The conservative think tank has recently pivoted away from its historically hawkish position on Russia.
The conservative think tank has recently pivoted away from its historically hawkish position on Russia.
T he Heritage Foundation’s top expert on defense policy is stepping down from his post as the storied conservative think tank rolls out a public-messaging campaign that attacks continued U.S. assistance to Ukraine for allegedly holding up disaster relief funding that could be distributed to Americans.
Thomas Spoehr, the director of the think tank’s Center for National Defense, has submitted his resignation, sources familiar with his decision say. Those sources also told National Review that a recent op-ed by Heritage president Kevin Roberts, which claimed that the White House’s recent spending request effectively holds disaster-relief money hostage to additional Ukraine assistance, was the final straw for Spoehr, a traditional conservative hawk who has long been frustrated with Heritage’s position on the conflict. Spoehr, whose final day at Heritage will be September 1, declined to comment.
In a statement today, Victoria Coates, Heritage’s vice president for national security and foreign policy, expressed appreciation for Spoehr’s contributions to Heritage. “We are grateful to Gen. Spoehr for his years of dedicated service to the Heritage Foundation and to our country. Tom is dedicated to strengthening America’s security and has tackled pressing problems such as rebuilding military culture, NDAA priorities, and Heritage’s Index of Military Strength,” she told NR. “We wish him the best in his future endeavors.”
Once a bastion of hawkish, Reagan-style foreign policy, Heritage has over the past year and a half executed a pivot toward what its top executives bill as a third-way foreign policy that is neither interventionist nor isolationist, roiling the conservative policy world.
Roberts explained his perspective on the matter in an interview with NR last year, when Heritage announced this pivot and made waves by opposing the first supplemental funding package for Ukraine.
“If we’re asking better questions and having better analysis about where we get involved, why we get involved, for how long we’re involved, answering the question of what success looks like, if that’s the third way, then you can sign Heritage up for that all day long,” he said, explaining that the think tank supports continued security assistance but believes that the U.S. has also provided funding for superfluous activities.
Now, there’s a new fight brewing over Ukraine funding. Earlier this month, the Biden administration submitted another supplemental-funding request, asking Congress to authorize an additional $24 billion to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The lion’s share of the request would go toward military and humanitarian aid.
The White House funding request also seeks some $12 billion for the government’s response to natural disasters.
Roberts wrote an op-ed in the Hill last week arguing that the structure of the package essentially holds disaster-relief funding hostage to Ukraine assistance. “The intent of the request is to put Republican politicians into a corner, forcing them to choose between their support for hurricane victims and their opposition to sending additional taxpayer money to Ukraine,” he wrote.
That advocacy push continued this week, as the think tank’s social-media account posted a tweet featuring side-by-side images of Kyiv and Maui, one portraying the Ukrainian capital as bustling and affluent and the other showing the devastation caused by wildfires on the island this month. “Biden gave $700 to Hawaii victims, but he took $900 from them and sent it to Ukraine,” the tweet reads, referring to a Heritage analysis that concluded that U.S. assistance to Ukraine totals about $900 per American household.
Then, last night, Heritage rolled out a video making a similar point about the Biden administration’s requested funding. “They’re holding hostage disaster-relief funding for Americans until they get their way,” a narrator says. “Until Joe Biden offers a plan to end the war in Ukraine, Congress shouldn’t approve another cent,” the video concludes.
Heritage’s overall shift has coincided with significant turnover. Dozens of former Heritage staffers left the organization in 2022, and several have told the Dispatch that the think tank’s move to a more nationalist orientation was the reason for their departure.
These developments have not prevented Heritage from recruiting new, hawkish foreign-policy talent. Under Roberts, the think tank hired Michael Pillsbury, the China expert and former Pentagon official who helped shape the Trump administration’s strategy, as well as Robert Greenway, who led Washington’s diplomatic efforts surrounding the Abraham Accords. And Trump-administration deputy national-security adviser Victoria Coates recently took the helm of Heritage’s foreign-policy shop, replacing its longtime head Jim Carafano, who is now senior adviser to Roberts.