Three Takeaways from Last Week's Foreign Aid Votes

What the passage of the aid package for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel tells us about the evolution of the politics of national security.

American and Ukrainian flags frame the U.S. Capitol dome during the Senate debate over President Biden’s request for military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan on April 23. (Credit: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Last week, the House finally took action on the military aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan that President Biden requested six months ago. White House briefings on the dire state of Ukraine’s war effort as well as Iran’s mid-April missile and drone barrage against Israel appear to have put the fear of God into Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), spurring him to move the aid package through the House with relative alacrity. Military assistance began flowing to Ukraine again just hours after President Biden signed the final aid bill into law on April 24.

So ends a long and tortuous legislative process, one that saw Congress solve a problem its unnecessary inaction created—a delay that almost certainly cost Ukrainian lives. With renewed American military aid, Ukraine will be far better positioned to hold the line against ongoing and future Russian offensives this summer. America’s defense industry will ramp up weapons production and—crucially—expand its capacity to make the arms and ammunition America and its allies will need going forward.

But the final votes in both the House and Senate can tell us a lot about the domestic politics of foreign policy and national security as well. Here are three things we learned from last week’s votes:

Conservative isolationism remains a potent force within the Republican Party.

Don’t fall for the line that the GOP has had a change of heart when it comes to foreign policy—former president Trump and his “America First” acolytes still set the tone for the Republican Party. After all, a majority of House Republicans—112 out of 218 representatives—voted against further American military aid to Ukraine. What’s more, Republicans provided all 34 votes against assistance to Taiwan and 21 even voted against aid to Israel. In the Senate, Republicans supplied 15 of the 18 votes against the combined aid package sent over by the House; three other Republicans (including outspoken opponents of American aid to Ukraine like Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama) did not vote. 

In other words, conservative isolationism remains a strong political force within the contemporary Republican Party. That’s no doubt due to former president Trump’s continued hold over the party itself, but many Republican up-and-comers see conservative isolationism as the wave of the party’s future. While most Republican elected officials may not be conservative isolationists, they’re either being slowly marginalized or forced to choose between conservative internationalism and partisan loyalties. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a conservative internationalist who has bucked Trump on aid to Ukraine, embodies both these dynamics: he looks set to retire at the end of his current term in 2027 and has endorsed Trump as his party’s nominee for president. These elite contortions and divisions accurately reflect the split among rank-and-file Republicans between Trump supporters and old-line, pre-Trump Republicans who hold opinions more consistent with traditional conservative internationalism.

Conservative isolationists may have lost the battle over aid to Ukraine today, but they appear well-positioned to win the war for the soul of the Republican Party in the medium term.

Democrats have a potential Corbyn problem.

At first glance, Democrats seem to be in much better shape than Republicans. No House Democrats voted against additional military assistance to Ukraine or Taiwan, and only three in the Senate voted against the combined aid package. But appearances can be deceiving, and Democrats have a nascent Corbyn problem on their hands—one that they ought to nip in the bud as soon as possible.

For reference, Jeremy Corbyn was the far-left leader of Britain’s Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. He and his devotees espoused a familiar brand of self-proclaimed anti-imperialism that manages to find fault with any and every American foreign policy decision while bending over backward to excuse every atrocity committed any dictatorship or terrorist group that professed even vaguely anti-American or anti-Israel sentiments. Under Corbyn’s leadership, Labour became an institutionally antisemitic organization that, in the British journalist Nick Cohen’s words, “became a magnet for every variety of Jew baiter and conspiracy nut.”

While Democrats remain distant from that sort of nightmare scenario, the events of the past six months or so should serve as a warning that the progressive left and its elite fellow travelers are headed in disturbing directions. Even before some 37 House Democrats voted against aid to Israel, a number of self-proclaimed progressives helped hold up President Biden’s foreign aid package before Speaker Johnson divided it up into its three main constituent components. This contingent remains a distinct minority, but a greater proportion of House Democrats voted against aid for Israel than House Republicans did against aid for Taiwan.

Making matters more troubling have been campus protests by far-left anti-Israel groups in recent weeks. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) shook hands with a high-profile leader of the Columbia University protest, an individual who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and told university administrators they should be “grateful I’m just not going out and murdering Zionists.” Omar herself went on to divide Jewish students into “pro-genocide” and “anti-genocide” categories based, apparently, on their support for Israel.

Democratic leaders have previously refused to straightforwardly address this sort of left-wing antisemitism and self-proclaimed anti-imperialism, leaving it to fester. But it’s a moral, policy, and political problem they should deal with head-on—and sooner rather than later.

A new vital center in the offing?

Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from last week’s votes, however, is that a new vital center appears both possible and plausible on foreign policy—even if it hasn’t truly coalesced in any meaningful way just quite yet.

In the House, 173 Democrats and 101 Republicans voted for all three military aid packages first requested by President Biden late last October—nearly a two-thirds majority in the chamber. Things were even more lopsided in the Senate, where the combined aid bill received 79 votes, with 48 Democrats and 31 Republicans in favor. That’s reflected in public opinion polling; strong majorities support economic and military aid to Ukraine, for instance. Still, it remains to be seen whether this shotgun foreign policy coalition can be made into something more robust and lasting.

It's a political and policy entente that faces strong headwinds: partisanship remains extraordinarily strong in Washington, with some conservative internationalists like Majority Leader McConnell lining up to support Trump’s isolationist candidacy despite their deep disagreements. In general, conservative internationalists are a dying breed in the Republican Party, either aging out of public service or, like Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), leaving office well before their time for reasons including violent threats. For their part, Democrats too often seem allergic to any foreign policy ideas that might come from conservative internationalists—particularly those who served in the dread George W. Bush administration—and far too willing to indulge their own minority isolationist faction on the progressive left.

Still, the recent votes in the House and Senate ought to give hope to those of us looking to forge a new vital center for the twenty-first century. It’s possible to see the very faint outlines of this potential coalition, and internationalists of each and every partisan and ideological stripe need to take steps to nurture this embryonic formation and transform it into something enduring. That could include a de facto bipartisan arrangement to bring votes on foreign policy to the floors of the House and Senate without delay, so that future foreign policy legislation does not face the stonewalling from isolationists that the Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan package did over the past six months.

In general, internationalists need to forge ties and cooperate across partisan and ideological lines in ways they have not done thus far—even something as basic and pro forma as a Congressional internationalist caucus does not exist. Caucuses on specific countries, regions, and issues related to foreign policy and national security are plentiful, but this concatenation of caucuses speaks to the fragmented nature of the internationalist bloc in Congress. Moreover, few existing think tanks and research institutions dedicated to foreign policy focus strongly or consistently on this subject.

An active effort is needed to call into being the new vital center fleetingly glimpsed in the recent votes on military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel. It’s an effort that can both build internationalist networks across traditional party and ideological lines—and provide them with the intellectual ammunition they need to take the battle to isolationist extremes on both right and left.

If internationalists are going to marginalize these isolationist extremes, they need to start building on the tentative, shaky foundation put in place by these votes—and start doing so sooner rather than later.