“Foreign Affairs” Lends a Hand to the Harris Campaign

An “America First” foreign policy does not go over well at the Council of Foreign Relations, the publisher of the journal Foreign Affairs whose website features a brief essay adapted from a speech delivered in Kyiv, Ukraine, by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III. Austin’s essay is about “the enormous stakes in Ukraine’s fight for freedom.” It is an effort to tie U.S. national security to Ukraine’s victory in the war with Russia. It is a plug for Biden’s policy of becoming what Austin calls “the arsenal of Ukrainian democracy.” “America’s security,” Austin writes, “demands that we stand up to Putin’s aggression.” The essay is a thinly veiled attack on Donald Trump–just a few days before the 2024 presidential election.

Austin, of course, does not mention Trump by name. Instead, he criticizes the “frauds and falsehoods of the Kremlin’s apologists.” Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, first Biden, who called Trump “Putin’s puppy,” and then Harris, who said a few weeks ago that “Donald Trump has put Putin over the American people time and time again,” have preached a narrative–a narrative promoted by the leftist mainstream media–that Trump loves the world’s autocrats and dictators, and wants to rule America as a dictator. Trump and anyone else who believes that Ukraine’s victory is not a vital interest of the United States are often labeled “Putin apologists” by the American left (who, ironically, had a history of being Soviet apologists during the Cold War) and neoconservatives like Joshua Muravchik, David Frum, John Bolton, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, and Irving Kristol, among others. So, Austin’s use of the phrase “Kremlin’s apologists” means anyone who opposes providing billions of dollars in lethal aid to Ukraine to achieve victory over Russia. If you favor a ceasefire or a peace agreement that cedes any Ukrainian territory to Russia, you are deemed a Kremlin apologist.

Vice President Harris has pledged to support Ukraine until it achieves victory over Russia, and referred to Trump’s proposals for making a deal with Russia that ends the war “proposals of surrender.” During remarks with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, Harris promised “unwavering” support for Ukraine. Trump’s proposals, she said, are Putin’s proposals.

Austin writes that “Putin’s war is a direct threat to European security, a clear challenge to our NATO allies, an attack on our shared values, and a frontal assault on the rules-based international order that keeps us all safe.” Yet, throughout 45 years of Cold War with the Soviet Union (which then included Ukraine), the United States never claimed that Soviet control/domination of Ukraine threatened U.S. national security interests. And in 2014, when Russia seized the Crimea from Ukraine, President Barack Obama said, “this is not another cold war that we’re entering into. The United States and NATO do not seek any conflict with Russia. . . Now is not the time for bluster.” Obama later explained that “Putin acted in Ukraine in response to a client state that was about to slip out of his grasp.” In Obama’s view, “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one.” George Kennan, who knew more about Russia than Lloyd Austin ever will, once noted in a Foreign Affairs essay in 1951 titled “America and the Russian Future” that Ukraine is to Russia like Pennsylvania is to the United States. Perhaps Austin believes that Kennan and Obama were “Kremlin apologists,” too.

Austin near the end of his essay writes, with echoes of Winston Churchill, that “we face a hinge of history.” “Ukraine does not belong to Putin,” he writes, “Ukraine belongs to the Ukrainian people. And Moscow will never prevail in Ukraine. Putin thought Ukraine would surrender. He was wrong. Putin thought the democracies would cave. He was wrong. Putin thought the free word would cower. He was wrong. And Putin thinks he will win. He is wrong.”

Stirring words as tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians die in a conflict that resembles the fighting in World War I and that rages with no end in sight. But Lloyd Austin is no Churchill. Vladimir Putin, as bad as he is, is no Hitler. Putin’s Russia does not pose the same threat to Europe and the United States that Hitler’s Germany did. Lloyd Austin and the other “Ukraine Firsters” are pouring American money and resources down an ever expanding sinkhole, and risking escalation with every day that goes by without a settlement. Perhaps Austin should remember that Winston Churchill also once said that it is better to “jaw, jaw than to war, war.”

Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month.