As Congress Weighs Whether It Can Fund Wars in Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Middle East, the ‘Realist School’ of Foreign Policy May Have Its Moment

As Washington tears itself apart over America’s open-ended financial and military commitment to underwrite Ukraine in its war with Russia, some foreign policy thinkers are urging Washington to consider a countervailing strategy known as realism, which favors more restraint in international affairs and is bidding to have its moment.This view has been building in respect of Ukraine but could yet affect Israel as the Jewish state goes to war against Hamas. President Biden on Tuesday said he would soon go to Congress for more funding for Israel. Yet lawmakers from both parties are voicing skepticism that there will be enough aid to support American commitments to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the most articulate backer of what the realists call the idealist school of foreign policy, weighs in with an editorial titled, “The False Choice Between Ukraine and Israel.” Helping Ukraine, it argues, “won’t rob weapons to fight Hamas or Hezbollah.”The Journal editorial suggests that Mr. Biden’s plan “to ask Congress for appropriations for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan” makes “military and political sense,” in that America is “confronting an authoritarian axis that is increasingly working together.” The “threats to the U.S. and its allies,” the Journal points out, “are growing worldwide,” and it argues that “Congress has an obligation to rearm to meet them.”The battle at Capitol Hill over the future of all this funding — Ukraine is but the newest contender — is turning out to be a test of strength of the realist and restraint school of foreign policy, which opposes the idealist and interventionist camp. Realists place national interests and security above an interventionist approach, favoring diplomacy in conflicts that could become mired in stalemate or threaten to go nuclear.“A significant degradation of our ability to defend our national interest” is the result of diverting America’s military and financial stockpiles to Ukraine, one retired American officer, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, tells the Sun. “What happens if we need to fight? What happens if, God forbid, we should get into a war with China?” he asks.Since the war in Ukraine began, the Biden administration and Congress have directed more than $75 billion in assistance to the country, most of which has gone for weapons systems, training, and intelligence to Ukrainian commanders. This is the first time a European country has been the top recipient of American foreign aid since President Truman’s Marshall Plan following World War II.“There’s no question that Russia’s war in Ukraine has consumed a huge amount of American policy mindshare and a lot of resources, therefore it is distracting from the main arena if the main arena is the China challenge,” a political scientist and a former assistant secretary of state, Graham Allison, tells the Sun.Mr. Allison popularized the theory of the “Thucydides Trap,” which holds that when a rising power — Communist China, say — threatens to displace a leading one — America, say — the most likely outcome is war. Let analysts approach the debate over aid to Ukraine like a “doctor” and abandon their emotions, Mr. Allison urges.“I’m sympathetic and admire hugely the Ukrainians and their bravery and their courage,” Mr. Allison says, “but I try not to let that impact my clinical analysis of what is actually happening.” The facts show that if Ukraine continues regaining land from Russia at its current rate, it would not fully liberate itself in the 21st century, he says. Mr. Allison applauds the Biden administration’s insistence that America will not fight World War III for Ukraine. Americans and Europeans are not willing to send troops to the front lines, as doing so would not be within the vital national interest, Mr. Allison says. “In Washington, ‘vital’ is used promiscuously,” but he looks to the dictionary to define the word as “essential for survival.” A growing number of Republicans in Congress are also questioning the promiscuous use of “vital” interests, fearing that blank checks and an endless stream of military supplies to President Zelensky’s war effort will weaken America’s ability to defend itself from its own adversaries should the need arise. Senator Hawley urges the government to focus instead on “our no. 1 national security threat” — Communist China. “If China invades Taiwan tomorrow, we are not in a position to stop it,” he told reporters prior to Mr. Zelensky’s visit to Washington in September. As Senator Rand Paul tells the Sun, America would even have to borrow from its Communist Chinese adversary to continue funding Ukraine — or, one could add, to defend Taiwan.To other lawmakers, though, unflagging support for Mr. Zelensky’s battle “is an American success story on aiding a partner fighting for freedom,” as Senator Blumenthal, a Democrat, told CBS News the other week. In the same broadcast, Senator Graham, a Republican, argued that the aid packages are the best money the country has spent “since we helped Churchill stand up to the Nazis.”Lieutenant Colonel Davis questions such idealist sentiments: “Is it really the best money we’ve spent?” The retired Army officer has a knack for predicting combat failure. He was one of the earliest public critics among American military officers of the war in Afghanistan, reporting after his visit in 2012 that America would lose, contrary to the military’s public narrative at the time.The “wound” of two decades of American involvement in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Colonel Davis says, stemmed in part from unclear American policy objectives. The same myopia, he argues, is evident in America’s approach to Ukraine. “We don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish,” he says. “We’re just throwing money at Ukraine without thought to what it’s going to cost us.”Or how it will be used, the realist camp argues. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, a professor of international relations at Notre Dame, Michael Desch, notes. Much of American funding “is getting skimmed off the top before it actually reaches the stated purpose,” he tells the Sun. “Until you have a more intrusive oversight apparatus, you don’t know exactly where it’s being siphoned off.”A professor of international relations and history at Boston University, Andrew Bacevich, advocates for an end to the fighting not only for humanitarian purposes, but due to potentially catastrophic geopolitical outcomes. “I worry a lot about Putin being pressed into a corner and deciding that there is a role for Russia’s nuclear weapons,” he says. “I don’t understand why there’s not more attention given to the nuclear threat.”While foreign policy idealists emphasize America’s exceptional duty to intervene in global affairs, realists argue for America to prioritize its own interests. The way Secretary Kissinger famously articulated the point is that “realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision.” Or, as Mr. Allison puts it, realism “aspires to shape a world that’s better.”To Mr. Allison, it is in America’s interest to support Ukraine through money, arms, and intelligence assistance. He urges Europe to match America’s level of support. “Defeating Putin’s imperial ambitions in this case is a big plus for the U.S.,” he says. Had the war been a “cakewalk” in which Mr. Putin “erased Ukraine from the map,” Mr. Allison asks, “would he have become more ambitious and maybe even look at some NATO countries, like Latvia?”Yet not all realists are of one mind. Mr. Desch, a self-described “card-carrying realist,” opposes a deeply engaged American foreign policy. Similarly, a professor of intelligence and national security at Texas A&M’s school of government, Christopher Layne, warns of “the dangers of American hubris.” He fears American hawkishness toward China, asking the Sun, “Is it always important for the United States to intervene militarily?”One example of such “hubris” under the veil of idealism is, in Mr. Layne’s view, admitting into the North Atlantic Treaty former satellite states under Soviet rule, which he says was a “huge mistake.” He says it set the U.S. toward of “path dependency,” an engineering term denoting the phenomenon of initial decisions making it difficult to reverse a course of action. That’s the phenomenon that America faces in weighing further aid to Ukraine. It’s nudged to do so by, realists fear, path dependency arising from its earlier funding. Yet realists, if that’s what they are, are contending with an idealist camp that is confident in the path America has been, on a bipartisan basis, pursuing in Ukraine, among other challenges.In the face of this bipartisan coalition, Mr. Bacevich frets, “to say anything that would suggest that you’re not in favor of allied victory by Ukraine is to be marked as appeaser.” He warns that this “absence of any serious diplomatic effort to bring about a resolution of this to end the violence is a grave deficiency in the U.S. posture.” Is there a compromise camp? Verbal support of Ukraine does not have to result in monetary action, one analyst, Julie Thompson-Gomez of the John Quincy Adams Society, a network of foreign policy professionals and students, argues. “America’s heart is with Ukraine, but more of her money doesn’t necessarily have to be,” she says.Ms. Thompson-Gomez quotes President John Quincy Adams’s July 4, 1821, address to the House of Representatives, the spirit of which underlies her organization’s mission. “She goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy,” Adams said of America. What Congress will have to confront in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, though, is the reminder that while we may not search for monsters to destroy, sometimes the monsters come looking for us.

As Congress Weighs Whether It Can Fund Wars in Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Middle East, the ‘Realist School’ of Foreign Policy May Have Its Moment

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