Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fielded a question about the war in Ukraine at the second Republican primary debate on Wednesday night, expressing his preference for ending the war and putting limits on U.S. funding.
Vivek Ramaswamy largely agreed with DeSantis, but they were sharply opposed by former South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who strongly favored more funding for Ukraine’s defense.
The question put to DeSantis by moderator Dana Perino phrased the war in Ukraine as a bargain at $76 billion in U.S. funding so far, or less than five percent of the annual defense budget.
Perino asked if that was money well spent to frustrate the ambitions of Russia’s sinister President Vladimir Putin and “degrade” the capabilities of his military on the grueling battlefields of Ukraine, especially since “there are no U.S. soldiers in the fight.”
“It’s in our interest to end this war, and that’s what I will do as president,” DeSantis replied.
“We are not going to have a blank check,” he said. “We will not have U.S. troops. We’re going to make the Europeans do what they need to do.”
“They’ve sent money to pay bureaucrats’ pensions, and salaries, and funding small businesses halfway around the world,” DeSantis said of the Biden administration, correctly noting that a good deal of the money sent to Ukraine has not been spent on the battlefield.
The governor’s remarks were possibly inspired by a 60 Minutes report on Sunday that examined non-military uses of funds sent to Ukraine, including the items DeSantis mentioned. Subsidies for Ukrainian small businesses proved especially controversial in the days after CBS News aired the report.
“Meanwhile, our own country is being invaded,” DeSantis continued on the debate stage Wednesday night. “We don’t even have control of our own territory. We have got to defend the American people before we even worry about all these other things.”
“I watch these guys in Washington, DC, and they don’t care about the American people,” he said. “They don’t care about the fentanyl deaths. They don’t care about the communities being overrun because of this border. They don’t care about the Mexican drug cartels.”
“As commander-in-chief, I will defend this country’s sovereignty,” he vowed.
Scott objected that “ninety percent of the resources that we sent over to Ukraine is guaranteed – it’s a loan.”
“At the end of the day, ninety percent of the money we send over there is actually in the form of a loan,” he contended, claiming the United States would be repaid by “the NATO alliance.” Scott did not elaborate on how this repayment plan would work or how long it would take.
The other candidates scuffled briefly over whether Scott’s comments were relevant to the discussion at hand, so he shifted to arguing that “our vital national interest is in degrading the Russian military.”
“By degrading the Russian military, we actually keep our homeland safer, we keep our troops at home, and we all understand Article 5 of NATO,” he said.
Article 5 of the NATO charter states that an attack on any member state must be considered an attack on all of them. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so Article 5 has no direct relevance to the Russian invasion, but Scott contended that damaging Russian forces in Ukraine makes it less likely that Moscow would attack a NATO country and trigger Article 5.
“At the end of the day, when you think about the fact that if you want to keep American troops at home — an attack on NATO territory would bring us and our troops in. By degrading the Russian military, we reduce, if not eliminate, an attack on NATO territory,” he said.
Vivek Ramaswamy pushed his way into the discussion, to Scott’s visible irritation.
“Just because Putin is an evil dictator does not mean that Ukraine is good,” Ramaswamy said. “This is a country that has banned eleven opposition parties.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did indeed sign a law in May 2022 banning eleven pro-Russian political parties.”
Nikki Haley attempted to talk over him, saying, “A win for Russia is a win for China. But I forgot — you like China, that’s why you’re okay with it.” Ramaswamy replied, “China is the real enemy, and we’re driving Russia further into China’s arms.”
“We need a reasonable peace plan to end this,” he said, chiding Zelensky for “hailing a Nazi in his own ranks,” alluding to an incident from last week that has proven hugely embarrassing for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Pence loudly interjected that giving up on Ukraine would be “a green light to China to take Taiwan.”
“Peace comes through strength,” Pence declared.
Moderator Stuart Varney seemingly buttressed Ramaswamy’s point by stating that President Joe Biden’s foreign policy has “brought Russia, China, and Iran closer together,” and he asked Christie if “we are not focusing enough on this threat from the new world order.”
Christie replied that all of those threats are “connected” through the war in Ukraine.
“The Chinese are paying for the Russian war in Ukraine,” he said. “The Iranians are supplying more sophisticated weapons, and so are the North Koreans now, as well, with the encouragement of the Chinese.”
China does not directly fund the Russian war effort in Ukraine, as the U.S. and NATO are funding the Ukrainians, and Beijing is technically neutral on the war, perpetually touting a vague “peace plan” that never seems to catch the interest of either Russia or Ukraine.
China’s greatly increased commerce with Russia has indisputably helped the Russian economy weather sanctions, however, and Christie might have been alluding to reports on Wednesday that a host of relatively small Chinese companies have been funneling military equipment to the Russian war machine.
Iran has long been accused of supplying kamikaze drones to Russia, which helped Russia make up for early deficiencies in drone warfare against the Ukrainians. The U.S. and South Korea have both accused Russia of working on deals to procure munitions from North Korea, but no hard evidence of such a deal has been made public as yet.
“The naivete on stage from some of these folks is extraordinary,” Christie complained. “Look, I understand people want to go and talk to Putin. Guess what? So did George W. Bush. So did Barack Obama. So did Donald Trump. And so did Joe Biden, when he said, ‘a small invasion wouldn’t be so bad.’ Every one of them has been wrong.”
Biden’s exact words in the controversial January 2022 statement Christie was referring to were that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine would merit a less severe response from the United States. After an uproar, Biden scrambled to claim that he was talking about non-military actions like cyber espionage, not a minor territorial incursion.
“The fact of the matter is, we need to say right now that the Chinese-Russian alliance is something we have to fight against, and we are not gonna solve it by going over and cuddling up to Vladimir Putin,” Christie said.
“Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was ‘brilliant’ and a ‘great leader,’” Christie continued. “This is the person who is murdering people in his own country, and now — not having enough blood — he’s going to Ukraine to murder innocent civilians and kidnap 23,000 children.”
Trump praised Putin’s maneuvers at the beginning of his Ukraine invasion as “genius” and “very savvy” in a February 2022 radio interview. He was specifically referring to Putin declaring a “big portion of the Ukraine” as two “independent” republics. He derided President Joe Biden for having “no response” to Putin’s strategy.
Putin was actually the one who called Trump “brilliant” in December 2015. Trump declared himself pleased with the compliment and said he would return the favor.
Trump has, on various occasions, praised Putin as a “strong” leader who acts aggressively in Russia’s national interest, unlike American leaders.
Putin did indeed kidnap thousands of Ukrainian children as Christie said, and he has been indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, with an arrest warrant to match.
“Let me tell you, if you think that’s where it’s going to stop — if we give him any of Ukraine, next will be Poland. This is a guy in 1991 who said that was the darkest moment in world history, when the Soviet Union fell. Listen everybody: he wants to put the old band back together, and only America can stop it, and when I’m president, we will,” Christie concluded.
Putin has mourned the fall of the Soviet Union and proclaimed it to be a catastrophe for Russia, or indeed the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th Century.
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