, Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) attacked the Biden administration for its refusal to provide adequate arms to Ukraine. “The Ukrainians stood their ground and fought,” Cotton wrote. “Yet Mr. Biden has dragged his feet all along, hesitating fearfully to send the Ukrainians the weapons and intelligence they need to win. Today, Mr. Biden stubbornly refuses to provide fighter jets, cluster munitions and long-range missiles to Ukraine. As a result of Mr. Biden’s half-measures, Ukraine has only half-succeeded. We should back Ukraine to the hilt . . . We act to protect our vital national interests. That’s the case in Ukraine, and we deserve a strategy of victory to match.”
Other Republican senators have joined the fray making similar points.
It’s true that for some time there has been a disconnect between the policy offered by the Reagan Republicans in the Senate and the Putin Republicans who, through their loud antics, have come to be regarded by many as representing the voice of the GOP in the House. But now, with former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley entering into direct contention against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, the issue can no longer be ducked.
Haley is a hard-line voice for Western victory in Ukraine. In an interview with Fox on February 15, Haley called for sending fighter jets to Ukraine and attacked Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, for his defeatism. On February 16, she amplified this on NBC, saying, “This is not a war for Ukraine; this is a war for freedom. We need to give Ukraine everything they need to win.”
Haley’s clear stance on Ukraine elevates her challenge to Trump to a fight over fundamental issues. Likely candidate Ron DeSantis has been keeping silent on where he stands concerning Ukraine, but the job of the president is to serve as commander in chief, not supervisor of Disney World. If DeSantis is going to stand for anything, he will have to decide which side he is on. There can be no bridging the gap between the Reagan Republicans and the Putin Republicans. Nor is there any middle ground. The GOP can be the Party of Reagan or the Party of Putin. It can’t be both.
The Reagan Republicans now have a standard-bearer. Let the battle begin.