… is the most important task a president does. It’s literally about war and peace.
But this poses a conundrum, because presidential campaigns are waged and won or lost on domestic issues; politics is very much a “what will you do for me” affair. (The softer and more polite way of putting this is encapsulated by the phrase “bread and butter issues.”)
But bread-and-butter issues don’t disrupt our lives or threaten to blow up the world the way foreign conflicts do. Nearly every president faces a foreign crisis, so as a citizen and voter, what I want most in a presidential candidate is someone who can handle whatever will be thrown at them. And keep in mind that our adversaries “test” new presidents to see what they can get away with. I don’t want a weak person in the White House.
While the Republican grassroots is preoccupied with “woke” teachers and school librarians, and transgender boys on girls’ swim teams (how many of these are there in the whole country, a couple dozen?), I’m thinking about how a President Haley or a President DeSantis would react if China invaded Taiwan.
I don’t have to wonder how President Biden would react to a foreign policy crisis. During his half-century in politics, with 36 years in the Senate (including a dozen years as the ranking member or chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) and 8 years as vice president, he was steeped in foreign policy and relations.
That enabled him to thread the needle when Putin invaded Ukraine (with his eye on eastern Europe), or walk the tightrope if you will, between not doing enough to save Ukraine (and other countries on Putin’s bucket list), and provoking a clash between Moscow and NATO that could lead to a nuclear conflict.
He knew how to rally Europe and the American people to Ukraine’s defense, yet act with just enough restraint to keep the conflict confined to Ukraine’s soil — and keep the nuclear demon caged.
Beijing is watching intently. What they don’t see is a weak and vacillating American president.
Now along comes Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who wants to be president, and has built a political career on provoking liberals. Public health crisis? Diss the doctors and fling open Florida to maskless unvaxed crowds, because the GOP grassroots will love it. That Florida has twice the Covid death rate as Washington is a detail nearly all voters will overlook.
Ban the history of slavery and segregation from schools, deport legal asylum seekers from Texas to Massachusetts with Florida taxpayers’ money, attack free speech and abuse whistleblowers, and go after corporations with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs because it’ll give liberals fits — and the GOP grassroots will love it.
DeSantis’ dabbling in foreign policy — and that’s what he is, a dabbler — may be a bridge too far. Even some of his fellow Republicans are shuddering.
AOL News described his foray into Ukraine policy as his “first major test as an alternative to Trump.” (Read story here.) He flunked. His comment that Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is a “territorial dispute” and not a “vital national interest” of the United States landed with a thud even in his own party. It positions him as a modern-day Neville Chamberlain.
Chamberlain was the British leader who bragged about achieving “peace in our time” by appeasing Hitler. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the weak-kneed western leaders of the late 1930s failed to stop Hitler when he could have been stopped, and by appeasing him, Chamberlain strengthened Hitler’s position with his generals and emboldened him to strike first Czechoslovakia and Austria, then Poland followed by France. Appeasement policies made World War 2 inevitable.
In short, Chamberlain is not a politician you want any American president to emulate; and since DeSantis is emulating him, it follows that he shouldn’t be president.
GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) wasn’t shy about making that connection. “The last time someone in Europe claimed the land of others, and tried to take it by force of arms, was Adolf Hitler’s attempt to build a Third Reich. Those who miscalculated Hitler’s intentions paved the way for a wider war and missed many opportunities to stop him early on,” he said, adding, “Now is not the time to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
Electing DeSantis — or Trump, for that matter — is how you repeat those mistakes.
DeSantis’ remarks about Ukraine — which reflect the classic American isolationist thinking that was discredited by the events between the world wars — popped out of his mouth during a friendly on-air chat with Tucker Carlson, who sucks up to Russia so much you wonder if he’s secretly on Putin’s payroll or at least what goods the Russian intelligence services have on him.
GOP Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was also blunt about it. He said, “I think he’s a smart guy. I want to find out more about it, but I hope he [DeSantis] feels like he doesn’t need to take that Tucker Carlson line to be competitive in the primary.” That’s pretty rough; basically he’s saying that DeSantis lets Tucker Carlson do his thinking for him.
The GOP isn’t united on Ukraine. Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, who both want to be president, “have said that the U.S. must ensure that Ukraine defeats Russia.” This may put them at odds with the isolationist wing of their party’s grassroots supporters, but that can’t do any more damage to their ambitions than being anti-Trump already has. The GOP grassroots is still largely a MAGA mob, firmly in Trump’s corner.
At this point everything DeSantis does is solely for the purpose of advancing his big ambitions. There’s political calculation behind every bit of it. AOL News says, “DeSantis has sought to put himself somewhat in the middle of the GOP divide, striking rhetorical notes that resound with the populist isolationism of those Republicans who are more aligned with Trump and influenced by Carlson.”
This has nothing to do with what is the best policy for America or preventing the next world war, it’s purely about pandering for votes not yet locked up by Trump or other candidates.
AOL News continued, “But DeSantis’s implication is that he would continue limited support for Ukraine. ‘The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table,’ he said in his statement to Carlson.” Guess what? That’s an exact description of Biden’s Ukraine policy.
If you want Biden’s policy, vote for Biden, not the guy who would jail teachers for speaking of slavery and segregation in a high school history classroom.
Related story: While China ponders playing peacemaker, “Putin thinks he can outlast western support for Ukraine,” and that could depend on the 2024 U.S. election, as both “DeSantis and Trump seem inclined to stand back and let Putin take pieces of Ukraine.” Read that story here.
Image below: A satirical depiction of Putin walking his dogs
