Will Republicans support Biden’s strategy on the Ukraine war?

Read More

With a single vote lead for Democrats in the Senate and the House effectively in the grip of Republicans with a seven-seat lead, President Joe Biden, it seems, will be stuck in a serious dilemma for the remaining two years of his stint at the White House. 

Not only his ambitious legislative agenda — a crucial bet for the resurrection of Democrats in domestic politics ahead of the 2024 presidential contest — will be impeded by the new composition of the Congress, but Republicans are also going to create problems for Biden in the domain of foreign policy. 

At the moment,  Biden is confronted with two prickly questions: one, how to extinguish the Ukraine war and tighten the noose around Moscow’s neck and, two, how to defuse the economic and military belligerency of Beijing without creating new flashpoints — or a new Cold War for that matter. 

On both subjects, despite having similar stances as Democrats on key points, Republicans are likely to give a tough time to the Biden administration in the coming days. The most crucial matter, however, is the scope and quantum of financial and military support for Ukraine. Ever since the Russian tanks rolled into the Ukrainian territory in February this year, the US Congress has sanctioned $68 billion in financial and military aid for Kyiv and the Biden administration has again resorted to Congress to grant an additional amount of $37 billion two weeks back. 

Till now all such proposals by the Biden administration have received bipartisan support in Congress. In May, the largest tranche for Kyiv was approved with overwhelming support and only 57 no votes in the House of Representatives — interestingly, all of them belonging to the Republican Party — indicating the existence of small bunch of extreme rightists among the Republican legislators.  There are now two major divisions in Congress: the first is between the Democrats and Republicans and the second is in the Republican Party over the Ukraine invasion.

The midterm polls have confirmed that the rightist group is gaining strength, although not enough to cause any kind of disruption on the major policy matters, which signals a new challenge for Biden. Some mainstream Republican leaders, including Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader and the next House Speaker to replace Nancy Pelosi, have been questioning the financial support to Ukraine. 

McCarthy, during the midterm campaign, threatened that there would be no “blank cheque” for Ukraine under the Republican majority in the House. Later on, McCarthy backtracked on his blank cheque comments in his private conversations with national security leaders and clarified that he had no plans to put brakes on support for Ukraine, but other extreme right elements among Republicans are still keeping their voices loud against the US involvement in the Ukraine imbroglio. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right conspiracy theorist Congresswoman, was also hawkish on this subject and during her election campaign also vowed that “under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine”. Just after the midterm results, Greene introduced a resolution in Congress calling for an audit of US spending on Ukraine. 

As soon as the midterm results were announced, Greene, along with a bunch of like-minded Republicans, began campaigning for a tight audit of the US aid programme to Ukraine. This group is not seeking complete severing of the aid to Ukraine but they have been demanding a thorough audit of the whole package. 

Greene has been particularly sceptical about Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s sincerity about the war. She alleges that Zelenskiy is deliberately trying to drag the US into a bigger conflict for his own selfish reasons. “We must stop letting Zelenskiy demand money & weapons from US taxpayers while he is trying to drag us into WW3. No more money to Ukraine. It’s time to end this war and demand peace,” she tweeted recently. 

Greene is not alone in this campaign. There are a handful of far-right Republicans, apparently a pro-Trump contingent, who want to at least curtail the US’s assistance to Ukraine. Rallying around “America First” nationalism and citing the examples of previous misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, this campaign is generating momentum against the country’s costly involvement in the Ukraine crisis. 

Obviously, such anti-Ukraine voices emanating from Republicans folds have caused anxiety in Kyiv. Zelenskiy appealed to the US lawmakers not to weaken in their support for Ukraine: “There have been these mixed messages that were in the US mass media, particularly from the Republican side … that we need to be more careful about supporting Ukraine — and maybe that at a certain point, the support could be reduced. For us this is a very concerning signal.” 

But in view of the bipartisan support on both sides of the divide in the US Congress, it is highly unlikely that the US aid to Ukraine will face any significant change in its flow. McCarthy will not give in to Greene and her group’s demands as such, but Republicans are under pressure to put some conditionalities regarding transparency and amount. 

Immense support for Ukraine is palpable among the American voters and no party can afford to seriously limit or cut off aid to Ukraine. At the moment, far-right groups in the Republican Party can’t afford to alienate the voters by taking an aggressive stance on financial and military assistance to Ukraine. 

But they are expecting that with the skyrocketing inflation and economic downturn, Ukraine fatigue would soon envelop the Oval Office as well as Congress and the public pressure will start mounting if Washington continues to pour tens of billions of dollars into funding the war in Ukraine at the expense of aggravating cost of living crisis at home. 

So, even if the far-right group is still a small bunch, they may start buttressing support for their views if the Biden administration stumbles in handling the energy and inflation crisis. Nonetheless, Republicans, despite agreeing in principle on supporting Kyiv, will not let Biden have an easy run on the matters pertaining to the Ukraine war.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.