It's not necessary to be stupid or to have forgone all attempts at cultivating intellectual rigor to be a Trumpist. Granted, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but examples of figures with impressive credentials and accomplishments whose eyeballs are afloat in Kool-Aid abound. Alan Dershowitz said of Ted Cruz that he was one of the best students he ever had at Harvard Law School, and Cruz went on to clerk for SCOTUS Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He was Solicitor General for the state of Texas. Outside of the realm of government/politics, one can point to such luminaries as Roger Kimball and Victor Davis Hanson as examples of wrong conclusions tortuously reached.
Consider Josh Hawley, who was likewise praised by professor David Kennedy as "arguably the most gifted student I taught in 50 years" at Yale Law School, edited the Yale Law Journal and clerked for SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts. He's another case of someone who seemed to have impeccable conservative bona fides - that is, until the arrival of the Very Stable Genius on the political scene.
He's since gone full-blow nationalist-populist, supporting Trump's tariffs and ranting in 2019 - at the National Conservatism Conference - against a left-right "consensus that reflects not the interests of the American middle, but of a powerful upper class and their [sic] cosmopolitan priorities."
So it's not in the least surprising that he's penned a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying that the US taking a leadership role in the defense of Ukraine is contrary to American interests and takes our eye off the ball with regard to China's aims in the Indo-Pacific sphere. He says the U.S. "can no longer bear the heavy burden it once did in other regions of the world - including Europe." He requests written responses to six questions that, in their sum, make clear he's dubious about the idea if Ukraine ever joining NATO.
He doesn't give any indication that he's given much thought to how Europe and the Indo-Pacific are connected.
Mark Theissen of the American Enterprise Institute has:
China is watching. If Putin can invade Ukraine, Taiwan may be next. In October, following President Biden’s disastrous August retreat from Afghanistan, China flew a record number of fighters and bombers into Taiwan’s air defense zone — the largest Chinese air force incursion ever against Taiwan. A few weeks ago, as Putin massed forces along Ukraine’s border, China made another major incursion. If the United States fails to deter Russia less than a year after surrendering in Afghanistan, Beijing may calculate that it has a short window of weak US presidential leadership to invade and crush Taiwan’s democracy. The result could be a war in the Pacific.
North Korea and Iran are watching as well. If Putin invades, both countries will have every incentive to accelerate their development of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. They both know that after the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine inherited an arsenal of nearly 2,000 strategic nuclear weapons. But in December 1994, the United States brokered an agreement called the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in which Ukraine agreed to give up those weapons along with its intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. In exchange, Russia pledged to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine,” while the United States and Britain promised “to provide assistance to Ukraine … if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression.”
In 2014, Russia violated that agreement when it invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Now, Putin is threatening to finish the job. If he is allowed to do so, no nation will ever give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for US security assurances again. To the contrary, the lesson from Pyongyang to Tehran will be that the only path to security is to develop and deploy nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
This could spark a global arms race. Saudi Arabia has pledged to develop its own nuclear arsenal if Iran becomes a nuclear power. Indeed, Amos Yadlin, former head of Israeli military intelligence, has warned that “the Saudis will not wait one month” to go nuclear. Other countries could follow suit. Nuclear nonproliferation as we know it would be dead.
And United States’ credibility would lie in tatters — as would the credibility of NATO. The transatlantic alliance is already reeling from Biden’s debacle in Afghanistan. But the founding purpose of NATO was to deter Russian aggression in Europe. If allies can’t agree to take steps necessary to do that, then it’s fair to ask: Why does NATO still exist?
The consequences of NATO’s failure to deter Russia would resound across every alliance. NATO remains the touchstone of the US commitment to its allies around the world. Every US treaty alliance is measured against NATO. There is a reason 17 nations — including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Jordan and Israel — are designated under US law as “Major Non-NATO Allies.” US law also requires that Taiwan be treated as a Major Non-NATO Ally, without formal designation as such. Those commitments will be rendered meaningless if NATO’s credibility is destroyed. The web of US security alliances that has guaranteed peace and stability internationally would be decimated.
Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman goes so far as to say we've twiddled our thumbs too long as it is, making the situation ever more dire:
Alexander Vindman, who oversaw Ukraine policy in the Trump White House and became a key figure in the 45th president’s first impeachment, has criticized the Biden administration for doing “too little, too late” to stop Russia from invading its western neighbor and warned of a conflict that could spread throughout Europe.
Vindman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, claimed White House policymakers “didn’t seem to come around to this threat until really quite late.”
“You only start seeing [them] take things seriously in the November and December [2021] time frame,” Vindman told Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast on Tuesday.
When administration officials did grasp the gravity of the situation in Eastern Europe, Vindman explained, they focused on sanctions and other nonmilitary responses that would have no deterrent effect on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We should have been providing Ukrainians with a lot more advanced military capability,” he said.
The US and its Western allies estimate Putin has massed up to 140,000 troops and heavy military equipment along the Ukrainian border, while White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has said Russia could launch an attack at “any time.”
Vindman — who blew the whistle on President Donald Trump’s summer 2019 call asking Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden as well as natural gas company Burisma — added Tuesday that the effects of a Russian incursion could spill over Ukraine’s borders.
“This could very well not end up being a limited war,” Vindman said on the podcast.
There's no such thing as a set of American interest isolated from world-stage dynamics.
Consider the joint pronouncement from Xi and Putin emanating from their pre-Olympics summit. They, too, don't want to see NATO expansion:
The leaders of Russia and China pushed back against U.S. pressure on Friday, declaring their opposition to any expansion of NATO and affirming that the island of Taiwan is a part of China, as they met hours before the Winter Olympics kicked off in Beijing.
Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping issued a joint statement highlighting what it called "interference in the internal affairs" of other states, as both leaders face criticism from Washington over their foreign and domestic policies.
They support elbowing the West out of each other's respective theaters, and were not subtle in saying so.
And Russia is not just eyeing Ukraine as evidenced by the military drills, involving 30,000 troops, it's begun with (and in) Belarus, which borders Poland and the Baltic nations.
This is no time for posturing, Senator Hawley. You're not dumb. Think this through again, in light of the grim developments unfolding every day.
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