As chief sponsor to Kiev in the ongoing Ukrainian security crisis, Washington has the right to tell Kiev when enough is enough as far as US arms deliveries are concerned, and that time is right now, says staunch anti-interventionist and veteran paleo-conservative commentator Pat Buchanan.
Pointing to the $38 billion in new assistance requested by the Biden White House last month ahead of the convening of a new Congress where Republicans will control the House of Representatives, Buchanan, a former advisor to presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, asked what interest Americans have in granting the request, besides possibly igniting a war with Russia.
“The US ought not dictate to Kiev when it should move to the negotiating track to end this war. But we Americans do have, given our indispensable contributions to the Ukrainian war effort, the right to tell Kiev when we believe that the risks of further fighting exceed any potential gain for us; and, if Kiev is determined to fight on, to give notice that Ukraine will be doing so without any more US munitions,” Buchanan wrote in a recent op-ed.
“Great powers should never cede to lesser powers, unconnected to their vital interests, the capacity to drag them into unwanted wars,” Buchanan emphasized, pointing to the risks posed by Washington continuing to finance the Ukraine conflict with $38 billion in new aid, which would “virtually guarantee” that fighting continues into the spring, as the suffering of ordinary Ukrainians grows.
The commentator stressed that given the US’s decisive financial contribution to propping up the Kiev government, Americans “also need to have a voice” in saying when the conflict ends, and that for the US, the “greatest” interest lies not in who controls the Donbass, Kherson, or Central and Eastern Europe as a whole for that matter, but in avoiding being drawn directly into situation “that would put us on the escalator to a war with Russia, a world war and perhaps a nuclear war.”
There is “nothing” of strategic value to the US in Central or Eastern Europe worth escalation into a nuclear Armageddon that would kill millions of Americans, the retired politician stressed, pointing out that Moscow and Washington managed to avoid precisely this sort of conflict during the Cold War.
Unfortunately, Buchanan lamented, the ‘War Party’ in Washington remains strong and “eager for the next confrontation” with Russia, as evidenced by the Ukrainian missile incident in Poland in November, which briefly heightened tensions to the brink of World War III as NATO hawks blamed Russia.
Buchanan, 83, has been considered a senior ideologue of the anti-interventionist wing of the Republican Party, represented most prominently in recent years by its pro-Trump ‘MAGA’ faction.
Dozens of GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate voted against the $40 billion Ukraine appropriations bill in May, and promised to fight their neocon rivals for the heart and soul of the party, including on the issue of Ukraine aid, ahead of the midterm vote.
Some senior Republicans including incoming House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have promised to audit assistance to Kiev more thoroughly in the next Congress and to avoid giving the White House the same kind of “blank check” it got in the current one. However, observers have expressed concerns that the latest $38 billion in proposed spending may be rolled into the $1.7 trillion must-pass omnibus budget bill to get it through Congress ahead of the holidays.
3 December 2022, 09:59 GMT