UPDATE 7/14: The vote on the cluster munitions amendment, which would have prevented any of the weapons from being sent to Ukraine, was defeated late Thursday night by a vote of 147-276 — with 49 Democrats joining 98 Republicans in favor of the measure.
Late last night, the Rules Committee decided to block a bipartisan proposal to prevent the export of cluster munitions in favor of a last-minute amendment sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that would only stop transfers to Ukraine.
The surprise decision came just two days after a broader proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act — led by Reps. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — earned support from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who agreed to co-sponsor the effort.
The bipartisan amendment — aimed in the near term at blocking Biden’s decision to send the cluster munitions to Ukraine — originally appeared sure to get a vote after the chair and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday that they had no opposition to a debate on the issue.
The decision to move forward with Greene’s amendment drew sharp criticism from Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who was a co-sponsor on the original amendment.
“You may lose Democratic support because the implication here is that we’re okay with sending [cluster munitions] to other places,” argued McGovern.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is now the chief author of this. I’m someone who thinks we ought to help Ukraine push back on Russian aggression. She has a very different opinion on that,” he continued. “So you’re taking what could be a bipartisan amendment […] and you’ve turned it into something that is now simply an anti-Ukraine amendment.”
Some have speculated that the decision to kill the Jacobs amendment in favor of the Greene amendment is a “poison pill” aimed at reducing support for blocking the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine. But Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) argued that the move was a practical attempt to attract Republican support for the proposal.
“We found support in our own conference was greater for the limited amendment, and I would like to see this passed,” Massie said during the Rules Committee discussion.
The split highlights the partisan challenges facing lawmakers with growing concerns about how the Biden administration is handling the war in Ukraine. While some Republicans, including Greene, have argued that the conflict is an expensive distraction from other security issues, few Democrats are prepared to publicly split with the administration on the best path to ending the war.
The divide is particularly thorny when it comes to cluster munitions. The Biden administration says that the controversial weapons — which leave behind unexploded munitions that continue to kill civilians long after conflicts — are the only ammunition that the U.S. can send Ukraine as it burns through artillery in its slower-than-expected counteroffensive.
Prominent progressive Democrats — including Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) — have slammed this logic as short-sighted and immoral. “[I]t’s essential in this process that we maintain our fidelity to just means as well as just ends,” Raskin wrote in a statement. “[W]e should not furnish weaponry designed to maximize suffering or that inherently threatens the injury and loss of life, including those of civilian noncombatants.”
But progressive Democrats are unlikely to vocally support a bill put forward by Greene — a far-right lawmaker with a history of controversial statements about everything from racism to the war in Ukraine. And Greene may even struggle to garner support from her conservative colleagues, who removed her from the House Freedom Caucus this week.
These theories will be put to the test later today when the amendment goes to the floor for a vote. Meanwhile, Ukraine announced this morning that it has already started to receive cluster munitions from the United States. The weapons are “in the hands of our defense forces,” according to a Ukrainian military spokesperson.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=600&height=600&quality=90&coordinates=483%2C0%2C483%2C0)