Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Tuesday condemned the protracted delay in sending military assistance to Ukraine, claiming that it has damaged Ukraine’s prospects of triumphing over Russia on the battlefield and was based on the “sheer fiction” propagated by some colleagues that supporting Ukraine is not a vital national security priority.
McConnell addressed his pointed criticism at critics within his own party, such as Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who have argued that the Ukraine aid package will not turn the tide of the war and have questioned whether the United States even has the industrial capacity to enable Ukraine to match Russia’s arsenal of drones, missiles, and 155mm artillery shells. Vance wrote in a recent op-ed that “the math on Ukraine doesn’t add up.”
However, McConnell on Tuesday reiterated his argument that the $95 billion foreign aid package will bolster U.S. arms production as well as the domestic economy. He noted that European countries are increasing their defense spending at a faster rate than the United States and that allies and partners from Europe to the Indo-Pacific have already ordered more than $100 billion worth of cutting-edge American weapons and capabilities.
McConnell also warned about the implications of abandoning the war in Ukraine for U.S. national security, saying that it would embolden adversaries like Iran and China. He stressed that failure to re-establish deterrence against Iran would result in unchecked terrorist violence against American personnel, Israel, and global commerce, while failure to keep pace with the threat posed by China would jeopardize the entire system of alliances that protect American interests and ensure American leadership.
McConnell argued that senators who dismiss the importance of U.S. alliances disregard the lessons of history and that allies like Japan fully recognize the potential repercussions of Russian success in Ukraine and its implications for Chinese ambitions in the Far East. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently affirmed the “indispensable” role of the United States in global affairs, a view echoed by McConnell in his remarks Tuesday.
McConnell emphasized that American prosperity and security are the result of decades of American leadership and that “our global interests come with global responsibilities.” He concluded by stating that “healthy alliances lighten the burden of these responsibilities” and that “at the end of the day, the primary language of strategic competition is strength.”
