The NPR Politics Podcast - Divisions Grow Over Sending More Aid To Ukraine

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

The country's wartime president heads to the United Nations and to Capitol Hill this week to make the case for more support. But the topic of further funding Ukraine's war efforts is increasingly dividing the American public, with Republicans in Congress especially split. This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and political correspondent Susan Davis.This episode was produced by Casey Morell and Elena Moore. Our editor is Eric McDaniel, and our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is Morgan, doing the dishes while my wonderful, amazing partner puts our two-year-old to bed. This podcast was recorded at... 1.06 p.m. on September 18th, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear it.

Like, hopefully, our toddler will have accepted the gentle slumber of tonight. Okay, here's the show. I know that division of labor quite well in my own house. There's something peaceful about listening to someone do the dishes. I think I would do a playlist of that. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And we're going to. I cover politics. And we're going to talk about Ukraine today. The war is still continuing,

and there's increased urgency as winter approaches, fighting becomes a lot tougher. And in the U.S., the question over whether to continue funding the Ukrainian war effort is becoming increasingly polarized. And Greg, you were reporting from Ukraine recently. For those of us who have not been following the war every single day, what's new? Bring us up to speed. Sure. The Ukrainians have been pushing this offensive in the southeast of the country. And the goal is to push really like 50 miles south to get to the southeast coast and split the Russian forces in two, leaving them much more vulnerable. But it has not gone as planned. The Ukrainians have made some advances since they launched this in June.

They've moved up a few miles here, a few miles there, but it's really, really tough fighting. The Russians are dug in. They're contesting every piece of territory. And just a quick step back, last year, we saw territory change hands all the time and move around. This year, very little territory is changing hands. Neither side is able to make much of an advance. And I've seen a lot of reporting on, you know, it seems like as you get closer to winter, fighting becomes more difficult. Can you explain that a little bit? Does it really, how impossible is it, I guess, to make advances once the winter sets in? Not impossible, but much more difficult. In the fall, you get a lot of rain. Ukraine is an incredibly lush place.

But that means if you're off-road, it's muddy, and it's very difficult to move heavy armored vehicles through mud, to move troops through mud. And then you hit this bitterly cold winter where things ice over, a lot of snow makes it even more difficult. Not impossible. Wars are fought in the winter. Guns still fire in the winter. But it's just much more difficult, much easier to be in a defensive position anytime, but particularly when the weather is cold and it's hard for an offensive army to make moves and be nimble and mobile. So, Sue, as this war in Ukraine has continued to drag on, the question of financial support has started to become a wedge issue in American politics. And that comes as there is another impending ask for more money from the Biden administration to support Ukraine.

Who is driving the opposition to funding these efforts? The division is happening almost entirely within the Republican Party. And we've seen this division, particularly on foreign policy, accelerate since former President Donald Trump was in office. His more isolationist America First ideology has taken deeper root within the Republican Party. You know, if you don't remember, not too many years ago, people like Rand Paul ran for president, and he was sort of a fringe thinker in the party as making these cases that the US should not be as involved in any almost foreign interventions. Not only are we seeing that division play out in the presidential race for the Republican nomination, but you're seeing it on Capitol Hill where Congress has to vote to approve more Ukraine aid.

I talked to Rand Paul recently about it, and this is what he said. There is no national security interest in us being in Ukraine. Ukraine has a national security interest in not being overrun by Russia. Europe might have a national security interest in not having Russia overrun other borders. There's no national security interest for us in Ukraine. And even if there were, it would be trumped by the fact that we have no money. Rand Paul's not alone in this viewpoint anymore. I talked to senators like Josh Hawley of Missouri, Mike Braun of Indiana, other senators like J.D. Vance of Ohio, all are out there voicing skepticism, if not outright opposition to

additional aid to Ukraine. I do want to make clear, Miles, that I do believe that there is still a majority of support on Capitol Hill to get this Ukraine aid passed. But what used to be a very small fringe part of the party is obviously growing. Yeah, but the Republican Party, to be clear, is not united against this, right? I mean, even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been coming out pretty strongly, right, in favor of funding the Ukrainian war efforts. Sure. I mean, McConnell is a very traditional neoconservative philosophical thinker, right?

Like he believes U.S. intervention in the world, especially on behalf of democracy, is a good thing. He has been very forceful and very public about support for Ukraine. And in a series of recent floor speeches since Congress got back from the August recess, he's been making these long pointed cases in defense of the aid and specifically batting down arguments that members of his own party are making. Usually when senators are doing this kind of thing, it's against the other party. This is clearly directed at Republicans. The arguments against Ukraine that you're hearing is that, you know, Europe needs to do more. We're spending too much money. There's no accounting of where this money is being spent.

And he's been sort of systematically trying to dismantle these cases in public and on the record in the Senate, because I think he's trying to show in the end, ultimately, when this gets a vote, that support for Ukraine still has sizable support from the U.S. Congress. We don't know what that vote's going to be, and it's one that I'm watching very closely. Greg, what do you make about the arguments that some members of the right are making about Ukrainian funding? What do experts in your space think of those arguments? There'll be a lot of pushback, I think, Miles. For starters, we hear the argument that Sue mentioned about Europe needs to step up and do more. Europe has done a lot more and been a lot more united than anybody really was predicting when this began 19 months ago. aid and humanitarian aid together, the Europeans are providing roughly the same amount of money that the Americans are doing. Now, one could argue it's still not enough. They should be doing more.

But it's not nothing. It is quite substantial. It's in the tens and tens of billions of dollars. And that support has held up pretty strongly. There are some divisions in Europe as well as we've seen here in the U.S. But by and large, it's been strong and united so far in Europe. There's also a point that I learned in reporting on this that I think is important for public understanding, too, is that the idea that the US is passing billions of dollars in Ukraine aid is true, but it's not technically all going directly to Ukraine. And this is a point that McConnell made that a lot of the money that has been spent on Ukraine is actually going back into U.S. defense companies and U.S. factories to build more weapons. Basically, the U.S. is like taking its dusty old weapons and giving

those to Ukraine and then using that money to build newer weapons for the U.S. military. And Greg, I wonder specifically about the oversight question. I've seen it brought up a lot that the U.S. is sending billions and billions of dollars into Ukraine, into a country that is kind of famous for how much corruption it's had to deal with. And I've seen specifically comparisons to how much money flowed into Afghanistan during the conflict there? Is that comparison apt here? So it's a fair question to ask for oversight when these billions of dollars are going anywhere. No war in history has been fought without some level of corruption. But there are some real distinctions to make between the war in Ukraine, the war in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. was sending a lot of cash, literally for the Afghan military to pay soldiers in cash. They were sending smaller weapons like rifles that could be sold or exchanged. It was the kind of money and weapons that could easily go into a corrupt kind of deal. Great trade hands easily, yeah. Not so much in Ukraine. The kinds of things the U.S. is sending tend to be large weapon systems. And most recently, we've seen the debate around the F-16 or the HIMARS rockets or the Patriot air defense system. These are massive, massive systems, not the kind of thing you can stick in the trunk of your car and hand off to your buddy. So in that sense, it's not stuff that you can easily exchange in a corrupt way. Now, there's also money going to finance the government. And just the size of the assistance that the U.S. providing needs some oversight. And it's impossible to track everything once it gets into the war zone. But it's fundamentally different in the kinds of material the U.S. is providing to Ukraine

versus Afghanistan. All right, we'll take a quick break. And when we're back, we'll talk about Ukrainian President Zelensky's visit to the United States. And we're back. Sue, can I just ask, you know, you mentioned obviously Donald Trump's presence here is pretty big in terms of pushing the Republican Party towards some of these more isolationist stances. Are there any other influences that have helped make this become such a he has impacted the party. I've spoken to a lot of Republican lawmakers about this, and they don't always like to talk about it on the record because while they still support continued aid to Ukraine, they acknowledge most of their constituents do not. One senior Republican lawmaker told me is it was really the influence of conservative media. For example, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who now has his own platform, has been very against Ukraine intervention and arguing against it. And this lawmaker told me, look, that's had a huge, huge impact on how my constituents

view this. And it has helped turn the tide of their opinion. And if you think about how polarized this issue is now, I was really stunned by this. CNN did a poll just last month asking people if they supported more funding for Ukraine. Nearly seven out of 10 Republicans said no more aid, while nearly six out of 10 Democrats said yes, keep giving them money. I mean, that is a huge gulf of public opinion that we usually see on pretty divisive culture war issues. It's hard to see Republicans coming back into the fold there, especially with all the leading candidates for president in the Republican primary field also voicing skepticism about continued U.S. support for Ukraine. Greg, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is heading to the United Nations in New York this week, and then he's meeting with President Biden and congressional leaders later in the week as well.

What are his goals? Well, I think he's got a number of goals. The first one, I think, is just solidifying support in the U.S. You've had this very strong support from the Biden administration, maybe a few voices on the far right or the far left of opposing the U.S. role in Ukraine. But as Sue has noted, it's growing. And so I think he doesn't want to let that become an obstacle. The thing you hear from Zelensky and many Ukrainians is, please send us the weapons. We're not asking you to come and fight here and die here, but we do

need the weapons. So I think he wants to keep that pipeline going of weaponry from the U.S. He's also, I think, talking, because it's the United Nations, he is talking to the global community. And while Western support for Ukraine has been very strong, a lot of support in the developing world has been rather mixed. Maybe they're sort of sympathetic to Ukraine, but they're not openly supporting Ukraine. Or in many cases, they're taking advantage of situations the war has created. Russia is selling its oil at a discount, so it means cheaper oil for a lot of poor countries. Some countries, on the other hand, are dependent on Ukrainian grain. He's trying to appeal to those countries and telling them why they should support Ukraine

in this conflict with Russia, when many of them feel we're not going to be decisive one way or the other. We don't really want to take sides here. And so, Sue, as I mentioned, Zelensky is also going to Capitol Hill. What do you think his strategy is going to be when he's talking to lawmakers? You know, I think it's fair to call part of this a charm offensive. Zelensky is a very charismatic figure. He's had a joint address before Congress before. He has had video conferences with members. I think he's got his work cut out for him this week.

And I think it's different between the House and the Senate. You know, as I said, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden are pretty much arm and arm and arm here that they need to continue to support Ukraine. It was an amendment to the defense bill. And that amendment got 70 votes from House Republicans. It's a third of the membership of the House Republican majority. That's a lot. And it's quite possible that that number has grown even since then because we've spoke to lawmakers who didn't vote for that amendment who are now questioning aid. So how he approaches the House and specifically House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who's like been on board for Ukraine aid, but he's he has had contradictory comments and has been nowhere near as forceful in making the case as Mitch McConnell, which I think highlights the divide in the party as well. And it's a more difficult time for Zelensky coming to Capitol Hill because of this growing opposition. I want to take a step back here, Greg, and just talk about, I feel like we're talking about this funding issue sort of in a sort of abstract way, but I'm wondering if you can lay out the stakes here in very real terms. If the U.S. were to just decide, we're out of here, we are no longer going to send money or

financially support the Ukrainian army, What would that look like? It would be absolutely devastating, Miles. And I'll give you one simple example. Ukraine's air defenses, which have been so critical in keeping the Russian Air Force at bay. Ukraine initially began last year using old Soviet era systems to shoot down incoming Russian planes, helicopters, that kind of thing. But they ran low on missiles. The only place that still makes missiles for those air defense systems is Russia. So Ukraine literally would not be able to mount any credible air defense. They couldn't get any missiles. They're relying overwhelmingly now on Western air defense systems, the U.S. and other European systems. They're having to get resupplied with the missiles that go in those air defense systems. So Ukraine would be cut off very, very quickly. Both Ukraine and the Russians are burning through

thousands and thousands of artillery shells in this fighting. It's very much an artillery war. The Ukrainians also depend on this regular importation of Western artillery. So it would be absolutely devastating. And while Europe is providing a lot of help, it's very closely coordinated with the U.S. and Ukraine is absolutely dependent on this to continue waging the war at the level that it's currently being fought at. I just want to piggyback on to what Greg said, because I spoke to a guy named Frederick Kagan. I'm sure Greg knows who he is. He's a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He's a conservative. He was also someone who was an architect of the 2007 surge strategy in the Iraq War, which kind of makes him someone that Rand Paul doesn't want to take a listen

to often. But I asked him this question when I interviewed him recently, like, what do you think is at stake if the U.S. did ultimately cut off Ukraine aid? And he spoke about it in just really stark words. This is what Americans need to understand. The alternative to the U.S. leadership of the world as it is, is a Hobbesian world that is the war of all against all. We are much closer to that world than most people imagine. And that world will not leave us alone. I just thought it was so striking when you consider how far apart philosophically the Rand Paul wing is now saying like, look, we can't afford it. We don't really have a national security interest there to sort of the Mitch McConnell, Fred Kagan wing saying,

look, like the future of democracy around the globe matters to the outcome of Ukraine. And you can see how those two, those two factions might be really hard to reconcile. All right. Well, we will keep watching this as lawmakers continue debating, you know, how to fund the government. We'll leave it there for now. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Greg Myron. I cover national security. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.