Ron DeSantis Gets Ukraine Wrong

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

 

The statement Florida governor Ron DeSantis provided Fox News host Tucker Carlson regarding his outlook on Russia’s war against Ukraine and the West’s commitments in that conflict will be finely parsed for months to come. It deserves to be. DeSantis has staked out a position he will struggle to defend and, should he emerge as the GOP nominee next year, potentially represents a significant liability for his campaign.

 

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests,” DeSantis’s statement began, it has become clear that “becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” DeSantis cites the urgent threat posed by the “economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party,” which is presumably going unmet because of the West’s commitments in Europe.

 

This weak and convoluted statement is likely to haunt DeSantis in both the primary campaign and, should he make it that far, the general election. Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is a “dispute” over territory in the same way a bank robber and depositor have a “dispute” over money. This statement establishes equivalencies between invader and invaded that do not exist. DeSantis may struggle, as any honest broker would, to explain why the hypothetical prospect of a Chinese land grab in the Pacific is of more immediate urgency than the ongoing Russian land grab in a state that borders U.S. allies with whom we have defense pacts.

 

“The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank check’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes,’” DeSantis’s statement continues, “without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.” It’s wholly valid to complain, as I have, that President Biden has failed to articulate early and often the objectives that American support for Ukraine’s defense is designed to secure. It’s simply false, however, to contend that congressional appropriations are a “blank check” without “accountability.”

 

Congressional appropriations are not open-ended, and the inspectors general tasked with overseeing military, economic, and humanitarian disbursements to Ukraine do not operate in the shadows. “Our citizens are also entitled to know how the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being utilized in Ukraine,” he insists. Yes, they are. They should read all about it.

 

A former congressman himself, DeSantis should know this. Indeed, if he does, why is he misleading voters?

 

As for the idea that the largest land war in Europe since 1945 “distracts” from domestic challenges, that’s a subjective assessment. But European wars do have a habit of drawing the United States into them, even before America assumed its role as the sole global hegemon and guarantor of the present geopolitical order. Moreover, providing for the national defense is a constitutionally enumerated role delegated to the president. If a president would rather focus on social or economic issues, that’s his prerogative. But which of these proclivities constitutes a distraction is up for debate.

 

“The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders,” DeSantis continues. Here, in what may become the biggest liability in his statement, the governor has adopted the view of the Biden administration.

 

Since February 2022, the Biden White House has routinely negotiated against itself over what weapons platforms could be construed by Moscow as escalatory, only to settle the debate in favor of Ukraine’s defense. The escalation those controversial platforms were supposed to produce never materialized. Do HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) units, which can fire guided ordnance at targets up to 70 kilometers away, constitute “long-range missiles” that should be “off the table”? If they do, are we supposed to take them back?

 

DeSantis will be made to explain himself more than once, and he might find it difficult to articulate both his theory of the case and why he’s had such a profound change of heart since his tenure in Congress. In 2016, DeSantis voted in favor of a handful of bills designed to provide Ukraine with more defensive and intelligence-gathering capabilities than the Obama administration was comfortable with. He will have to articulate a compelling conversion narrative — assuming one exists beyond his immediate political imperative of getting on the good side of the Right’s more nationalistic voters.

 

DeSantis’s statement contends that Biden’s policies produced a “de facto alliance” between Russia and China (suffice it to say that this qualified partnership did not materialize within the last 13 months). “Because China has not and will not abide by the embargo,” the statement adds, “Russia has increased its foreign revenues while China benefits from cheaper fuel.” In combination with Biden’s ideological war on domestic energy producers, “Biden has further empowered Russia’s energy-dominated economy and Putin’s war machine at Americans’ expense.”

 

Taking all this at face value, what’s the remedy? Should the U.S. and Europe ease the sanctions regime targeting the Russian energy sector? Should the West more aggressively pursue secondary sanctions against the entities that violate that regime? Is this just a general lament, or is there a set of policy preferences that were meant to accompany DeSantis’s observation?

 

DeSantis’s concluding paragraph is little more than a non sequitur: “We cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland, especially as tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year from narcotics smuggled across our open border and our weapons arsenals critical for our own security are rapidly being depleted.” The triaging of resources DeSantis mourns has not been established. Nor is it at all clear that a domestic narcotics crisis is going unaddressed because the Pentagon has allocated about 6 percent of its annual budget to supporting Ukraine against a hostile foreign power. The United States can and does do many things simultaneously, and meeting the challenges posed by two simultaneous crises is what we expect of a president.

 

Ultimately, the specifics of this political document will be forgotten, but the sentiment DeSantis expressed in it will not. What the United States is defending isn’t just Ukraine’s sovereignty against an expansionist power that is hostile to its very existence. It’s safeguarding the security and alliance architecture that emerged after the Second World War and became a continental bloc at the end of the Cold War. America’s allies are not passive participants in this effort, and they will defend their interests with or without America’s imprimatur. If America tells European allies that they are on their own, Europe will behave accordingly in disparate and uncoordinated ways. A schism would serve Moscow just fine. Russia’s goal is to break that alliance, and its war in Ukraine still has the capacity to advance that objective.

 

In the absence of Western support, Russia will win its war of aggression. Is DeSantis prepared to defend that outcome as a by-product of his policy preferences?

 

What the governor has articulated is, in essence, a policy of cutting and running — a proclivity America’s adversaries have come to rely on. The U.S. and the West have already committed their prestige and material support to Ukraine’s cause. Paring that commitment back would constitute retrenchment — a withdrawal under pressure hardly distinct from the humiliation Joe Biden engineered in Afghanistan. The consequences of that posture for America’s interests are not unknowable. They’re certainly undesirable.

 

Perhaps this statement aids DeSantis in the primary, but at the cost of ceding to the Democratic nominee room to run against the Republican position on Ukraine from the right. And make no mistake: This statement is purely political. It is not predicated on a thorough understanding of America’s permanent interests abroad or some immutable principle. It’s not even clear that DeSantis really believes his own rhetoric. For a figure who has built for himself a hard-won image as a straight shooter, that’s poison. Voters will notice that DeSantis is, it turns out, a politician after all. Whether they will be inclined to punish that most unlovely of political traits, I guess we’ll soon find out.