Shielding Ukraine from America’s Culture Wars

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Ukranian counter offensive grinds on, there is a real threat that some Congressional Republicans may attempt to subvert America's continued military aid to Ukraine as their culture war of "owning the libs" and seeking authoritarianism in this country.  Sadly, far to many evangelicals and far right Republicans admire Putin's dictatorial rule, his war on gays, and the preferences and privileges he has granted to the Russian Orthodox Church.  Indeed, they want something similar here in America.  As the war grinds on it will become increasingly important for the Biden administration, Democrats and right thinking Republicans - admittedly a threatened species - to formulate an argument to disconnect the war in Ukraine from the culture war being fought by the political right here in America.  A column  in the Washington Post looks at the situations:

The cool reception afforded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week by the populist wing of the Republican Party was a reminder: The war in Eastern Europe won’t be exempt from the grinding logic of American polarization. An elite consensus within both parties continues to back Ukraine’s drive, underwritten by U.S. arms, aid and logistics, to repel Russia’s invasion. But right-wing skepticism has been growing and will likely continue to grow as the war persists, inconclusively, into its second year.

It’s easy to condemn or ignore this Republican sentiment. But it might be more productive for Washington to try to wall off the war from the United States’ raging cultural conflicts that distort everything in their path. That would mean justifying Washington’s support for Ukraine not as an open-ended ideological mission but as a limited defense of national sovereignty and a demonstration of U.S. military strength.

Joe Biden’s presidency has been animated by the notion that the United States faces a contest between democracy and autocracy, in which not just Donald Trump but ordinary Republican opposition to parts of Biden’s agenda poses an autocratic threat. . . . If Democrats’ political battle against right-wing populism is the domestic front in the global struggle for democracy, Ukrainians’ armed battle against Russian invaders is its main foreign outpost.

Put aside the merits of assertions that the GOP favors authoritarians, or that the war in Ukraine is principally about promoting democracy. It should be obvious that pressing both claims at once — and linking them together as part of a global ideological vision — won’t persuade Republican voters that continuous U.S. investment in the war serves their interests.

Consider that President George W. Bush’s democracy-promotion justification for the U.S. occupation of Iraq failed to persuade his critics of the war’s wisdom. Bush’s moral case for his foreign policy in some cases fused with the 2000s’ culture war over Christianity, heightening liberal opposition.

To take a much older example: In the early United States, the egalitarian Jeffersonians backed the French Revolution, while the more-conservative Federalists feared and opposed it. Though the new nation wasn’t directly involved, the ideological shockwaves from that European war turbocharged domestic divisions, leading to repression and near civil war during George Washington’s administration.

Ideology is a powerful mobilizer, and Biden’s democracy framing has probably rallied dovish U.S. liberals. Yet most successful American foreign policy projects see their public support stabilize as a consensus forms. On Russia and Ukraine, Americans are split over Biden’s performance, and Republican support for generous U.S. aid, which started sky-high, has deteriorated in recent months.

Ironically, the strongest arguments for Washington’s backing of Ukraine have nothing to do with America’s domestic contest over the meaning of democracy. As Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in April (but the administration has hesitated to repeat since), the United States is successfully weakening Russia’s military, thereby reducing its capacity to undertake future costly aggression. The United States is also upholding the importance of national sovereignty, a cause that is arguably dearer to conservatives and populists than to liberals. . . . . This war, like that one  [Kuwait war], is putting the United States’ military-technological edge on global display.

On the populist side, the best argument for limiting America’s involvement in Ukraine is likewise not ideological but strategic: that the United States is burning through munitions so quickly that it might be weakening Washington’s deterrence capacity in East Asia in the short term. That region is more important to Americans’ prosperity than Ukraine, and is threatened by a far more powerful rival in China.

Foreign wars have a way of becoming bound up in America’s own conception of its national identity. But that doesn’t mean leaders need to lean in to the ideological polarization they produce. As the war enters a new phase, the administration will be forced to start thinking about what kinds of settlements would be acceptable to the United States. It might find public attitudes less volatile — and American strategy easier to define — if it begins to disentangle Ukraine from the culture wars.