Questions for Ron DeSantis on Russia and Ukraine

By Mark Antonio Wright

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

 

On Monday night, in a statement to Tucker Carlson, Florida governor Ron DeSantis gave the fullest accounting of his view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to date. The headlines this morning highlight DeSantis’s assertion that, “Becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” is not a vital national interest for the United States. You can read DeSantis’s full statement, along with the responses from other potential GOP candidates, here.

 

To be clear, while I disagree on this point and others, it doesn’t necessarily follow that anyone who takes a different view on this issue is a “Putin apologist.” There are good-faith, conservative reasons to want to avoid an escalation with the Russians. There are good-faith reasons to argue that, as DeSantis writes, “Peace should be the objective.” And there’s a good-faith basis, while supporting the Ukrainians in general, to criticize the Biden administration’s policy as being weak, ad hoc, and ill-defined.

 

In his statement, DeSantis breaks with the standard Reaganite, internationalist view in three areas:

 

·         He challenges the view that the war is a vital U.S. national interest.

 

·         He characterizes the Russian invasion as a mere “territorial dispute.”

 

·         He argues that “F-16s and long-range missiles” should be “off the table” because, he says, the U.S. should not “enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders.”

 

Of course, DeSantis’s statement aligns with typical Republican foreign-policy thinking in other respects: He shoots down any notion of a “blank check” for Ukraine aid; he’s wary of a policy of regime change in Russia due to its very plausible negative downstream outcomes; he’s against the direct involvement of American combat troops in the fighting; and he’s concerned that the war has driven China and Russia closer together.

 

But DeSantis laid out real differences, and he should be urged by the press and his rivals to clarify what exactly he means.

 

If DeSantis means that Ukraine recovering every last inch of its pre-war territory is not a vital U.S. interest, then we agree. If he means that it’s not a vital U.S. interest for a belligerent, malign power such as Russia to fail when it invades its neighbors and forcibly annexes their territory, then we disagree.

 

DeSantis writes that, “Without question, peace should be the objective.” Without question? At any price? Does Ron DeSantis believe that Putin will accept a negotiated peace settlement at this moment, on any terms but those that decisively favor him and vindicate his decision to launch his invasion? I happen to believe that Ron DeSantis does not believe that Vladimir Putin is so weak and feckless to agree to such terms, so what does DeSantis mean by a policy of peace “without question”?

 

Finally what, in principle, is the difference between the “territorial dispute” between Russia and Ukraine and the territorial dispute between Communist China and Taiwan? Both Russia and China view their neighbors as breakaway provinces that should be returned to the direct rule of the imperial capital. Both Ukraine and Taiwan prefer to remain independent and aligned with the United States and the West. Does DeSantis think that it is a vital U.S. interest for Taiwan to remain free? What lesson does DeSantis think that Beijing would draw if the United States were to abandon Ukraine and allow Russia to end its invasion — I mean, its “territorial dispute” — on favorable terms on the principle of “peace as the objective,” “without question”?

 

Again, I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a Putin lackey — last year, in the days following the invasion, DeSantis called Putin a “dictator,” criticized the Russians for the invasion, and said that he was “heartened to see [the Ukrainians] having some moxie to fight back” and that the “Ukrainians have done a good job so far standing up.” Moreover, DeSantis argued that Putin’s “miscalculations were very much borne of his estimation of Biden’s weakness.”

 

“Having the weakness that we’ve seen,” DeSantis continued, in reference to Biden’s Afghanistan debacle, “it does have serious, serious consequences.”

 

On that we can agree. But can Ron DeSantis explain how acquiescing to a Russian victory would not be more of the same weakness?