The House vote to approve military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan has shown that America need not stay completely paralyzed by heedless partisan politics. Speaker Mike Johnson has garnered well earned acclaim, risking his position to put policy first. Even a somewhat recalcitrant New York Times columnist is pleased, as well as stunned.
Some credit is also due to an intelligence policy approach. Johnson was lobbied from all angles, but intel briefings reportedly went far to convince him to move the aid bill. Such briefings are not in themselves unexpected. But they fit, right now, with an ongoing initiative by the Biden Administration, releasing sanitized intelligence to the public to debunk misinformation from Russia and others. Taking the risks of sharing sensitive information, to bring truth to light, is a smart strategic move.
Aside from the specific politics of the aid bill, what does this vote tell about U.S. foreign policy? Perhaps only, as noted by Walter Russell Mead, that American fear of doing nothing about multiple crises outweighs an impulse to “stay home” and let things fall as they may. But how do the crises – in the Middle East, in Ukraine, around China, and for that matter at the border – fit together? As Mead puts it, “fear is a good motivator but a bad strategist.” We have told the world we are not inert. What meaning do we want our actions to carry?
In today’s global stress test, America needs to ensure that we exemplify our best purposes and show ourselves an effective actor. Our power remains great but if we let our own ideological discord partisanship set our priorities at cross purposes, power will dissipate. No one’s goals will be served and we coud even put ourselves at existential risk.
Looking at the recipients of aid under this bill, a review of the strategic significance of each – in terms of America’s foundational tenets – offers initial bearings for a cogent strategy.
Taiwan is a state-of-the-art democracy, rule-of-law state, and free society. For the sake of our own fidelity to our founding creed of personal rights and governments constrained to secure those rights, we must defend Taiwan. We hold that all persons have rights, and to allow forcible elimination of a society of established freedom would betray our national self-conception. Other interests are in play with China, but those should follow this priority of acting by our founding. And although we have agreed formally that it is part of China, the PRC has also agreed formally not to undo its autonomy by force. We must defend, by war if necessary, Taiwan’s living freedom.
Ukraine is emerging toward democracy, but has not fully arrived. Regardless of whether its neighbors fear Putin’s next step, regardless of who they are, we are not really defending democracy in Ukraine. Nonetheless, we need to ensure Putin’s defeat. His 2022 invasion is a unilateral use of force, not for any claim of justice but to take something simply because he wants it. Even his 2014 attack was tinged with claims on behalf of pro-Russian populations in the Donbas and Crimea. In that sense it resembled most wars and conflicts that have arisen since 1945. Belligerents almost always cite some injustice, of populations on wrong sides of borders, of oppressed minorities, of disputed boundaries. Only Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait matches Putin’s 2022 use of force for the sake of interest, in bald terms, acting nakedly by “might makes right.” There can be no reversion to the pre-1945 world where a king could “justify” his claims purely by winning a war. Human freedom will only regress if the world slides back to that state of nature. So Ukraine must be defended and Putin must be defeated, as a vital American interest.
Israel is, internally, a modern liberal democracy. That gives America a stake in its survival, as with Taiwan. The difference from the Taiwanese case is the dispute over the justice of Israel’s founding, on lands where an Arab population had been resident. Arab grievances have supported generations of war and political opposition. Those have also taken the form of terrorism and, in October 7, outright barbarism. Israel’s defense has been mixed with expansionism in the West Bank, and, now in Gaza, a horrendous toll of civilian deaths. In the opposing claims and all-around horror, plus the mix of political motives across the region, the situation is truly perplexing. America’s tenets point us in conflicting directions – Israel’s existence versus Palestinian civilian lives, to start with – which cannot be reconciled in any single coherent policy. We have long been committed to Israel’s existence, and abandonment would amount to betrayal. But, while pro-Palestinian advocacy includes anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, there is a basis to question the extent of our support for Israel. In our core values we can only be torn. Politicians’ “answers,” if they don’t acknowledge this perplexity, are not credible.
This review does not aim to advocate or oppose any given policy, but to voice the bottom line of our founding tenets, from the creed of the Declaration of Independence, as the lens through which we must shape our policies. The creed yields no direct prescription, but any American policies must trace, though cogent connecting rationales, to that core of our identity. “Rivalry with China” does not fit; defense of Taiwan’s modern democracy emphatically does. “Democracy” in Ukraine may not last – but Putin’s aggression must remain out of bounds. Israel’s existence is important, but we must account for the disputes over its conduct and even its founding, whatever policies we adopt. These considerations may not seem consequential at first, but setting priorities in this channel now can lead us to conduct consistent with our founding moral tenets and reason for being. And only if we act by our own bottom line can we find internal consensus, and show our purpose coherently in the world.
Common Conviction 