A Cynical Deal in Congress May Yet Save Ukraine
The Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck memorably compared laws to sausages: it’s better not to see them being made. That definitely applies to some particularly ugly meat-grinding now happening inside the US Capitol. But if the sausage in question comes out in one piece, it may just save Ukraine. So I’ll close my eyes and eat it.
The geopolitical background is this: Ukraine has so far withstood the unprovoked aggression of Russian President Vladimir Putin largely thanks to help from the US and its Western allies — in the form of intelligence, money and of course weapons. That support remains vital as the struggle becomes a war of attrition. Putin has turned Russia into a war economy churning out ammo, whereas Ukraine is starting to run low, especially in air defenses.
US President Joe Biden understands that and has pledged to keep the cash and kit flowing. Between Putin’s invasion in 2022 and last October, the US gave Ukraine about $75 billion, more than Kyiv received from any other country. Biden wants to send another tranche of $61 billion, which he wrapped into a supplemental budget request to Congress last fall.
The president knew, however, that the Republican conference that controls the House is in internal chaos, held hostage by a far-right cabal beholden to Donald Trump and MAGA. Some of them look askance at Ukraine and make googly eyes at Putin. But like other Republicans (and indeed many Democrats), they’re also pro-Israel and anti-China and worried about the migrant chaos on the Mexican border.
So Biden bundled his request for aid to Ukraine with money to help Israel, restrain China and restore control over the border, for a combined ask of a bit over $100 billion. But that wasn’t good enough for the MAGAs in the House, and its new and weak Republican speaker, Mike Johnson. In regards to the border, they said, Biden has to accept 100% of their demands, no matter how draconian or absurd (like a prohibition on any money for electric vehicles at the Department of Homeland Security).
In the early weeks of 2024, that’s where the journey in fact seemed to be heading: Biden and many Democrats, increasingly worried about both the border and Ukraine, were in effect getting ready to yield — to throttle border crossings more harshly than they ever imagined. But then Trump, the candidate, intervened, with a direct command to Johnson and the MAGAs: Don’t make a deal, especially if it would fix the border problem. Trump needs migrant mayhem during the campaign to keep slamming Biden.
Could anything be more cynical? Trump and his acolytes want to run on a problem they’re deliberately making worse first so that they can promise to make it better later. And it’s hard to think of anything more despicable than to accept the defeat and subjugation of Ukraine as collateral damage in such a scheme.
Fortunately, though, not all Republicans in Congress are MAGAs. Some, including the party’s foreign-policy leaders in both House and Senate, feel as strongly as Biden does that sacrificing Ukraine to Putin would be, as CIA director William Burns puts it, “an own goal of historic proportions.” So the Congressional axis of sanity is now hatching a new and bipartisan plan to prevent the worst.
It would emerge from the Senate. The simple idea, as it’s been described to me, is to take the border issue, originally included for Republicans, out of the supplemental request again, and then to send a smaller package to the House that contains only support for Ukraine, Israel and America’s Asian allies. This new bundle, according to one estimate, could win with comfortable majorities of 80-85 votes (out of 100) in the Senate and 270-300 (out of 435) in the House. The biggest question mark is whether Speaker Johnson would put it to a vote.
Even a wily fox like Iron Chancellor Bismarck would be agape. Republicans would be spiking an attempt to control migration, and tabling a policy they’ve been pretending to demand, so they can keep accusing Biden and his cabinet of the chaos, while graciously nodding through a measure intended to safeguard one of America’s top national-security interests, the survival of Ukraine and future deterrence of Putin.
One wonders how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy sees all this. He’s no stranger to political chicanery or Bismarckian realpolitik — next door and inside NATO, he sees Putin’s fifth column in the form of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Nor is Zelenskiy a novice at intramural rivalry — he’s currently locked horns with his own commander, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, who’s more popular in Ukraine than the president and so far refuses to be fired.
Even so, Zelenskiy can’t be enjoying the sight of his most important ally transacting so cynically in a matter that could determine whether Ukraine can fight on. The sausage-making now happening in Congress, even by its low standards, is something we’ll all wish we’d never seen. It’s also the latest sad sign that polarization and populism are ruining the American republic. But what’s at stake is the survival of Ukraine, and of the postwar international order the US built. If that’s the sausage, let it be made.
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