The war in Ukraine is the most important foreign policy issue facing the U.S. president today — but aspiring candidate Ron DeSantis can’t articulate a coherent view. By trying to placate everybody, the Republican governor of Florida is pleasing no one. And his dodging is an insult to the voters he is courting.
Even after officially announcing his presidential run, DeSantis can’t give a straight answer when asked about the Ukraine war. In a May 26 Newsmax interview, he praised former president Donald Trump’s “instinct” of pushing for a settlement, but said he hoped the war would be over before the next presidential inauguration in January 2025. When pressed on what he would do if elected, DeSantis pivoted to China and called on European countries to “do more” for security on their own continent.
Two days earlier, when asked during a Fox News interview what he would do about the Russia-Ukraine war on day one of his presidency, DeSantis said he would first go after “wokeness” in the military. He then reiterated his support for a settlement, without elaborating what it would look like or how he would get there. In DeSantis’s campaign launch event last week on Twitter, Ukraine was not mentioned.
The candidate’s answers all sidestep the crucial question: Does DeSantis support continuing the huge U.S.-led program of military and economic aid or not? Every other GOP presidential candidate is able to answer this question. And every GOP lawmaker will have to weigh in on it this autumn, when Congress will have to vote on billions more in funding.
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Anyone who wants to be commander in chief should be able to lay out a basic plan for the war he or she would inherit. Vague comments on achieving settlements and avoiding quagmires amount to pablum.
Many GOP insiders tell me that DeSantis is trying to avoid taking a side in the growing Republican foreign policy divide between “New Right” national conservatives, who are pushing for broad cuts in Ukraine aid, and traditional Republicans who don’t think their standard-bearer in 2024 should be running against Biden as a dove.
“He’s trying to appeal to the hardcore populists and the regular Republicans, hoping to get enough people from both camps to get through the primary,” one GOP foreign-policy insider told me. “But if the hardcore people want the real thing, they can choose Trump. And if you want the anti-Trump, there are more appealing options.”
DeSantis likely doesn’t care about the criticisms of his Ukraine policy coming from the candidates trailing him — such as Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Chris Sununu or Asa Hutchinson. But he clearly cares about Trump, and the former president is making Ukraine a top issue in his anti-DeSantis efforts. Trump won’t express support for Ukraine at all, promising to end the war with a settlement “within 24 hours.”
In a statement to Tucker Carlson in March, DeSantis called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute,” and said extensive U.S. involvement was not in America’s national interest. Then, facing criticism, he changed his tune, affirming that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. Trump’s response was to accuse DeSantis of using “neocon rhetoric.”
Trump’s callousness and ignorance on Ukraine is pushing many GOP insiders to give DeSantis a temporary pass on the issue. Many Republicans on Capitol Hill and in donor circles assume that DeSantis will back Ukraine if he makes it to the general election, but he just needs to win the primary first.
But what if that assumption is wrong? No one really knows what drives DeSantis on foreign policy these days. Some point to his hiring of a Ukraine hawk as his only known campaign foreign policy adviser. But that doesn’t mean that this adviser’s view will win the day inside a populist-dominated campaign.
Some say DeSantis is a “Jacksonian,” meaning that he thinks that U.S. foreign policy should be limited to a narrow calculation of national interest and that he eschews values promotion abroad. But even leading “Jacksonian” thinker Walter Russell Mead has said continued U.S. aid to Ukraine is crucial — which goes further than DeSantis.
Jennifer Rubin: Technical issues weren’t Ron DeSantis’s biggest problem
“Helping Ukraine is not a charity project to be undertaken out of sentiment. Nor is it a strategic distraction that weakens our hand in the Indo-Pacific,” Mead wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal. “In his blindness and folly, Vladimir Putin has handed the U.S. a golden opportunity. We should seize it with both hands.”
DeSantis’s foreign policy record as a congressman is not a reliable indicator of his current views. He supported U.S. military aid to Ukraine as early as 2014 (along with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement). He was against President Barack Obama’s plan to use force in Syria but later criticized Trump for not defending the Kurds there. In any case, DeSantis doesn’t seem to feel obligated to stick to any of his foreign policy positions from those days.
DeSantis is correct when he says that we can’t know what the Russia-Ukraine war will look like in 2025. That’s why he should tell American voters how he would handle the crisis if he were president now. If DeSantis is just following the polls, his equivocations make sense. But that’s not a sound way to craft national security policy — and it’s certainly not leadership.
Even after officially announcing his presidential run, DeSantis can’t give a straight answer when asked about the Ukraine war. In a May 26 Newsmax interview, he praised former president Donald Trump’s “instinct” of pushing for a settlement, but said he hoped the war would be over before the next presidential inauguration in January 2025. When pressed on what he would do if elected, DeSantis pivoted to China and called on European countries to “do more” for security on their own continent.
Two days earlier, when asked during a Fox News interview what he would do about the Russia-Ukraine war on day one of his presidency, DeSantis said he would first go after “wokeness” in the military. He then reiterated his support for a settlement, without elaborating what it would look like or how he would get there. In DeSantis’s campaign launch event last week on Twitter, Ukraine was not mentioned.
The candidate’s answers all sidestep the crucial question: Does DeSantis support continuing the huge U.S.-led program of military and economic aid or not? Every other GOP presidential candidate is able to answer this question. And every GOP lawmaker will have to weigh in on it this autumn, when Congress will have to vote on billions more in funding.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
Anyone who wants to be commander in chief should be able to lay out a basic plan for the war he or she would inherit. Vague comments on achieving settlements and avoiding quagmires amount to pablum.
Many GOP insiders tell me that DeSantis is trying to avoid taking a side in the growing Republican foreign policy divide between “New Right” national conservatives, who are pushing for broad cuts in Ukraine aid, and traditional Republicans who don’t think their standard-bearer in 2024 should be running against Biden as a dove.
“He’s trying to appeal to the hardcore populists and the regular Republicans, hoping to get enough people from both camps to get through the primary,” one GOP foreign-policy insider told me. “But if the hardcore people want the real thing, they can choose Trump. And if you want the anti-Trump, there are more appealing options.”
DeSantis likely doesn’t care about the criticisms of his Ukraine policy coming from the candidates trailing him — such as Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Chris Sununu or Asa Hutchinson. But he clearly cares about Trump, and the former president is making Ukraine a top issue in his anti-DeSantis efforts. Trump won’t express support for Ukraine at all, promising to end the war with a settlement “within 24 hours.”
In a statement to Tucker Carlson in March, DeSantis called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute,” and said extensive U.S. involvement was not in America’s national interest. Then, facing criticism, he changed his tune, affirming that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. Trump’s response was to accuse DeSantis of using “neocon rhetoric.”
Trump’s callousness and ignorance on Ukraine is pushing many GOP insiders to give DeSantis a temporary pass on the issue. Many Republicans on Capitol Hill and in donor circles assume that DeSantis will back Ukraine if he makes it to the general election, but he just needs to win the primary first.
But what if that assumption is wrong? No one really knows what drives DeSantis on foreign policy these days. Some point to his hiring of a Ukraine hawk as his only known campaign foreign policy adviser. But that doesn’t mean that this adviser’s view will win the day inside a populist-dominated campaign.
Some say DeSantis is a “Jacksonian,” meaning that he thinks that U.S. foreign policy should be limited to a narrow calculation of national interest and that he eschews values promotion abroad. But even leading “Jacksonian” thinker Walter Russell Mead has said continued U.S. aid to Ukraine is crucial — which goes further than DeSantis.
Jennifer Rubin: Technical issues weren’t Ron DeSantis’s biggest problem
“Helping Ukraine is not a charity project to be undertaken out of sentiment. Nor is it a strategic distraction that weakens our hand in the Indo-Pacific,” Mead wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal. “In his blindness and folly, Vladimir Putin has handed the U.S. a golden opportunity. We should seize it with both hands.”
DeSantis’s foreign policy record as a congressman is not a reliable indicator of his current views. He supported U.S. military aid to Ukraine as early as 2014 (along with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement). He was against President Barack Obama’s plan to use force in Syria but later criticized Trump for not defending the Kurds there. In any case, DeSantis doesn’t seem to feel obligated to stick to any of his foreign policy positions from those days.
DeSantis is correct when he says that we can’t know what the Russia-Ukraine war will look like in 2025. That’s why he should tell American voters how he would handle the crisis if he were president now. If DeSantis is just following the polls, his equivocations make sense. But that’s not a sound way to craft national security policy — and it’s certainly not leadership.
