This is show down time. This farce that the southern border is the reason that the GOP senators don’t want to approve funding for Ukraine needs to stop. Joe Biden called this out yesterday. “Putin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine,” he said. “We must, we must, we must prove him wrong … Holding Ukraine funding hostage in an attempt to force through an extreme Republican partisan agenda on the border is not how it works. We need real solutions.” Biden’s not imagining this. Russian propagandists are cheering the GOP right now and this is without Trump in the White House. The Guardian:
“Russian loyalists in Moscow celebrated when Republicans voted to block Ukraine’s aid last week,” the US president said at a joint press conference with the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Washington on Tuesday. “The host of a Kremlin-run show said: ‘Well done Republicans, that’s good for us.’” Biden added: “If you’re being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you are doing. History will judge harshly those who turned their back on freedom’s cause.”
Fiona Hill spoke with Politico and spelled out the situation in no uncertain terms:
When we spoke this week, she made clear that the decision of whether Ukraine wins or loses is now on us — almost entirely. As Congress debates how much more money to authorize for Ukraine’s assistance amid growing Republican opposition, she says that what we are really debating is our own future. Do we want to live in the kind of world that will result if Ukraine loses?
Hill is clear about her answer. A world in which Putin chalks up a win in Ukraine is one where the U.S.’s standing in the world is diminished, where Iran and North Korea are emboldened, where China dominates the Indo-Pacific, where the Middle East becomes more unstable and where nuclear proliferation takes off, among allies as well as enemies.
“Ukraine has become a battlefield now for America and America’s own future — whether we see it or not — for our own defensive posture and preparedness, for our reputation and our leadership,” she told me. “For Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage.”
The GOP and Putin are united in yet another cause: They both want to see Biden lose and Trump restored to power. We have reached the stage that Nikiti Khrushchev bragged about in 1956: “We will take you over without firing a single shot. We will defeat you from within.” It may have taken you a few years, Russia, but you made good on your prediction.
“The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,” she said. “People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden.”
“In that regard,” she continued, “whether they like it or not, members of Congress are doing exactly the same thing as Vladimir Putin. They hate that. They want to refute that. But Vladimir Putin wants Biden to lose, and they want Biden to be seen to lose as well.” […]
So Ukraine isn’t losing yet. But depending on the domestic situation in the United States, and with its European allies, it could? It could start losing very soon?
That’s right, we’re at a pivotal point. There’s a lot of detail, but the bottom line is that we are at an inflection point, a juncture where it could very rapidly tip, in fact this month — December and January — into a losing proposition for Ukraine.
What do you think Putin sees when he’s watching the debate taking place in the United States right now?
He does see the entire battlefield of the military, financial and political arenas tipping to his benefit. Putin really thinks that he is on the winning side. We’ve just seen in the last few weeks, something that looks rather suspiciously like a preparatory victory tour [by Putin] around the Middle East, visiting the UAE and Saudi Arabia, stepping out again in “polite company,” preparing to go to other major meetings. And then the coverage in the Russian press — their commentators are crowing with glee at the predicament of the Ukrainians, clapping their hands, literally and figuratively, about the peril for Ukraine in the U.S. Congress.
And don’t forget, when we asked Ukraine to divest itself of nuclear weapons, that was with the understanding that we would protect its borders. Now look at what’s happening.
One key challenge is going to be the nuclear front. There’s several different ways in which we can look at the nuclear front. There’s the moral imperative. We pushed Ukraine to give up the nuclear weapons that it had inherited from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. And we gave assurances along with the United Kingdom, that Ukraine would not end up in the situation that it is in now. We guaranteed its territorial integrity and sovereignty and independence and also assured Ukraine that we would step up to help. This opens up a whole can of worms related first to the moral jeopardy of this, that we obviously don’t stick to our word.
But also in terms of nuclear weapons, we could face proliferation issues with Japan, South Korea, other countries — even NATO countries who currently see themselves covered under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. They will start to worry about how much we would actually support them when they needed it, and how vulnerable they are to pressure or attack by another nuclear power. Think about the dynamics between India and Pakistan, for example, or China and India, or China and South Korea and Japan; and the predicament of leaders in other countries who will be thinking right now that, “I’m going to be extremely vulnerable — so perhaps I should be getting my own nuclear weapon.” You’re hearing talk about this in Germany, for example. You hear it all the time in places like Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, we know that they have nuclear aspirations. So this opens up a whole set of different discussions.
There’s a lot of anti-American sentiment in the world and letting Ukraine fall will “put us at each other’s throats,” says Fiona Hill. In a pre-Trump era, when there were two functioning political parties, it was not questioned whether we would support an ally on the world stage. Of course we would. But now, the world stage is not nearly as important a place to win as ginning up the right-wing into an anti-Biden frenzy. If you missed this dummy’s comment yesterday, this says it all.
JD Vance spreads the worst form of far-right propaganda. Dismissive lies that really harm Ukraine.
— Eva P (@Eva_eva_P) December 11, 2023
Nothing like GOP senators lying their asses off to constituents whom they believe to be complete morons. Look at who we have become.
You mentioned Ukraine giving up its nukes (which were Russian nukes to begin with) but it’s important to remember RUSSIA was a signatory to that agreement, promising not to try and take over Ukraine again.