Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled Tuesday to Capitol Hill to plead his case.
He was met with skepticism and even some measure of hostility.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) has led the anti-Ukrainian charge, calling Zelensky’s appeals for more aid “disgraceful” and suggesting those persuaded by them would “cut Social Security” to finance foreign corruption.
Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, has expressed interest in continuing to support Zelensky’s cause but only on the conditions “transformative” border-security legislation is passed and the Biden administration articulates a “clear strategy” for the war in Ukraine.
The amalgamated package for Ukraine, the border and Israel the White House is championing is imperfect and will do little to ameliorate the migration crisis devised, built and maintained by the Democratic Party.
Accordingly, Republicans’ reluctance to sign on to it — and even their eagerness to use aid for Ukraine as a bargaining chip — are not incomprehensible.
Nevertheless, they must reject Vance’s position, shared by others in the party, that “not one more penny” should be sent to Ukraine and take action to safeguard not just Zelensky’s people but the United States’ security and standing around the globe.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is an enemy with the means and the intent of undermining America and the world order it upholds.
Putin has allied himself with the totalitarian Chinese Communist Party and mullahs of Iran while sowing chaos, death and destruction in the Middle East and Europe.
The world he seeks to create is one where might makes right and malign actors are able to operate outside the bounds of both human and natural law with impunity.
If he succeeds in annexing all or some significant portion of Ukraine despite the setbacks he’s already suffered, he’ll have accomplished that mission.
His success will be compounded if his victory is attributable to American apathy, as the United States’ credibility as an ally and the leader of the free world would be dealt a potentially fatal blow.
China would be emboldened to the point it might launch a potentially world-war-inducing invasion of Taiwan.
Iran’s expansive terrorist network would take comfort in the fact that the “Great Satan” had blinked.
Indeed, even if you share the professed priorities of the most hysterical critics of Ukraine, who warn that American support for it draws us dangerously close to a nuclear exchange with Russia, abandoning Zelensky and his countrymen is the more perilous path.
The United States and Russia are not presently at war.
But Russia’s incorporation of Ukraine would place Putin on the border of NATO, which America is compelled to defend by treaty.
Given the Russian dictator’s insatiable ambition and the countless lives already sacrificed in service of it, it’s this scenario — not its prevention — that would draw us closer to Armageddon.
The cost of withdrawing entirely on the basis of Vance’s mendacious arguments or even Johnson’s reasonable concerns is just too high.
What’s occurring at the United States’ southern border on a daily basis constitutes a humanitarian crisis and national-security liability.
If Republicans can strike a deal for real immigration reform or even some effective, short-term measures to curtail this national embarrassment, it would be a great credit to them.
But they must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good or allow Democrats’ insistence on owning the disaster at the border to delude them into owning a geopolitical catastrophe.
Both parties have seemed to internalize the idea that choosing the high road is equivalent to surrender in recent years.
It’s a pernicious falsehood holding the country and its allies back.
The stakes are high enough now to demand that Republicans drop it and earn the prize of calling themselves the adults in the room.
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