After months of near-silence and insinuations, Florida governor and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis decided to speak about Ukraine, dispelling any doubts about his position.
While his statement on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show accommodates some small print, it is fraught with a fundamental misunderstanding of war and US geopolitical interests.
First good. DeSantis is right to criticize the Biden administration’s lack of clear goals in its support for “so long as it takes,” which is a recipe for an extended and intractable conflict – which Americans would rightly reject.
He’s also right in declaring that President Biden’s energy policy was lame – and much of the blame goes to left-wing climate fixation.
The remainder, unfortunately, is a multitude, starting with a series of strawberry arguments warning against “a US troop deployment” that nobody is advocating and “a ‘regime change’ policy in Russia” that will “significantly raise the stakes of the conflict.”
This latter policy, “undoubtedly popular with DC foreign policy interventionists,” in response to DeSantis, doesn’t actually exist, either as an official position or whilst a subject amongst the actual “foreign policy interventionists” that I’d count myself as. .
It is price considering about the stability of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his likely successors (the man is 70 years old and doesn’t look like in perfect health) and our support for the opposition, but there is no single voice that matters, in Washington or elsewhere, in favor of military intervention or one other, aimed toward removing Putin from power.
It is equally unclear what a part of Russian history DeSantis is referring to when he says, “Putin’s successor. . . would probably be much more ruthless.”
If anything, the primitive scheme seems to suggest that aggressive, “hardliners” leaders are followed by more cautious ones – Stalin was succeeded by Khrushchev, Brezhnev (essentially) by Gorbachev, and Ivan the Terrible by Boris Godunov.
DeSantis is right to be concerned about Russia’s “de facto alliance” with China, which nonetheless predates the outbreak of war (remember the “unlimited” partnership from early February 2022?) on the battlefield.
Geopolitical stakes
To start with, he doesn’t understand the stakes of the conflict (in his opinion, the “territorial dispute”) in the context of our long-term rivalry with China.
It presents a false dichotomy between helping Ukraine and pursuing our “vital interests”.
Actually, our military aid to Ukraine puts the United States in a a lot better position to confront China.
First, a punished and demoted Russian military will probably be a much lesser threat to NATO’s eastern flank countries, allowing us to pay attention more of our resources on the Indo-Pacific.
A prosperous Europe at peace can be a much stronger partner in holding Beijing accountable than a Europe preoccupied with its own security.
Second, contrary to the disingenuous rhetoric of “blank checks,” most of the money allocated to Ukraine’s military aid is spent here in the United States on upgrading our own military capabilities by donating older equipment to the Ukrainians.
Actually, it represents a belated investment in our own capabilities that will have been further delayed if Russian aggression had not created a way of urgency.
Has our aid to Ukraine revealed vulnerabilities in US arms and ammunition stockpiles and our defense industry base?
After all.
But the adult response doesn’t consist of a “cannot” attitude.
As an alternative, we must address these shortcomings, including by increasing military spending commensurate with the role the United States plays in the world.
Global leadership has at all times come at a value – nevertheless it’s higher than making a vacuum that our enemies fill.
Finally, for a presidential candidate who will need to discover with the “Peace Through Strength” approach to our adversaries, it is odd to argue, as DeSantis does, against supplying Ukraine with our (ageing) F-16 fighters and long-range missiles. , deeming the risk “unacceptable”.
It is in America’s interest to finish this war quickly.
What Biden fails to grasp in his efforts to forestall escalation is that the only technique to lasting peace is for Ukraine to win and Russia to humiliate.
A Republican challenger who falls for the same set of Russian tricks is not going to be in position to indicate Biden’s weakness in the general election.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Twitter: @DaliborRohac.