It has been difficult for many observers to understand why so many conservative Republicans, for whom opposition to Russian aggression was once a core foreign-policy tenet, have turned so soft on Russia. Have they developed a new foreign-policy doctrine centered on anti-interventionism? Or are they just rationalizing Donald Trump’s affection for Vladimir Putin? Their response to the conflict between Hamas and Israel has been clarifying.
On October 6, Republican senator Mike Lee, one of his party’s most vocal skeptics of supporting Ukraine since the Russian invasion, shared a social-media message from Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. “Here’s a commonsense idea,” it read. “Until the Biden administration presents a clear strategy for U.S. support of Ukraine, Congress should demand answers, not provide a blank check.”
On October 7, Hamas terrorists conducted a rampage in Israel. Lee’s response to Israel’s defense had a notably different tone. “Israel has a right to defend itself and its people, and my prayers are with the families suffering from these unprovoked attacks,” he wrote. In short order, Lee was sharing tweets arguing that Israel was fighting a war to spare Europe and stating, “Here is everything you need to know about Israel and Palestine: If Palestine had stopped there is peace. If Israel had stopped they are all dead.”
Suddenly a man who appeared indifferent to the principle of self-defense and deeply concerned about excessive spending on military aid had reversed his thinking on both.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack against Israel are obviously different events, and there are many reasons one could rationally devise to approach the two conflicts differently. Yet when you look more closely at the rhetoric the anti-Ukrainian Republicans have employed toward the two conflicts, it’s impossible to find any logical consistency.
Has the Biden administration presented a “clear strategy” for how Israel can defeat Hamas? Obviously not. Yet Republicans are not using this failure to conjure a brilliant plan to end the war as a rationale to cut off funding to Israel.
Likewise, the aphorism “If Palestine had stopped there is peace. If Israel had stopped they are all dead” is more true of Russia and Ukraine than it is of Israel and Hamas. Russia and Ukraine have internationally recognized borders to which the two armies could easily retreat. Simply halting the violence in Israel would not produce a lasting peace.
Senator Josh Hawley, also a critic of Ukraine, has proposed, “Israel is facing existential threat. Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately.” This is utterly backward. While Hamas has carried out horrific violence against Israeli civilians, it has no ability to destroy Israel as a country. Ukraine, on the other hand, actually does face an existential threat. Russia is attempting to depose its government and turn Ukraine into some kind of subjugated vassal that may or may not retain its putative independence but will practically cease to function as a vehicle for self-determination.
The contrast between the two conflicts reveals which principles actually motivate the GOP’s anti-Ukraine bloc. Lee, Hawley, et al. have offered a combination of rationales for their skepticism of aiding Ukraine. They believe the United States government and military are overextended and should focus on China; they wish to wrest control of Republican policymaking away from neoconservatives and depict support for Ukraine as an extension of the failed Iraq war; they decry the lack of an exit strategy for American involvement (“They want us to be writing checks to Ukraine, direct to their government, forever,” complains Hawley); and they warn the United States might get pulled directly into the war.
All these principles argue even more strongly against supporting Israel than they do against supporting Ukraine. The last point, about avoiding direct U.S. involvement, is especially notable: To support Israel, the United States has sent military assets into the theater of conflict, creating a significant risk, whereas the notion of American direct fighting against Russia remains totally theoretical.
Yet none of the ideas that supposedly motivate the anti-anti-Russia Republicans have come up in their analysis of Israel and Hamas, despite obvious applications. So what is their true motivation?
A more revealing explanation comes from J.D. Vance, yet another anti-anti-Russian Republican. “A lot of the anti-Russia obsession on the left has nothing to do with Ukraine,” he wrote last month. “It’s a revenge fantasy over 2016. They blame Russia for Donald Trump’s election and they’ll bleed Ukraine dry for payback.”
As an analysis of the left, this is silly: If American liberals are just angry over Russia’s support for Trump, why did pro-Ukraine sentiment break out across the globe? Why is NATO pouring resources into Ukraine’s defense?
As a confession of the right’s own response, however, it’s quite telling. The schism within the GOP over Russia maps closely onto its schism over Donald Trump. Conservatives that grudgingly tolerate Trump’s leadership of the party (National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Mitch McConnell, etc.) fiercely support Ukraine’s defense. Conservatives who have enthusiastically supported Trump and his various authoritarian gambits (the Federalist, the Heritage Foundation, Hawley, Lee, most far-right House Republicans) have expressed the most skepticism toward Kyiv. They disparage the Ukrainian flags and the pro-Ukrainian sentiment they otherwise tend to laud as “moral clarity.”
It is difficult to come up with a coherent explanation that does not center on Trump. It’s not that Trump is controlling them. Rather, they understand perfectly well that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump, and Trump both welcomed and exploited Russia’s hack-and-leak operation on his behalf. Trump adopted a series of strangely Russophilic positions, from issues like NATO’s security guarantee to idiosyncratic historical positions like saying the Soviets were forced to invade Afghanistan to stop terrorism.
It is certainly true that Russia’s role in helping Trump — and Trump’s creepy affection for Vladimir Putin — is contributing to American liberal sympathy for Ukraine. But support for Ukraine is a position Americans would naturally take.
The right’s lack of interest in defending the principle of self-defense against aggression, the crocodile tears about military overreach, and hyperventilated warnings about American entry into the war, are all sharp heel turns. The war in Israel confirms that none of these newfound anti-interventionist principles have actually taken root in a serious way. The Republican anti-Ukraine wing is simply rationalizing its loyalty to Trump.
