Aid to Ukraine: How the Threat to American Leadership Brought Democrats and Republicans Together

While the House of Representatives has approved substantial aid to Ukraine, the impression is growing among a part of the political class and civil society that the United States has lost control on the international stage.

On Saturday, April 20, after months of back and forth, the House of Representatives passed by a broad majority a new financial and military aid package for Ukraine totaling $61 billion. The Senate will debate the bill early this week.* The last time American lawmakers approved extensive aid for the country was in 2022, before the majority of the House tilted in favor of Republicans. Congress has so far approved $113 billion in aid to Ukraine, with $75 billion going toward direct military, humanitarian, and financial assistance. The April 20 House vote passed separate measures, also with bipartisan support, including sanctions on TikTok, $26 billion in aid for Israel and Gaza, as well as $8 billion for Taiwan.

Nearly half of conservative lawmakers in the House voted in favor of the Ukraine package. For its part, the MAGA faction and other media-friendly extremists opposed it through blind allegiance to Donald Trump, who claims that aid is only prolonging the conflict, and an obsession with never siding with the Democrats on any bill. Threatening House Speaker Mike Johnson, who stood firm, had no effect. Vengeful as they are, Trump loyalists also perpetuate the belief that Ukraine aided Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. There is no evidence of this, while Russian interference in the election in favor of Trump is documented, notably in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in 2019.

Cold War Vision

Johnson undoubtedly took a political risk; but a calculated one. In fact, he visited Mar-a-Lago on April 12 to meet the former president who, according to the American press, did not object to loaning funds to Ukraine (which will likely never be repaid). Was the April 20 vote, then, a sign that a sizeable number of Republican lawmakers are not aligned with Trump—who is not in office, has no political responsibility, but continually speaks into their earpieces—or, more likely, was it a sign of laissez-faire on the part of a Trump, who is mired legal issues as his first criminal trial in the Stormy Daniels affair gets under way? Not to mention his watchword remains that, if he returns to the White House, the war will end immediately. In other words, it remains to be seen.

Russia remains an adversary—to say the least—in the collective view of a Republican Party that no longer has a strong neoconservative voice among its members, yet is still imbued with of a Cold War vision of geopolitics. There is considerable fear that Ukraine, currently in a bad way militarily, could be only one stage of Vladimir Putin’s strategy of Eastern European conquest. And Johnson did say that he would “rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys.” A long war, perhaps, but without American cannon fodder. The trauma of Iraq is still vivid.

The Defense of Weakened Democratic Values

Above all, the fear of losing U.S. global leadership is bringing the two parties—Democrat and Republican—together. This fear is both well-founded and dated. In particular, the defense of democratic values and human rights is being undermined given that American support for Israel (which is much more unconditional among Republicans, who care little about the fate of Palestinians, than among Democrats) reads, on a global scale, like a double standard: Why is the kind of compassion and aid for Ukrainian civilians not accorded, or if so, only scarcely, to Palestinian civilians in Gaza?

This also explains the passage in the House of $13 billion in military aid for Israel, and $9 billion for humanitarian aid in Gaza, which is considerable. Only 37 Democrats voted against the measure, which is less than one might expect and shows that there is no anti-Biden revolt on the matter in Congress. It is likely that Iran’s recent attacks on the Jewish state played a role in the “yes” vote, including on the left.

Around the world, and in a segment of the political class and American civil society, the impression is growing that the U.S. has lost control on the international stage: The Russo-Ukrainian conflict was not supposed to last this long; Russia was not supposed to garner so much support around the world out of mutual, well-understood interests; the transnational pro-Palestinian movement was not supposed to be so determined. The world is more fractured than ever, and peaceful solutions are more out of reach by the day. The prospect of a return to business under a Trump motivated by a transactional vision of international relations (“deals”), the weakness of which was demonstrated by the Abraham Accords, is not reassuring.

*Editor’s update: The Senate passed the $95 billion aid package that included funding for Ukraine on April 23. President Biden subsequently signed the bill into law.