As tensions mount in Eastern Europe amid questions about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will order an invasion of Ukraine, a new poll has found that Americans don’t have much of an appetite to go to war to defend the former Soviet Republic, with a vast majority saying U.S. leaders should focus their attention on domestic issues.
According to a survey conducted by YouGov in conjunction with the Charles Koch Institute that was released on Friday, a plurality of Americans (48 percent) said they either strongly or somewhat oppose “going to war with Russia to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity” should Russia invade. Just 27 percent favored such a move while 24 percent said they didn’t know.
Meanwhile, 73 percent agreed that the United States “should prioritize domestic issues over foreign policy issues,” and just 7 percent agreed that foreign policy should take precedence.
The poll also found little enthusiasm for increasing the U.S. military presence around the world, with 40 percent saying the United States should be less engaged, while 32 percent said it should remain about the same.
Ben Armbruster is the Managing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He has more than a decade of experience working at the intersection of politics, foreign policy, and media. Ben previously held senior editorial and management positions at Media Matters, ThinkProgress, ReThink Media, and Win Without War.
“I think we are closer to…peace than we think.” That’s what Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told ABC News amid his tour of the United States ahead of his speech at the U.N. General Assembly this week.
Zelenskyy appears to believe we are closer to peace in Eastern Europe because of a plan he says is a blueprint to win the war, one that he presented to President Biden on Thursday.
“Partners often say, ‘We will be with Ukraine until its victory.’ Now we clearly show how Ukraine can win and what is needed for this. Very specific things,” Zelenskyy told reporters ahead of the trip. “Let’s do all this today, while all the officials who want victory for Ukraine are still in official positions.”
There are reportedly military, economic, and diplomatic components of the plan which reportedly includes asks to authorize the use of U.S./UK suppliked long range weapons inside Russian territory, to put Ukraine on a path to NATO and EU membership, and increase sanctions on Russia.
While some European leaders are encouraging the Biden administration to okay long range weapon use, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — who is facing domestic pressure to help wind down the war — said this week that “Germany will not support lifting restrictions.”
As for Zelenskyy’s so-called “Victory Plan,” the Wall Street Journal reported this week that “the Biden administration is concerned that the Ukrainian leader’s plan for winning the war against Russia lacks a comprehensive strategy and is little more than a repackaged request for more weapons and the lifting of restrictions on long-range missiles.”
European and U.S. officials also said the plan offers no clear path to victory with the most developed part being, according to the Journal, “the first phase — the requests related to weapons — while the rest of the key elements have fewer specifics.”
“I’m unimpressed, there’s not much new there,” one senior official told the Journal.
Meanwhile, President Biden got ahead of his meeting with Zelensky on Thursday, issuing a statement “on U.S. support for Ukraine.”
“I am announcing a surge in security assistance for Ukraine and a series of additional actions to help Ukraine win this war,” the president said, including allocating all remaining security assistance and including an additional $2.4 billion in aid, providing more long range weapons and air defenses, expanding training for F-16 pilots, and offering tools to combat Russian sanctions evasion and money laundering.
The statement does not say anything about allowing Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with U.S. weapons.
In other Ukraine war related news this week
— Ukraine accused Russia this week of “seeking to illegally seize control of the strategically important Sea of Azov and Kerch Strait, as hearings opened in a high-stakes arbitration case between Kyiv and Moscow,” according to the Associated Press. The hearings — which take place at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague — are the latest in a series of similar cases involving the two sides since Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.
— Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said this week she’s confident that the West can help fund Ukraine’s war effort with the use of Russian assets, according to Politico. “I’m very confident Ukraine will start getting the money in the coming months,” she said. “At this point what we’re talking about is the technicalities.”
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Demonstrators take part in a procession to protest against a bill on "foreign agents" and to support Georgia's membership in the European Union, in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 24, 2024. REUTERS/Irakli Gedenidze
Sixteen years ago, Russia fought a brief war against the Black Sea nation of Georgia. Earlier in September President Joe Biden marked the anniversary, announcing that the United States “remains steadfast in its support of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.”
However, to Biden, sovereignty properly understood does not include resisting America’s wishes. He explained that “we remain committed to the Georgian people and their Euro-Atlantic aspirations [emphasis added].” He sharply criticized the “Georgian government’s anti-democratic actions, exemplified by the Kremlin-style ‘foreign agents’ law and Georgian government officials’ false statements, which are inconsistent with EU and NATO membership norms [emphasis added].”
This was further amplified last week when the U.S. announced a raft of sanctions on two Georgian officials and more than 60 individuals in the former Soviet state over human rights abuses and anti-democratic actions — all stemming from the fallout and protests of the government’s passage of a controversial foreign influence law.
“The United States remains deeply concerned by the ongoing anti-democratic actions of the Georgian government, which are incompatible with membership norms of the European Union and NATO,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday.
“In addition to the passage of the so-called ‘foreign influence law,’ we have also seen the Georgian government repeatedly violently crack down on Georgian citizens who protested that law.” Politics has been unsettled since the October 2020 parliamentary election, which the opposition refused to accept despite observers finding it to be basically free and competitive. Although demonstrators hoisted the banner of democracy, Georgia Dream has won three straight elections going back to 2012.
Nor is passage of a “foreign agents” bill inherently undemocratic, let alone “Russian inspired,” as the Biden administration charged. The new law only requires groups to disclose foreign funding if the contribution accounts for a fifth or more of their budget. By its own terms “this Law regulates the registration of an entity as an organization pursuing the interest of a foreign power and other issues related to the transparency of the activities of an organization pursuing the interest of a foreign power,” and “may not restrict the activities of an entity registered as an organization pursuing the interest of a foreign power on the basis of this Law.”
However, the State Department insisted that, “The draft legislation poses a threat to civil society organizations whose work benefits the lives of everyday citizens of Georgia.” The European Commission’s “Venice Commission” concluded: “Being designated as an entity pursuing the interests of a foreign power under the Law has serious implications as it undermines both the financial stability and credibility of the organizations targeted as well as their operations. … The persistent and stigmatizing obstacles concentrated in the hands of the state create a chilling effect.”
Alas, allied accusers have little credibility. Noted Serge Schmemann of the New York Times: “while Americans and Europeans are ramping up the pressure to take down Georgia’s bill, they might take a look at their own ‘foreign agent’ legislation to ensure that it never becomes weaponized for political reasons.”
But it is too late, at least in the US. The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires agents of “foreign principals”— defined as foreign governments, political parties, entities, and people — to register. Engaging in political or PR activities, collecting or spending money, and representing foreign principals to the U.S. government make one a foreign agent, subject to FARA’s registration, disclosure, and record-keeping requirements.
The law firm Covington & Burling warned: “FARA is written so broadly that, if read literally, it could potentially require registration even for some routine business activities of law firms and “FARA has no de minimis threshold. It can be triggered by even the slightest activity that means any one of the statutory triggers.”
As for Georgia, one suspects Tbilisi’s target is U.S. and European support for de facto regime change. Of course, Washington doesn’t put it that way. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller echoed Biden: “We are deeply concerned that draft legislation introduced into Georgia’s parliament will derail Georgia from its European path and harm civil society organizations improving the lives of Georgian citizens. We urge the government of Georgia to advance its EU aspirations.”
Allied governments are funding groups to attain a particular policy end. This is not new: U.S.-backed groups active in the Balkans have studiously favored liberal and Eurocratic parties over traditional and nationalistic ones, no matter how democratic the latter.
Is the Georgian legislation overly broad and badly designed? Perhaps, but many of the arguments against the legislation are self-serving. Contended a European analyst: “If the government claims to be concerned with how dependent much of Georgian civil society is on foreign funding, it could make more local funding available.” So Tbilisi is to blame for not subsidizing its critics?
In any case, legislative imperfection hardly justifies cutting off aid and restricting visas, and halting EU accession discussions, as the U.S. and EU have done, respectively. One could make the same critique of plenty of laws in Washington, Brussels, and capitals of the EU’s 27 member states. Could the law be misused, as it is, apparently, in the U.S. as well as Russia? Certainly.
Indeed, the Georgian Dream government deserves criticism, having forcefully cracked down on protests. Last month Human Rights Watch warned: “Georgian authorities have yet to demonstrate that they are conducting effective investigations into a spate of violent attacks on civic and political activists over recent months …. Impunity for these attacks risks encouraging further political violence and instability in the run-up to the country’s parliamentary elections in October 2024.”
Moreover, the government is threatening to ban the major opposition party, Saakashvili’s United National Movement, and other opponents as well.
For these actions, as well as abuse of any other laws, Tbilisi should be held accountable. Nevertheless, Western states should stop attempting to dictate other nations’ internal politics. Biden’s paean to Georgian sovereignty is disingenuous. Washington respects the independence of other governments to the extent that they act as Washington desires.
Indeed, the U.S. has been the world’s busiest election meddler: a Carnegie-Mellon study detailed how America had intervened in other nations’ elections 81 times between 1945 and 2000.
And despite the attacks on the Georgia Dream government for not joining Kyiv in adopting an anti-Moscow position, the former has successfully defended Georgian sovereignty. Observed the Quincy Institute’s Anatol Lieven: “Rather than a desire to follow Moscow, Georgian policy in fact reflects what CIA Director William Burns has called the ‘hedging middle,’ subservient neither to Russia nor the West, and determined by the official view of what constitutes Georgian national interests.”
The opposition complains that the government might make concessions to Russia. However, Tbilisi’s policy has been far more effective than Ukraine’s. Georgia remains free, even profiting from business with its overweening neighbor. Adapting to reality seems a small price to pay for not just survival, but independence, peace, and prosperity.
Obeying allies’ demand to help contain Moscow would leave Georgia to pay the price, as it did in the 2008 war, when it forlornly waited for American support. And as has Ukraine, with allied governments refusing to enter the conflict despite having rejected accommodation and compromise that might have forestalled the ongoing war.
Ultimately, the solution to improper behavior by the Georgian government lies with the Georgian people. With an October election pending, even one of Tbilisi’s sharpest critics says that the opposition should make its case to domestic voters, not foreign governments. Washington should remember John Quincy Adams’ admonition for a young America to avoid becoming “the dictatress of the world,” when “she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
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Former Vice-President of the United States Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney take part in a USA TODAY interview. (USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect)
Efforts to bolster the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris by the D.C. foreign policy establishment kicked into overdrive over the course of the past week with the near simultaneous release of two open letters signed by hundreds of former U.S. national security officials.
It is an accelerated version of previous campaigns in 2016 and 2020, where ex-officials and military officers on both sides of the aisle vocalizing major opposition to Trump offer to give national security cred to the Democratic candidate — in this case Harris. For their part, the candidate virtually ignores that many of these endorsements are in many cases coming from odious individuals, including architects of wars and interventions that Democrats have openly criticized as stains on recent American history.
The first was a letter signed by over 100 former Republican national security officials stating that while they, alumni of every Republican administration from Reagan to Trump, “expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues” they also “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.”
According to the former GOP officials, Trump’s “susceptibility to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, unusual affinity for other authoritarian leaders, contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior, and chaotic national security decision-making” render him a danger to U.S. national security interests.
Critics of course point out that many of these people are the same Washington creatures who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited from them for 20 years straight — and until this day support cruel, authoritarian dictators when convenient to U.S. policy. They are not wrong.
As a group, the signatories of the first letter are a very mixed bag. The missive does feature a few sensible, responsible pillars of the Washington establishment, including those of former defense secretary (and U.S. senator) Chuck Hagel, and former FBI and CIA director William Webster.
Yet for the most part, the letter carried with it the odor of the consensus minded War Party, if not 9/11-era neoconservatism. In the past this would have been a problem for traditionally liberal and progressive outlets, but Mother Jones and the New Republic were quick to applaud the letter as a “win” for the Harris campaign. Not surprisingly, only The Nation has called out their fellow liberals and progressives for making common cause with the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, both of whom have also endorsed Harris in recent days (except for columnist Joan Walsh, who found Liz Cheney's endorsement of Harris "strangely moving," writing, "Liz, I told you we could find common ground. Let’s have a cup of coffee. Or even a beer?"
This columnist at Al Jazeera, however, offers no stated desire for beers with the Cheneys, particularly father Dick. “What makes Cheney’s endorsement, and the Democratic Party’s embrace of it, particularly galling is the way in which they gloss over these past sins in order to paint him as a guardian of American values,” charged Howard University Law school professor Ziyad Motola.
Just so.
The letter features dozens of embittered Republican hawks who claim to deplore Trump’s “unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic's time-tested principles of constitutional governance” when they evinced no such concerns when they worked for the likes of George W. Bush, Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and old boss John Ashcroft during the Global War on Terror.
Among the signatories is a pair of neocons with ties to Johns Hopkins SAIS, Eliot Cohen and Eric Edelman — the latter fresh off of co-chairing the RAND Corporation’s congressional mandated Committee on the National Defense Strategy which called for (what else?) rather generous increases in defense spending for a multi-theater war against China and Russia.
Former NSA and CIA director Michael V. Hayden, long said to be among the chief architects of the Bush/Cheney administration’s program of warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and denier of CIA torture, also signed on.
The first Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, also added his ‘John Hancock’ to the letter. Negroponte, one of the architects of our blood-stained interventions in Latin America under President Reagan, now apparently loses sleep over Trump’s “contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior.”
The second letter, boasting 700 signers and released on September 22 by the group National Security Leaders 4 America, is a more serious effort if only because the caliber of people, whether you agree or disagree with them, is far higher.
The bipartisan effort portrays the choice in November, perhaps correctly, as one between “serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness.”
“Vice President Harris defends America’s democratic ideals, while former President Donald Trump endangers them,” the group said, adding:
Vice President Harris has proven she is an effective leader able to advance American national security interests. Her relentless diplomacy with allies around the globe preserved a united front in support of Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. She grasps the reality of American military deterrence, promising to preserve the American military’s status as the most “lethal” force in the world.
While the signatories were mainly retired generals, flag officers, and diplomats, the letter boasted its own share of armchair militarists, very much including the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The inclusion of a number of the most reckless and irresponsible civilian national security leaders of our time only serves to dilute the seriousness of the message — any letter featuring John Brennan, Victoria Nuland, Michael McFaul and Leon Panetta is one that can and should be safely ignored.
The message coming from Washington’s foreign policy elite, many of them directly responsible for the counterproductive and failed U.S wars and interventions of the last 40 years, is loud and clear. They do not like, trust, and indeed, perhaps even fear, the return of Trump to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Harris campaign appears willing to exploit this politically with the unfortunate byproduct being the exclusion of any serious conversation about the odious ghosts of America’s past.
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