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DC Freaks Out Over DeSantis’s Ukraine Comments; Voters Shrug
Several right-of-center politicians and commentators are outraged over Gov. Ron DeSantis’s latest statement on the war in Ukraine. The hawks accuse the Florida governor of showing American weakness. Trump accuses him of being too vague. Both claim his short statement threatens his electoral chances — a prediction which reveals a severe case of Beltway Brain.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked various potential presidential candidates for their positions on America’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This was DeSantis’s response:
While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.
Previously, the governor stuck to the vague assertion that we shouldn’t send Ukraine “a blank check.” His latest statement adds slightly more detail, with a strong emphasis on “slightly.”
Neither locks him into any firm position, which is an asset since no one knows the outcome of the expected spring offensives or what American voters will think of the issue in November 2024. Yes, it’s vague, as well it should be. Our leaders should constantly follow the facts on the ground and shift accordingly. The right strategy today probably won’t be the right strategy two years from now.
DeSantis is wrong to dismiss the full-blown invasion as a mere “territorial dispute”; outside of that, there’s little to criticize, let alone be outraged about. Either way, a vague foreign policy statement made 19 months before Election Day will have zero effect on said election.
Campaigns almost never win or lose on foreign policy; post-Cold War, a slight advantage accrues to the dovish. The rest of the country is not nearly as invested in Ukraine as DC tastemakers insist they be. In general, Americans sympathize with Ukrainians, but they’re more likely to rant about the price of eggs than developments across the Transdnieper.
This upsets foreign policy wonks since voters should care more about the latter than the former. In fact, it’s a moral failing that they don’t!
Meh. The kids want eggs for breakfast, but they’re getting a Lucky Charms knockoff instead. Voters are busy with everyday life, not geopolitical strategy on the other side of the world.
I think voters should care more about the $31.5 trillion federal debt, but here we are.
In contrast, President Biden promised to back Ukraine for “as long it takes.” Sorry, Joe, forever is a very long time. The US made similar promises to our Afghan allies before chaotically abandoning the country in Biden’s first year.
While the current president’s support seems earnest, he can’t promise anything beyond his administration. Especially if the American people turn against it. Which they are.
According to the Associated Press, in May 2022, 60% of Americans supported arming Ukraine. As of January, that has dropped to 48%. This still makes up a plurality but is trending the wrong way for the forever caucus. Who knows what it will be in a year and a half?
The US has already sent $112 billion to Ukraine with little debate and less oversight. For comparison, Ukraine’s entire GDP in 2020 was about $200 billion. On his recent visit, Biden casually announced a half a billion more, along with “artillery ammunition, anti-armor systems, and air surveillance radars to help protect the Ukrainian people from aerial bombardments.”
Rah-rah, Slava Ukraini, and all that, but there’s a limit to American largesse. And people get miffed when Biden jets to Kyiv with a suitcase full of money but avoids East Palestine, Ohio.
Politicians in both parties must understand that their first responsibility is to their own nation; allies come second. Forget this, and the people will toss them on their tin ears. DeSantis makes his priority clear: the United States of America.
Reagan-era Secretary of State George Shultz asked every new US ambassador a simple question. “I’m going to spin the globe and I want you to put your hand on your country.”
When they pointed to the nation assigned to them, Shultz corrected them. “Your country is the United States.”
DeSantis has passed this test. Biden has not.
Published in Elections, Foreign Policy, Politics
That’s my take, too.
Where do you stand on nuclear arms proliferation? Do you think we should abrogate our agreements and let any country that wants nuclear arms have them?
Because if we withdraw our support from Ukraine, I hope that’s the next step we take. Every country should be able to protect itself from every other country.
It’s a Second Amendment issue. No country has the right to invade another country. Each country should have its own nuclear arms.
What makes you think they are unwilling to defend themselves? Or, by defending themselves, do you mean sending troops into Ukraine?
Outside the strict “self-defense” interpretation, if we are acting in our own interests in Ukraine, then how much more so must be the Europeans? For them it tips into defense far sooner than it does for us.
What about the people of Eastern Europe who don’t think it’s ridiculous, and are backing up their fears with their own military buildups?
Speaking of further entanglements, one good route to further entanglement with the Ukraine-Russia war would be to attempt to force Ukraine to the bargaining table. Think of all the guarantees we’d end up making. We could always reneg on those guarantees like we did with the 1994 Budapest memorandum, but I’ll bet the memories of that agreement would be part of the process.
Mmmm. Europeans taking responsibility for their own defense? Sounds like a win.
I repeat my previous observation. From what we’ve seen of the Russian military over the last 13 months what makes you believe that, absent the use of Russian nukes, the Europeans should be incapable of defending themselves? And if Putin does decide to launch nukes, why pick on Europe when he’s blaming this whole situation on the US?
Putin is either a rational actor or he’s not. Invading the NATO countries of Europe would not be rational and neither is starting WWIII with nukes. So you fear one irrational action but not the other. Why?
Poland and Estonia seem to be hedging their bets in case U.S. support slackens. Poland is buying tanks from South Korea and building up its own manufacturing capacity for those tanks. Of course they don’t say this is in case the U.S. or NATO don’t hold firm. They realize U.S. help is essential right now, and that without it Russia would win in Ukraine and would be a threat to them, so don’t want to be turning U.S. non-participation into something that is thinkable.
If Russia weakens Ukrainian sovereignty through its invasion, the losses they’ve taken are a price that Putin and a lot of Russians are willing to pay. It would provide all the necessary motivation to go after other countries, too.
It may seem ridiculous to you, but I don’t think you’ve researched the question well enough if you haven’t asked Poles and Estonians. Maybe some other EU countries, too. Not that opinion is unanimous in any of those countries. The Russian minority in Estonia is not so strong on support for Ukraine, for example.
y u mad bro
I ask the question, “How is this in America’s best interest?” and I get, “Here’s how this is in the best interests of Poland… and Estonia… and maybe Germany.”
My family left Germany. I don’t vote for someone to represent Germany in the House or Senate. Who is the Senator representing Ukraine? Is that McConnell?
That’s not an accurate representation of how the conversation went. Let me quote #35 in full:
You were the person who brought up the threat to Eastern Europe, so it’s not very nice of you to complain that I wasn’t responding to a different question. I do think the questions are very much related, though, and that it would cause a lot of problems if the NATO alliance were to break up, for example, which it would if so many members were left exposed to new threats. Some people imagine that we could maintain our American freedoms in a world in which democratic freedoms ended at our border. I don’t think that’s possible. We can’t do everything for everybody, but there is a lot of ROI to be had in helping a country that has proven its determination to break free from rule by an autocratic authority that sees itself as an enemy of the west.
We are going to hear a lot of comparisons of DeSantis with Trump.
Some of them might even be based in reality.
But that point was attached to another question, namely the rationality test and if Putin passes it. Because you’re placing a very dangerous bet here, namely that Putin is irrational enough to invade a NATO country like Poland, but rational enough to not use nukes, and to use them on us.
Since there is widespread speculation on both Putin’s physical and mental health, why does everyone seems so eager to paint him into a corner without any sense of what’s really going on in his head?
But not only are we not having that discussion, we’re told we’re not allowed to have that discussion. Because you’re either 100% on the Ukrainian war wagon or you’re a fascist rooting for Putin. It’s George W. all over again. “You’re either for us or against us.” That’s not a rational foreign policy, either.
I’m sure there are arguments as to why continued war in the Ukraine is in America’s national interest. I suspect those arguments have a strong component of sacrificing Ukrainians to weaken Russia. Which is fine – or , at least, normal – because international relations don’t have morals, they have interests. Actions and people can be cruel or stupid, but the important questions to ask are about how such and such a decision advances or retards the interests of your country.
These are complex questions and people of good will can differ on the answers. I’m pretty sure “Shut up, Putin stooge! I’m right because it hits me in the feels” isn’t a great contribution to an important debate.
But neither is ignoring the underlying question to concentrate on “how will it resonate with the voters?”
I’d love to know where the people who put together the above list came up with the figures for our Ukrainian involvement at being only 247 million.
Is that because the vast majority of aid that we offered to Ukraine was no longer an obligation by the end of 2022 or else only some 247 million was about to be disbursed in 2023?
It’s hard to find agreement about the exact numbers that would be used to summarize the totals of aid we have given to the Ukraine. But two sources shown below both indicate that we have given over 100 billion dollars to that nation:
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-money-has-the-us-given-ukraine-since-russias-invasion/
From the above webpage: How much money has the US given Ukraine since Russia’s invasion?
One year in, the US has allocated nearly $115 billion in emergency funding to support Ukraine in wartime.
Published on Fri, February 24, 2023 1:05PM PST | Updated Wed, March 8, 2023 1:12PM PST
Full article at above link
####
But Fox news has decided we have given quite a bit more than that:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-leads-rest-of-the-world-196-billion-ukraine-war-russia
Published February 12, 2023 2:55am EST
From the above webpage:
US leads the rest of the world with $196 billion given to Ukraine amid war with Russia
Russia first invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022
Full article is at above webpage
One hopes that is what it is.
I don’t want to trade Trump’s weak foreign policy chops for something worse.
Hear, hear.
None of the Ukraine Hawks seem to want to answer that question.
The elites on Twitter seem to think comparing DeSantis to Trump on this hurts DeSantis somehow.
I worry that this is the start of the Never Trump attacks on DeSantis. The more DeSantis takes on the Uniparty, the more they will hate him.
Actually it gets answered all the time. You just don’t accept the answer. By now, sure, people are tired of answering as if nothing had been said.
I’m positive you could recite the answer off the top of your head. Bonus points for not inserting some poison pill straw man. Or whatever that rhetorical device is that I keep seeing.
Proving my point.
Nobody has ever provided their version of how our response ot this Ukraine thing is in America’s interest? Ever? You’ve never heard? Silence on the line?
You mean that I will not be able to find a single, solitary instance of anybody on Ricochet ever providing any answer whatsoever to the question?
Can you clear up something here? Are you saying
If it’s choice 2, we have actually gone far beyond what we agreed to in the Budapest Memorandum. You can read it here: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/Part/volume-3007-I-52241.pdf
I love that.
By defending themselves, I mean willing to put 2% or more of their GDP into defense, which hardly any of them do.
Your answer is always the domino effect or Munich or some other fatuous myth.
Ukraine is a land war. The US sucks at land wars. The only time the US has won land wars is when it has allied with countries that are good at land wars. Those were times when the US was not the dominant player in the world. We are no longer the buck passer but the buck catcher. Our diplomacy should be structured accordingly. Instead our liberal interventionist and neocon cretins insist on constant provocation. It just leads us into constant losses. And you never seem to learn.
So there are answers, and some people simply disagree. It’s not as though nobody ever answers the question, right? You just don’t find it credible, which is fair enough.
Putting it on the table here. I admit I get a bit disgusted seeing grown men whining that “nobody ever answers my quessstionsss” when plenty of people answer them.
Fatuous myths, aye. I’m hardly a neocon cretin, but I appreciate your concern.
I’m down to three overseas “lines”, which are Israel, Russia’s west, and China’s east.
Ukraine is indeed a land war (you could even say a land war in Asia), but I’m happy to have no troops there, and in fact oppose putting a single boot in. Fight Russia to the last Ukrainian? #YGDR
This nefarious, corrupt administration may yet hose this up, and Heaven knows the money could be well-spent on our own southern border, or even (gasp!) NOT SPENT.
If you can convince me that Russia did not invade Ukraine, that will go a long way to getting me into the car.
The question was asked here in this thread and I have yet to see it get answered. What I have seen is name calling.
It is so weird. I have not gone hammer and tongs against people supporting this intervention as moral reprobates. No one has. But many of the pro forces have jumped to me being pro Putin.
Sorry, but the attitude of you side has been to wave the flag and tell those of us not on board we are basically siding with our mortal enemy.
So how is this in my interest, BDB? How does this make my life better?
Just watched people in this thread not answer them.
And here, you are just insulting as Manny was.
What’s your side has is insulting people that don’t agree with you.
I find it disgusting to use the methods of the left to shame others into spending blood and treasure.