‘America Firsters’ pose a false choice on Ukraine

Republicans seem to be racing backward in time, resurrecting old tenets that defined their party’s outlook in the 1920s and 1930s: Christian fundamentalism, nativism, protectionism and isolationism.  

Long discredited by events, these reactionary shibboleths are risen from the dead and lurching like zombies across the U.S. political landscape. We hear their echo in today’s red state crusade to stamp out women’s reproductive rights, the hysteria over immigrant hordes “replacing” whites and the Trump administration’s high tariff policies, which remain on the books despite having failed to reduce U.S. trade deficits. 

The former president also dredged up the hoary isolationist slogan, “America First” to signal his rejection of key pillars of America’s post-war internationalist strategy — open trade, security alliances and the formation of world bodies dedicated to collective problem-solving.  

Trump’s push to replace that strategy with selfish and transactional U.S. diplomacy has opened a deep foreign policy rift within the GOP. The crux of this dispute is Ukraine: While mainstream conservatives in Congress support U.S. aid to Ukraine’s resistance to Russian imperialism, the MAGA right insists that America has no dog in that fight.  

Elbridge Colby, a former Trump Pentagon official, is attempting to put an intellectual gloss on America First. Today’s version, he says, isn’t a return to the naïve pull-up-the-drawbridge mentality of isolationism, but rather belongs to the more respectable realpolitik tradition.   

The “realist” school complains that U.S. attempts to quell foreign conflicts or defend its liberal principles embroil America in “endless wars” and leave us overextended abroad. Better to put our values on ice and intervene only to protect “hard” U.S. security and economic interests.  

MAGA world, however, needs enemies, not textbook theories about balances of power. “America First” fans oblige by casting China in that role.     

Colby maintains that Ukraine is a distraction that’s draining U.S. resources needed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. An admiring Politico profile depicts him as trying to bridge the GOP divide between Bush-Cheney neoconservatives and MAGA isolationists by making confronting China the new organizing principle of U.S. diplomacy.  

The danger here is that prematurely declaring China the enemy will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. President Biden has a smarter — and more realistic — take: China is America’s main strategic competitor, but Russian aggression poses the more immediate threat to peace and stability.  

Rejecting the America Firster’s false choice between supporting Ukraine and deterring China, Biden and Reagan-style Republicans understand that the two are strategically linked. 

No one doubts that China has become a more formidable great-power rival than Russia. It boasts the world’s second-largest economy; Russia ranks 12th and is shrinking under pressure from international sanctions.  

China is rapidly converting its wealth into military power, spending about $300 billion a year, second only to the United States. That buildup, coupled with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s militarization of the South China Sea and missile rattling over Taiwan, makes Washington and China’s neighbors in East Asia increasingly nervous.  

China also offers its fusion of repressive rule and competitive markets as a superior alternative to liberal democracy. Beijing propagandists contrast China’s ability to combine dynamic growth with “social harmony” to the random violence and deep social divides that afflict the United States. 

Nonetheless, there are sound reasons to doubt that China has what it takes to replace the United States as the world’s leading power. Its mighty growth engine is sputtering, due to a combination of demographic trends and the state’s heavy-handed misallocation of economic resources.  

Unlike the United States, China has few reliable friends around the world. That’s why Xi has been so eager to tout China’s “no limits” partnership with Putin. Beijing has thrown Moscow a lifeline, refusing to join the international chorus of condemnation over its brutal war in Ukraine, and buying Russia oil and gas that Europeans no longer want.

What the America Firsters fail to grasp is that by thwarting Russia’s land grab in Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies can deal a double blow to Xi’s hyper-nationalist ambitions. First, Russia’s defeat would discount its value as a counterweight to the liberal democracies. Second, it would raise the bar against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.  

America Firsters seem equally oblivious to dramatic changes in Europe that are tilting the global power equation toward the free world. Putin’s serial aggressions in Ukraine have shaken the continent out of its post-Cold War complacency about national security.   

Now, most European Union countries are funneling advanced weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, taking in millions of refugees, expanding NATO, hiking defense budgets and coordinating defense production.  

A more unified and resolute Europe doesn’t just create a bulwark against Russian expansion, it also strengthens America’s hand in dealing with China.  

For years, U.S. diplomats have been imploring EU countries to rethink their growing investment in China and to take a tougher line against Beijing’s predatory trade policies and brutal suppression of civil liberties and ethnic minorities, especially Muslim Uighurs.   

Xi’s unequivocal embrace of Putin has dramatically hardened European attitudes. Last March, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen issued a blunt warning to Beijing: “How China continues to interact with Putin’s war will be a determining factor for EU-China relations going forward.” 

By abandoning Ukraine, as Colby and MAGA types like Tucker Carlson and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) demand, the United States would rescue Putin, fracture relations with Europe and signal weakness to China. This is realism?  

Let’s remember that the original incarnation of America First failed miserably. Retreating into isolation didn’t prevent fascist dictators from plunging Europe into war, or Japan from conquering much of East Asia.  

Today’s version won’t fare any better, because it views America’s global network of prosperous, technologically advanced and democratic allies, across the Atlantic and Pacific, as a burden rather than a priceless strategic asset. 

Going it alone doesn’t make America stronger. It’s time to throw America First back on history’s scrap heap, where it belongs. 

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).