Republicans Who Want War ‘To the Hilt’ Against Russia Forget The Lessons Of Iraq

It didn’t escape The notice Conservatives, that Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was wearing the colors of his favorite team’s jersey on the evening of the State of the Union speech. Like millions of the virtue signalers on Facebook who replaced the Black Lives Matter or Covid vaccination logos on their profile pictures, McConnell’s blue and yellow tie was a visual manifestation of His belief Support for Ukraine is the “the most important thing going on in the world.” 

As President Joe Biden’s astonishing success in getting the Senate Republicans to rubber-stamp his decision to spend more than $100 billion on aid to Ukraine last year demonstrated, the Beltway GOP establishment is just as invested in the war in Ukraine as the Democrats.

Some of this is due to the remnants of Reaganite policy towards the Soviet Union. It rightly believed it was necessary to engage and defeat Moscow whenever it tried to expand its reach. Yet despite the fact that Vladimir Putin dreams of reassembling Stalin’s empire, his Russia doesn’t pose the same threat to the West that the Soviet Union did.

That has been demonstrated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s been, to put it mildly, a fiasco that exposed systemic incompetence. Biden may be an option, but it is unlikely.https://www.newsweek.com/polish-scare-should-lesson-those-pushing-endless-war-ukraine-opinion-1760947″>blundering Into a nuclear Third World War scenarioThe Russians do not pose a significant threat to NATO expansion.

Yet Republicans, such as Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., are still sounding the same sort of critique of Biden’s war policy that Republicans also used against weak-kneed Democrats who were soft on the communist threat in the last century. But according to Cotton’s pro-war manifesto published earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal, in which he correctly states that Biden’s indecisiveness and weakness encouraged Putin to do something he didn’t dare try while Trump was president. He also argued Biden isn’t doing enough to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ambitions in the region. 

But a consensus about preserving Ukrainian independence against Putin’s efforts to force it back into Soviet-era satellite status isn’t good enough for GOP hawks. They want a full American commitment to Zelensky’s quest to oust the Russians from every inch of soil that was under Ukrainian sovereignty in 2014. If that means giving Ukraine U.S. fighter jets, cluster bombs, and long-range missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia, then Cotton’s all for it. He believes anything short of a complete Ukrainian victory — however improbable that might be — would be a disaster and wants an American commitment to “war to the hilt” Russia.

That may resonate with Republicans who came of age after the Vietnam War when Americans critiqued leaders who didn’t fight to win the wars they blundered into. He believes America should have had a “strategy of victory” that will put an end to Russia’s ability to threaten Europe and deter China from invading Taiwan.

Beijing poses a threat to U.S. interests, but not like the Moscow regime that is in decline.