More On The Republican Division Over Ukraine

I'm heading this post with another fanciful end-state map for a theoretical partition of Russia, this one after a putative 2037 Treaty of Delhi that ended World War III. This was imagined well before Putin's current invasion of Ukraine, but I think it's pertinent because it represents what antiwar Republicans are refusing to recognize: the Ukraine conflict is likely to force a similar resolution, but at a much lower cost than anyone could have predicted.

As Allahpundit put it at Hot Air more than a week ago,

I’m showing my cards here: I don’t believe that much of the MAGA or MAGA-adjacent caterwauling about the cost of the Ukraine aid bill is on the level. Nationalists have never been sticklers about federal spending, after all. I posted these Mark Levin tweets earlier but let me post them again here.

. . . The populist right and left resent that Ukraine is demonstrating the strength of the prevailing western liberal order on the battlefield at the expense of one of the great enemies of that order. After all, the more effective the American establishment and the EU look in backing the Ukrainians, the less interest American and European voters will have in replacing either with populist regimes of the right or left.

The aid bill has become a cause for populist grumbling because it channels that dubious ambivalence or even hostility towards a Ukrainian victory into a more politically congenial grievance, exorbitant federal spending and the government’s misplaced priorities[.]

. . . [Rand Paul] can’t resist lapsing into libertarian boilerplate about America not being the world’s policeman even though no American “police” are in the field in Ukraine. The Ukrainians are policing their own territory. All we’re doing is helping them defend themselves, a concept that libertarians normally support ardently in the context of the Second Amendment and gun rights.

Once more for emphasis: This bill will pass. [It did.] And because it will, Paul knows that holding it up won’t achieve any of his stated goals but might hurt the Ukrainians at the margins. The fact that he chose to hold it up anyway speaks volumes about his intentions. I hope McConnell exacts some revenge the next time Paul needs something from him.

And McConnell is playing to his advantage now. Allahpundit quotes an interview in the New York Times behind a paywall:

Why did you decide to make the trip to Europe last weekend?

One was to try to convey to the Europeans that skepticism about NATO itself, expressed by the previous president, was not the view of Republicans in the Senate. And I also was trying to minimize the vote against the package in my own party.

We have sort of an isolationist wing, and I think some of the Trump supporters are sort of linked up with the isolationists — a lot of talk out in the primaries about this sort of thing. And I felt this would help diminish the number of votes against the package. I think that worked out well.

The current strategic situation in Ukraine represents a resurgence for Reaganite and neoconservative foreign policy, to the point that even Mitt Romney is regaining credibility:

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney suggested in a New York Times essay that "NATO could engage" in Ukraine, "potentially obliterating Russia's struggling military" as an option against Russian President Vladimir Putin were he to deploy nuclear weapons.

. . . "Russia's use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event," Romney continued. "Any nation that chose to retain ties with Russia after such an outrage would itself also become a global pariah."

Romney warned that a "cornered and delusional" Putin could use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine, citing warnings from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov, and CIA Director William Burns.

I think the problem for populist opponents of Ukraine aid is that the war is already a "redefining, reorienting geopolitical event" -- consider only that Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO, and irrespective of NATO's specific composition, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, and some NATO countries are already concluding side security guaranatees against Russia, while even Austria and Switzerland are beginning to reconsider their prior neutrality.

If Putin were to use nukes, it would only hasten the eventual outcome, which is going to wind up looking something like the map above no matter what. And an attempt to delay the inevitable outcome by forcing a smaller withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine than Ukraine wants will only result in renewed conflict later and continuing war at higher cost.

Neoconservative policy foundered on Iraq and Afghanistan, advocating disastrously costly and inefficient endless wars -- it bothered me from the start that the US was using multimillion-dollar helicopters on missions that alone cost six-figure amounts in fuel, ammunition, and personnel to shoot at insurgents riding motor scooters. This had to end somehow; Biden ended it clumsily. Ukraine reverses the cost-benefit ratio; it's Ukraine that's the low-cost combatant fighting the wasteful Russians.

And the benefit nobody has so far mentioned is that somehow Biden has gained nothing in the polls for his support of Ukraine.