Inside the GOP Fight Over Ukraine Aid

Will Republicans continue to support the embattled nation?

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the Capitol on February 6, 2023. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Nearly a year after Russia launched its bloody war against Ukraine, American lawmakers still broadly support aiding the country’s defense. But the growing rift between a vocal, isolationist group of Republicans and the rest of the party suggests Ukraine assistance packages could face serious hurdles in the new Congress.

With Republicans controlling the House, future aid is an open question. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has vaguely said the chamber won’t advance blank checks to Ukraine, suggesting future spending will at least have more robust oversight provisions attached. But some of his members want to cut off Ukraine funding entirely, as they also seek to drastically reduce federal spending this year.

Eleven House Republicans, led by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, introduced a “Ukraine Fatigue” resolution last week calling for an end to America’s assistance to the country. And on Thursday, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley delivered a speech at the Heritage Foundation arguing the American military is overextended. Instead of arming Ukraine, he said, U.S. resources should be diverted to Taiwan and the Pacific to counter aggression by the Chinese government.

The speech—which outlined Hawley’s idea of a “nationalist foreign policy”—was the culmination of months of such comments from Hawley. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    If anything, Ukraine is a great stress test for our defense industrial base. We’ve learned some lessons we will probably work to solve - and therefore we will be better prepared for conflict with China, not worse.

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  2. Autonomian

    Gaetz and Hawley are our current Manchurian candidates.

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    John D. Wright

    We are paying pennies on the dollar to prevent another cold war. Russia wants to restore the Russian empire which includes pretty much the boundaries of the old Soviet Union. If they succeed, we will be spending TENS of trillions of dollars. What we pay to keep Ukraine free is in our interest even if we are cold hearted people who care nothing for freedom or democracy. If we are entirely self-interested, Ukraine is a no brainer. In fact, Taiwan is far more of a question. Will taking Taiwan really make China that much stronger? I doubt it. Russia taking Ukraine would be a geopolitical disaster.

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  4. Dennis.Trask.Z

    Hawley checked his brain at the door many moons ago. How does one who has all the trappings of intelligence speak with such flawed logic?

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  5. Sean Smith

    "Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley delivered a speech at the Heritage Foundation arguing the American military is overextended. Instead of arming Ukraine, he said, U.S. resources should be diverted to Taiwan and the Pacific to counter aggression by the Chinese government."

    So . . . we can't defend a democracy that has actually been attacked by an aggressive dictatorship so that we might be better prepared to defend a different democracy that MIGHT be attacked by a different aggressive dictatorship. M'kay.

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  6. Gbm311

    I am with Tom Cotton and so disappointed with Josh Hawley. JD Vance seems to be following in Hawley's footsteps. Clearly, our military is over-extended so let us increase their budget. This is obvious and common sense. We must cut back domestic spending. We need politicians who will agree to discuss the future of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Rick Scott's revised proposal may open that door. Stopping Russia is critically important and Tucker Carlson has been seriously wrong from the get-go.

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    Soniak21

    "Ukraine Fatigue resolution?" All else aside, this seems like a real branding fail. We're supposed to end support for Ukraine because... what? We're tired of this show and want to see what else is on? You can argue that aiding Ukraine isn't a good use of our resources or isn't in our interests (though I'd disagree). But "this is getting boooorrrrrrrrring..." isn't an argument at all.

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    1. RC

      That’s the voter he is appealing to.

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  8. Stevenreedcurtis

    Having spent 15 years overseas in various countries, I think I have a decent idea of what the united States is.

    For the past few generations the left has been on the wrong side. If that changes, I may change my voting.

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  9. Tom.Ostrenga

    Thank you Haley for your wonderful reporting. Great article that brings focus to the facts and what's really going on.

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  10. Ed K

    One wonders if Tucker Carlson, et al., are against supporting Ukraine simply because the Democrats by and large support it.

    I never thought I'd live to see the day when Democrats are more hawkish than Republicans.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Peter_Shalen

      Of course during the period between the two world wars, the Republicans were the party of isolationism and it was the Democrats who became interventionist, at least under Roosevelt.

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      1. Ed K

        Yes, perhaps best personified by Charles Lindberg and all the tawdriness that entailed. I guess the great cosmic pendulum is shifting again.

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          Peter_Shalen

          Lindberg was a horrible example in the '30s. In the '20s, if I remember my high school history correctly, it was Republicans in the Senate, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, who kept us out of the League of Nations. The conventional wisdom used to be that the isolationism of people like Lodge was one of the causes of the Second World War.

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          1. Randall Briggs

            Henry Cabot Lodge was a friend and ally of T. Roosevelt. Neither was an isolationist. They were both what was then called "Atlanticists." They opposed U.S. membership in the LofN under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (which contained the charter of the LofN at President Wilson's insistence). They believed that, under the terms of the treaty, U.S. sovereignty could be compromised. They also both hated Woodrow Wilson, and Wilson returned the hate. So, for reasons of policy, politics, and personality, they were opposed.

            There were basically three groups in the Senate as it debated the Treaty of Versailles: about 18 "Irreconcilables"--mostly Republicans--who would not vote to approve the treaty under any circumstances; 39 "Revisionist" Republicans who would vote to approve an amended version of the Treaty; and 30-some Democrats who would vote for the Treaty as written, but would follow Wilson's directions to vote against any amended version of the treaty. Some of the Democrats were willing to support an amended treaty, but they obeyed Wilson and voted against it. The treaty came up for a vote three times--once as written and twice with reservations. The two votes for the amended treaty came close but did not reach the 2/3 majority required to ratify the treaty. Wilson could have had the U.S. in the LofN, but he demanded that membership be on his terms or not at all. So he got the latter--the U.S. did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles and thus did not join the League of Nations.

            It is often said--incorrectly--that this triggered a period of isolationism. It didn't. The U.S. was active in international affairs even without membership in a collective-security organization. The U.S. hosted and drove the agenda of the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22, which was the first arms-control treaty in history. It produced three major treaties, and these preserved the peace in the 1920s and into the 1930s, when they were not renewed in the increasingly hostile world of the Great Depression. It worked with France to produce the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, an attempt to outlaw war. The U.S. also maintained "observer" status at the LofN, so we were well aware of what was going on in the rest of the world. The U.S. took a harsher response to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria than the League had been able to take, and the League then followed the U.S. lead.

            Our retreat into true isolation began during FDR's presidency, as FDR blew up the London Conference on currency stabilization and the U.S. Congress passed a series of neutrality acts. These acts might have kept us out of another World War I, but they were increasingly useless in the very different situation of the late 1930s.

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            Porouke

            Hard to see how the presence of the United States in the League of Nations would have done much to deter German aggression in the 1930s. Perhaps it could have helped in the Pacific theater as Japan became more and more annoyed with American aid to its allies, but it is still pretty hard to see how western pressure would have curbed their imperial ambitions at the time.

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