ALEXANDER J. MOTYL
The “Proposed Plan for Victory in Ukraine,” authored by three prominent Republican congressmen, may be one of the most important documents to come out of Washington in the last two years.
Drafted by Chairman Michael McCaul of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairman Mike Rogers of the Armed Services Committee, and Chairman Mike Turner of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the plan is both a decisive repudiation of the pro-Russian stance of MAGA Republicans and their spiritual leader, Donald Trump, and a slap in the face of Democrats who aren’t sure how they want the Russo-Ukrainian war to end.
In short, the plan is right on target. Were it not for its unnecessarily disrespectful language about President Joe Biden — whom the three generally refer to as “Biden,” just as they refer to “Putin,” thereby setting up an equivalence between the two — the document could easily serve as a bipartisan set of policy proposals.
Read page 6 of the plan:
“House Republicans believe President Biden should present a credible plan for victory and arm Ukraine with the weapons it needs to win as soon as possible.” An obvious point, but one worth emphasizing given the Biden administration’s roundly criticized “too little, too late” policy of providing weapons.
“Since the first day of the war, Biden’s debilitating hesitation to provide critical weapons to Ukraine has delayed a Ukrainian victory.”
True, too, alas. Now we get to the core of the plan:
“Ukraine needs the longest-range variant of ATACMS, F-16s, and sufficient quantities of cluster munitions, artillery, air defenses, and armor to make a difference on the battlefield. … A path to victory for Ukraine will require (1) providing critical weapons to Ukraine at the speed of relevance, (2) tightening sanctions on the Putin regime, and (3) transferring [$300 billion of] frozen Russian sovereign assets to Ukraine.”
Ukrainian policymakers can take pride in the fact that this is precisely what they’ve been arguing since Russia invaded on February 24, 2022. It appears to have taken over 20 months for American policymakers to recognize the obvious — during which time tens of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of thousands of Russians have needlessly died in Putin’s mad escapade. But, when one is trapped, like Ukraine, between the Scylla of Russian imperialism and the Charybdis of Western torpor, one needs to be thankful for any movement toward sobriety.
The three Republicans conclude their plan with an outright rejection of the geopolitically nonsensical belief that one can and should negotiate with Putin immediately. Instead, the congressmen correctly state that their “strategy will ensure Ukraine is able to make the needed advances on the battlefield to force Putin to the negotiating table. If Ukraine doesn’t negotiate from a position of strength, there can be no lasting peace.”
Exactly.
The plan then goes on to make a variety of ancillary arguments, some on target, some not. Among the former is the recognition that “as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. ranks just 30th in total assistance to Ukraine, with Poland, the Baltic states, the UK, Norway, and others contributing more in terms of this metric. In terms of security assistance by GDP, the U.S. ranks 14th. Europe has also committed more non-security assistance to Ukraine than the United States.” In a word, the Europeans are no deadbeats. (Which, by the way, means that the ongoing deadlock in Washington over immigrants and aid for Ukraine and Israel is not as debilitating for Ukraine as some may think.)
Also on target is the plan’s concern with questions of human rights: “Russian forces have committed countless war crimes in Ukraine, including executions, torture, and rape. Russia has also kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and sent them to so-called re-education camps in Russia and occupied Ukraine. Those responsible for these crimes must face justice.”
Indeed. My only quibble is that the document should have mentioned Russia’s leading war criminal, Putin, by name.
Less persuasive is the trio’s claim that “President Trump understood Putin only respects strength” and their evident belief that Trump wasn’t acting by seat-of-the-pants spontaneity but actually had a foreign policy vision. That’s at least open to debate.
Whatever the document’s flaws, its plan for victory in Ukraine proposes a set of policy initiatives that should be amenable to pragmatically oriented Republicans and Democrats, who represent the majority in both houses of Congress.
It would be a tragedy if MAGA politics superseded commonsense.
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