Republican Governor Ron DeSantis strongly suggests he will not support Ukraine further if elected in 2024
Adapted from “UPDATED: The most important front in the Ukraine war is America, not the Donbas,” Trenchant Observations, May 14, 2023, [Update No. 2 ].
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has issued a statement read on Tucker Carlson’s FOX TV program last night stating he did not think Ukraine was a vital national security interest for the U.S.1
He wrote in his written answer to Tucker Carlson’s questionnaire regarding the war the following:
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party – becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration’s virtual “blank check” funding of this conflict for “as long as it takes,” without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.
Without question, peace should be the objective. 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. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.
A policy of “regime change” in Russia (no doubt popular among the DC foreign policy interventionists) would greatly increase the stakes of the conflict, making the use of nuclear weapons more likely. Such a policy would neither stop the death and destruction of the war, nor produce a pro-American, Madisonian constitutionalist in the Kremlin. History indicates that Putin’s successor, in this hypothetical, would likely be even more ruthless. The costs to achieve such a dubious outcome could become astronomical.
The Biden administration’s policies have driven Russia into a de facto alliance with China. Because China has not and will not abide by the embargo, Russia has increased its foreign revenues while China benefits from cheaper fuel. Coupled with his intentional depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and support for the Left’s Green New Deal, Biden has further empowered Russia’s energy-dominated economy and Putin’s war machine at Americans’ expense.
Our citizens are also entitled to know how the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being utilized in Ukraine.
We cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland, especially as tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year from narcotics smuggled across our open border and our weapons arsenals critical for our own security are rapidly being depleted."
Clemens Wergin of Die Welt has provided a quick and cogent analysis from a European perspective. 2
With this statement, DeSantis seems to have disqualified himself from being elected president in 2024. He may win the base of the GOP, but he is not likely to win the general election.
But the risk is there. Donald Trump was not viewed as likely to become president in March of 2016.
With his characterization of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the barbarism of its war crimes in that country as a “territorial dispute”, DeSantis has demonstrated that he doesn’t have the vaguest understanding of international relations in general, or what is going on in Ukraine, in particular. Or that, regardless of what he understands, he is willing to lie and distort the facts in order to placate the Republican primary base.
In terms of the likely impact in the world of DeSantis’s statement, whether his motivation stems from ignorance or from naked ambition and a willingness to do and say anything to win over voters in the 2024 Republican primary elections is really irrelevant. Either ignorance or craven ambition with reckless disregard for the truth should disqualify in the eyes of voters in the 2024 presidential election.3
DeSantis’s response to Carlson’s “questionnaire” is a carefully drafted document which tells us exactly where DeSantis thinks the Republican primary electorate is today or will be in the spring of 2024.
In any event, DeSantis has done us all a big favor. We can all now see, beyond any doubt, that the GOP is likely to become, if it is not already, is the Party of Appeasement of Putin. The PAP.
Link to Tweet:
Clemens Wergin, “‘Gehört nicht dazu’ – Der Mann, der die Ukraine schockt,” Die Welt, den 14. März 2023 (16:45 Uhr).
See,
1) Leo Sands, John Wagner, Dan Lamothe and Meryl Kornfield, “DeSantis dismisses Russian invasion of Ukraine as a ‘territorial dispute’,” Washington Post, March 14, 2023 (updated at 4:07 p.m. EDT).
2) Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, “DeSantis, Backing Away From Ukraine, Angers G.O.P. Hawks; The Florida governor, who joined Donald Trump in declaring that defending Ukraine from Russia was not a vital interest, drew swift condemnations from establishment Republicans," New York Times, March 14, 2023 (5:02 p.m. ET).
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See also “Why I care about the war in Ukraine,” Trenchant Observations, June 26, 2023,