Ukraine aid faces stress test as some GOP 2024 presidential candidates balk at continued support

Ukraine aid faces stress test as some GOP 2024 presidential candidates balk at continued support

Washington, The Gulf Observer: For President Joe Biden, strong backing for Ukraine’s effort to repel Russia’s invasion has been a rare issue where he’s mustered bipartisan support.

But this week’s first GOP presidential debate — and recent comments on Ukraine by the 2024 GOP polling leader and former president, Donald Trump — show that unusual unity will face a stress test as the 2024 presidential campaign intensifies and the leading Republican contenders show antipathy toward the American backing of Ukraine.

There long has been an isolationist strain in the United States, particularly in the Republican Party, but rarely has it been shared by so many candidates for president.

On the debate stage in Milwaukee, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would make additional U.S. aid “contingent” on European allies increasing contributions. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy called it “disastrous” that the U.S. government was “protecting against an invasion across somebody else’s border” and argued Ukraine funding would be better spent on the “invasion of our own southern border.”

Meanwhile, Trump, who did not participate in the first debate, has said he will end Russia’s invasion in one day if he wins back the White House. Even some of his Republican allies, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said that assertion was folly.

Trump also has called on Congress to withhold additional Ukraine funding until the FBI, IRS and Justice Department “hand over every scrap of evidence” on the Biden family’s business dealings.

Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland and distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that Republican Congressional leadership and Biden remain on the same page on providing Ukraine the assistance it needs.

Still, he said the prominent voices in the Republican field calling for the U.S. to slow or wind down support for Kyiv sends a troubling signal to allies about what the U.S. commitment could look like following the 2024 election and harkens back to the years when isolationists who pressured the U.S. to remain neutral during the first two years of World War II.

“It’s very easy to say ‘I’d rather spend money on a bridge in West Virginia than a bridge on Ukraine.’ That on a superficial level makes sense,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank. “We’re witnessing a struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party right now and the Ukraine debate is a proxy of that.”

Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania, said the handling of the Ukraine war isn’t as salient to the electorate writ large as the economy, health care, immigration, abortion and some other issues. But polling suggests that concerns about the costs of the war resonate with working-class Republican primary voters.

On the flip side, Borick said Biden is not likely to win votes solely on his handling of Ukraine. But how the war plays out in the months ahead could help or diminish the president’s broader argument about his administration’s competency and success at restoring U.S. leadership back on the international stage after four years of Trump’s “American first” foreign policy approach.

“Right now, Ukraine isn’t as prominent an issue for voters, but we’re seeing Trump, Ramaswamy and DeSantis setting the table to raise the question later in the campaign of how much U.S. treasure we’re spending over there that we could be spending at home,” he said.