DeSantis lacks moral clarity on Ukraine
Ron DeSantis’s remarks about Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine have now sustained more scrutiny than some treaties. Americans should want both moral clarity and prudence in our foreign policy. Florida’s Republican governor is showing too little of the first, and many of his critics too little of the second.
Supporters of Ukraine found several reasons for dismay in DeSantis’s response to questions from Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The governor’s characterization of the war as a “territorial dispute” euphemizes Vladimir Putin’s quest to destroy a nation. DeSantis’s claim that President Biden, by siding with Ukraine, has driven Russia and China together — as though those regimes have no free will of their own — is a species of what used to be called “blame America first” rhetoric. DeSantis implied that he might be willing to exert pressure on Ukraine to settle with Russia. And at no point did DeSantis either express the hope that Ukraine would prevail or offer sympathy for its people.
Hawks have split into two camps in reaction. Some excoriate DeSantis for betraying the legacy of Ronald Reagan, ignoring the lessons of Neville Chamberlain and siding with Putin. Others say that presidential candidates’ rhetoric does little to predict how they will act in the White House and that, anyway, DeSantis did not endorse cutting off aid to the Ukrainians. He rejected a policy of “regime change” in Moscow, something Biden foolishly floated in a moment of excitement but has not actually pursued. The governor said that supplying Ukraine with F-16s and long-range missiles should be “off the table,” when it’s not even clear they’re on it.
The most enthusiastic defenders of DeSantis’s remarks are advocates of more restrained foreign policy in general and of avoiding military conflict with Russia in particular. It ought to be possible to place firm limits on our assistance to Ukraine, they think, without drawing accusations of repeating 1938. A policy of maximal opposition to aggression abroad, regardless of circumstances, cannot possibly be the right lesson to take from history.
There is something to be said for each of these reactions, as is perhaps inevitable given that DeSantis seems to have been trying to stake out a position that would be defensible from all sides. It takes no skill in mind-reading to see that he wanted to reassure Carlson that he is broadly with him — seeking above all to reduce the risk of war with Russia — while at the same time not committing himself to any specific course or saying anything as deranged as former president Donald Trump’s recent comment that his enemies in the United States are the greatest threat to Western civilization.
This kind of maneuver might not represent politics at its noblest, but it must above all be deft. DeSantis wasn’t, in a way that raises questions about both his political and diplomatic skills. Skipping the “territorial dispute” line, treating Ukraine’s survival as a vital U.S. interest among many others that sometimes conflict with one another and reiterating his previous condemnations of Putin would have saved DeSantis from half the criticism.
The dust-up over DeSantis echoes one among Democrats last fall. House progressives issued a letter calling for diplomacy, drew fury from hawks and then retracted it. One of the letter-signers explained, “Only Ukrainians have a right to determine the terms by which this war ends.” That episode, too, deserved a mixed verdict. Putin has shown no interest in reaching a settlement, so what’s the point of calling for the Ukrainians to make concessions? But obviously, the United States can, should and has set conditions on its help.
Insisting that it’s wrong, weak or treacherous to consider making those conditions more stringent will likely, in our polarized times, make many Americans warier about the Ukrainian cause. Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression deserves continued U.S. support, but that support could use more realism.