Small-Minded Party Politics

U.S. military aid to Ukraine is not yet a done deal. Republicans are taking a gamble. Therefore, it’s too early to celebrate.

There are many very good reasons in parliamentary democracies why billions in military aid to warring parties abroad should be discussed in detail and may be controversial. However, what Congress has been doing for months has absolutely nothing to do with any of those reasons. Since the beginning of October, the Biden administration has endeavored to get new funding approved to keep supporting Ukraine, in particular in its defensive struggle against the Russian invasion.

But instead of discussing military and political perspectives of the war and coming to a decision accordingly, Republicans linked the topic to the situation at the U.S. southern border and demanded massive spending first to hold back the influx of migrants there.

The Biden administration and the Democrats begrudgingly went along with this and, for many weeks, negotiated a package of more than $15 billion for border security in the Senate — only to have it rejected again by the Republicans. In the meantime, prospective Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump instructed them not to agree to any deal that could spoil his most important campaign issue.

The inconceivable, small-minded irresponsibility the Republicans display under Trump’s outside leadership makes one shudder. As if it were about nothing, as if the many thousands of human lives and possibly the future of the global security architecture didn’t depend on these decisions or lack thereof.

The United States has never been an especially good partner for advancing new initiatives on the world stage in election years. However, the basic consensus was generally enough to at least remain reliable, especially in times of war. That is over. Members of Congress and senators are also caught in a constant paradox. According to cumulative polls, 82% of Americans believe Congress does not do its job correctly.

No wonder, when at least one of the houses of Congress is busy around the clock preventing practically all legislation. And yet every single member of Congress regularly makes the decision that the particular political behavior they display serves their political career the most — and they are usually right about that.

Here, dysfunctional, polarized political communication in the public sphere strikes back at the decision-making level, causing fear. In comparison, the ever-quarreling German traffic light coalition* looks like an efficient machine. Not a good sign. Not for Ukraine, not for the rest of the world.

*Editor’s Note: In German politics, a traffic light coalition is a coalition government of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Free Democratic Party and Alliance 90/The Greens. It is named after the parties’ traditional colors, respectively red, yellow, and green, matching the color sequence of a traffic light.