Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Tuesday sent his strongest signal yet that he does not believe support for Ukraine is in the US national interest.
The war in Ukraine provides a new battleground for candidates and potential candidates seeking the Republican nomination for next year’s presidential election that could shape how the party engages with the world for years to come, analysts said.
Although DeSantis has not yet officially declared himself a candidate, he and former US president Donald Trump, who has, are the clear front-runners in the Republican race. Both have dismissed US support for Ukraine and other allies as a waste of resources, and said that leaders should pay more attention to issues in the US.
Photo: AP
Meanwhile, declared and likely Republican challengers — including former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and former US vice president Mike Pence — have portrayed themselves as steadfast defenders of Ukraine, willing to stand up to US foes, including Russia and China.
Caught in the middle is the Republican electorate, which is split on whether the US should support Ukraine and how the nation should engage with the world more generally, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
Once the party of foreign policy “hawks,” Republicans have increasingly cooled on foreign entanglements and military support for allies, particularly after Trump took office in 2016.
The ideological shift of the party was laid bare on Monday when television host Tucker Carlson posted on Twitter responses from Republican candidates and possible hopefuls to questions on the war in Ukraine.
“While the US has many vital national interests ... becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis said in his reply.
Some Republicans were quick to hit back.
In a statement on Tuesday, Haley reiterated her support for Ukraine.
“America is far better off with a Ukrainian victory,” she wrote on Twitter.
Republican senators Marco Rubio, who is from DeSantis’ home state, and Lindsey Graham, both former presidential candidates, criticized isolationists within their party.
“When it comes to Putin, you either pay now or pay later,” Graham wrote on Twitter, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“DeSantis’ comments very much recall the Republican pre-World War II tradition of so-called isolationism, which was really an indifference to European security,” said Dan Fried, a former top US Department of State official under then-US president George W. Bush who is now with the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.
Republican voters are divided on the issue.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month, 55 percent of Republicans said that the US should support democratic countries when they are attacked by non-democratic nations.
Asked whether the US should continue sending weapons to Ukraine, self-identified Republicans were split 50-50.
“People care about foreign policy, but I think it’s kind of mixed on Ukraine funding,” said Trudy Caviness, a member of the Iowa Republican State Central Committee. “What I’ve heard [from party members] is that we have to give them what we’ve promised so far and then move on.”
Pollsters, analysts and campaign aides said that DeSantis’ embrace of a more isolationist approach could open the way for more hawkish candidates to appeal to the significant chunk of the Republican electorate that still prefers a more hands-on US foreign policy.
Several prospective candidates, including Haley, Pence and former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, have made their foreign-policy experience a key part of their pitch to voters.
By embracing Trump’s hands-off brand of foreign policy, DeSantis risks turning off some of the white-collar Republicans who are most eager to move on from the former president.
While 46 percent of non-college educated Republicans said that the US should provide weapons to Ukraine, the rate was 59 percent among those with a college degree the poll showed.
However, many would be voting for personalities rather than policies, pollsters said.
That would give the eventual winner of the Republican nomination significant power to shape the party’s foreign policy preferences going forward.
“I think leadership matters a great deal on issues where voters can be a little unsure what they think about them,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS