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Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) offered a rare Democratic rebuke of the Biden administration's rhetoric on the war in Ukraine during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.


Smith, the ranking member on the committee, was following up on questions from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla) to Celeste Wallander, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, on whether the administration considered the repatriation of Crimea and the Donbas as necessary for a Ukrainian victory.


"It's a fascinating world we live in because I actually agree with Mr. Gaetz on something around Ukrainian policy," Smith said. "Realistically, Crimea is not coming back to Ukraine and we can absolutely win this war and absolutely make a difference even in that reality. We do not have to have Crimea to make it 1000% worth it to give Ukraine the money, okay? We need a sovereign democratic Ukraine that can survive."


During her exchange with Gaetz, Wallander repeated the Biden administration refrain that it would be up to Kyiv to decide what constitutes a Ukrainian victory, and that Washington's ultimate goal was to ensure "Russia's strategic failure," which includes "reinforcing the international law that borders cannot be changed by force."


"I've heard this phrase over — 'nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.' Forgive me. That is a ridiculous thing for any U.S. diplomat or person in U.S. policy to say," Smith said. "We got partners all over the world and, yes, we listen to them, but when we're footing the bill, when we are spending so much money over there, we have a say." Watch:





Smith, who has been a staunch supporter of continuing aid to Ukraine, made clear during his comments that approving the next tranche of funding for Kyiv was vital to accomplishing his goal of having a "sovereign democratic Ukraine that can survive."


The congressman asked earlier in the hearing how Washington would handle the delicate situation of pushing Kyiv to negotiate and accept territorial concessions.


"What would you say is the scenario and the administration's position on negotiations? So we get them the aid, we stop Russia so that Russia cannot achieve their maximalist goals. I see risk if at that point we continue (...) to keep fighting because we got to get it all back." he said. "I mean Ukraine should have pre-2014 borders, but what should happen, isn't the same as what can happen. How do you handle that discussion to get to a peace in Ukraine?"


Wallender responded that the administration would not force Ukraine to the negotiating table and that thinking that territorial concessions would placate Vladimir Putin misunderstood the Russian president's goals.


"He's not after territory, he's not after Bakhmut or Avdiivka or even Odesa, he's after Ukraine," she said.


As George Beebe of the Quincy Institute has argued, finding a way to end the war quickly is an essential step to upholding Kyiv's democracy.


"It is a mistake to believe that Ukraine will emerge from the war as a strong and prospering democracy no matter how it ends or how long it takes. The longer it continues, the bleaker will be Ukraine's future," Beebe wrote in RS last August. "It is time to combine our defensive support for Ukraine — which is essential to preventing further Russian territorial gains and pushing the Kremlin toward negotiations — with a diplomatic offensive aimed at a compromise settlement. The sooner we do, the better off Ukraine will be."


A growing group of congressional Republicans have expressed skepticism about the Biden administration's policy, with some focusing on the lack of a clear mission or endgame. Smith's comments mark the first time that a Biden congressional ally has conveyed similar misgivings about the administration's strategy.


The national security supplemental that the Senate passed in February and includes approximately $60 billion in aid for Ukraine remains stalled in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said that his chamber will address the issue soon, though it is unlikely that the House will vote on the Senate bill. The Speaker has instead floated "important innovations" to address some of his caucus' concerns, but what exactly those look like are unclear.

USAID administrator Samantha Power presented a bleak picture of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and international efforts to alleviate it during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, prompting some senators to question whether Israel's conduct during the war was in compliance with U.S. law. Power was testifying in front of the Senate Appropriation subcommittee State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs to discuss her agency's budget for the upcoming fiscal year. But a majority of senators — all but one of whom were Democrats — focused their questions largely on the crisis in Gaza. Power said that according to many aid workers that she met in Israel last month, this was the worst humanitarian catastrophe that they had experienced in their careers. "Unprecedented was the word they used," she said.During her remarks, Power noted that nearly the entire population is living under the threat of famine, ,that Israel has not done enough to facilitate necessary humanitarian access into Gaza, and that aid workers in Gaza were not able to do their work safely or reliably."Right now, the inability to get to the north in a sustained way has limited our ability to provide ready-to-use therapeutic food," she said."I think that is a stunning statement," replied Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) "We know children are starving to death. And the most fundamental, life-saving substance that we can transport to this country, we cannot get to the most serious areas."In recent weeks, the Biden administration has maintained that it has no evidence that Israel has violated international law as it prosecutes its war in Gaza, including with respect to the provision of humanitarian assistance."I think it's essential that those who are responsible in the department for the delivery of humanitarian aid have a strong voice within that process," said Sen. Chris van Hollen (D-Md.), referring to a report that the Biden administration must submit to Congress in early May on whether or not Israel is complying with international law. "One of the key factors of [National Security Memorandum] 20, as you know, is whether a recipient of U.S. military assistance is facilitating and not arbitrarily restricting the delivery of humanitarian assistance." As Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) pointed out, Section 620I of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act also prohibits the U.S. from providing military assistance to states impeding the delivery of humanitarian aid. Power declined to answer Merkley's question about whether she or others in the Biden administration had advocated the president to invoke 620I to cut off military aid for Israel. Following a phone call between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week in the aftermath of the IDF strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen staffers, Tel Aviv has taken small steps to increase the flow of humanitarian aid. Israel opened three aid corridors and the number of trucks allowed into Gaza has increased from under 100 per day, according to Power, to 433 on Tuesday."It should not have taken the death of foreign aid workers to get the world to really say, enough is enough," said Van Hollen.Additionally, according to the Maryland senator, these changes also demonstrate that Israel was restricting humanitarian aid prior to this week. In February, following the International Court of Justice's ruling that Israel had to do more to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accused Israel of defying the ruling and blocking the passage of sufficient aid. "I'm glad to see the Netanyahu government say it's going to open the Erez crossing. This is something those of us on this committee who are here right now have been calling for for months. as has the president," he said. "I'm glad to see over 400 trucks cross into Gaza yesterday. To my mind, it has been possible all along."Power will continue to speak about the USAID budget this week, testifying in front of both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations committee on Wednesday, where she is sure to face more questions about the crisis in Gaza.

The Biden administration's policy toward Gaza has come under increased pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill. When Congress returns from a two-week recess on Monday, these members will have an opportunity to follow through on the sternly-worded letters and statements they have issued in recent weeks.Despite an apparent shift in tone following the Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen staff last week, the Biden administration maintains that Israel is complying with international law — both in its war conduct and in its provision of humanitarian assistance. As a result, Washington continues to send weapons to Tel Aviv unimpeded. In March, The Washington Post reported that the Biden administration had greenlit more than 100 weapons packages for Israel that fell under the $25 million threshold that would necessitate that it notify Congress. Since then, the administration has continued to sign off on weapons packages, including as recently as the day of the strikes that killed the WCK staff. The Biden administration is also reportedly close to approving an $18 billion arms package to Israel that would include as many as 50 F-15 fighter jets. While the delivery of the jets would not be immediate — one unnamed U.S. official told Al-Jazeera that even if the approval process were completed as soon as possible, the aircraft would not be delivered until 2029 — the announcement of such a large weapons package could provide Congress with a rare opportunity to debate arms transfer policy in public.The $18 billion package would mark the largest sale to Israel since the start of the war in October. It is difficult for Congress to block an arms transfer. Any legislative vehicle used to halt the sale would require a veto-proof majority in both chambers. Congress has never successfully blocked a sale under either the Arms Export Control Act or a Joint Resolution of Disapproval. But a large number of Democratic members have expressed disapproval or concern over continuing to provide Israel with weapons as it prosecutes its war. On March 11, Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) sent a letter to Biden describing how the Israeli government has interfered with humanitarian operations. The senators reminded the administration that under U.S. law, the president "should not provide military assistance to any country that interferes with U.S. humanitarian assistance." In the House, Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) circulated a letter last Friday that called on the president to "reconsider [his] recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike [that killed the WCK staff] is completed." The letter also called on the suspension of weapons transfers if Israel fails to make changes to mitigate civilian harm in Gaza. By the end of the day on Friday, 37 other members had signed on to the letter, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).The looming debate over the sale of the F-15 package could allow these members the opportunity to follow through on their words. RS reached out to the offices of each of the Senators to see if they would pursue legislation that would halt arms sales to Israel. None responded (though Van Hollen told Politico that he was "strongly considering" a variety of options to place conditions on aid, and Warren said on CNN on Thursday that it was "clear that Congress has a responsibility to act. We have legal tools here. And as I said, we cannot approve the sale of arms to a country that is in violation of our own laws on this.")Sanders in January introduced a resolution that would have forced the State Department to issue a report detailing whether Israel was using weapons provided by Washington to commit human rights violations. The resolution failed in the Senate by a vote of 72-11. As Stephen Semler of Security Policy Reform Institute has documented, all the senators who signed the letter, with the exception of Sanders, voted on March 23 for a spending package that included a total of $3.8 billion in military aid for Israel and cut off all U.S. funding for UNRWA, the U.N. agency which performs vital humanitarian work in Gaza. "That this bill passed with overwhelming Democratic support belies the party's increasingly vocal criticisms of Israel's behavior and expressed concern for compliance with US and international law," Semler wrote in Jacobin following the vote.

As the foreign ministers of NATO member countries gathered this week in Brussels to celebrate the alliance's 75th anniversary, the war in Ukraine is at a crossroads.
On the one hand, despite incremental movement in recent weeks, the latest tranche of aid for Kyiv remains stalled in the U.S. Congress. And while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to urge Washington to approve the package, Ukrainian military officers are now acknowledging that even if that aid ever arrives, it is unlikely to shift battlefield dynamics that currently favor Russia.
"There's nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us," an anonymous military source told Politico this week. "We don't have those technologies, and the West doesn't have them as well in sufficient numbers."
So far, however, NATO appears unmoved by these realities. Instead of pivoting its strategy, the alliance is leaning into a military-only solution to the war. To mark the anniversary, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Poland co-authored an op-ed in Politico, celebrating NATO as "the most successful defense alliance in history" and playing up the stakes of the war in Ukraine.
"For Europe to be at peace, Russian imperialism must be stopped. We cannot allow for any 'gray zones' because Putin sees them as an invitation to undermine territorial integrity and sovereignty, draw imaginary lines on the map and, ultimately, use military force," the foreign ministers wrote. "His full-scale invasion of Ukraine has also proven that a policy of concessions vis-à-vis Russia, in the hopes that it could bring peace or stability back to the Continent, is naive."
Given the possibility that Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2025 — and considering his and many in his party's apparent skepticism to continuing funding Ukraine's war effort — NATO is planning for ways to overcome Washington potentially taking a step back on the issue.
"Under a proposal being discussed this week at the military alliance's headquarters, NATO would oversee the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a group currently led by the United States that coordinates the donation and delivery of weapons to the battlefield," according to the New York Times. "Discussions are also underway about a plan floated by Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, to secure an additional $100 billion from the alliance's 32 member states for Ukraine over five years."
The $100 billion fund has been described by other media outlets as a way to "Trump-proof" future aid for Ukraine. Sources close to NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told the Financial Times that he had framed the proposal as a way to "to shield the mechanism against the winds of political change."
Both the long-term funding structure and the plan to shift the leadership of the Defense Contact Group are in their early stages and could run into roadblocks. Hungary, which was the lone hold out on a recent European Union long-term aid package for Kyiv before eventually acquiescing, is again expected to raise opposition to Stoltenberg's suggestion.
And the U.S. may not want to take a step back from its leadership role in coordinating military support for Kyiv. While the Biden administration has refused to comment directly on the proposal, U.S. officials "appeared dubious," according to the New York Times. Both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby lauded the success of the group under Washington's leadership.
"The contact group has been very, very effective," said Kirby. "We're going to continue to lead and convene it. And we know that our leadership of that contact group is valued, it's important."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— Zelensky signed a law this week lowering his country's draft age from 27 to 25, bringing an end to a battle that started when the law was first passed last summer. "Discussion over who and how many people to mobilize has been divisive in a society that has otherwise been united by a common Russian foe," according to the The Washington Post. "Although support for the military is extremely high among Ukrainians, few people who haven't already volunteered to fight want to. Meanwhile, Ukrainian commanders have said they are in desperate need of reinforcements, especially in the forwardmost positions. Some soldiers have been fighting for more than two years with few breaks."
— In another sign of turmoil in Kyiv, Zelensky fired a number of aides last weekend. According to the Associated Press, Zelensky removed Serhiy Shefir from his post of first assistant, as well as three advisers and the presidential representatives in charge of volunteer activities and soldiers' rights.
— U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) pledged to address the Ukraine aid package quickly once Congress returns from a two-week recess on Monday. It remains unlikely that the House takes up the national security supplemental that passed the Senate in February that contains about $60 billion for Kyiv, with the Speaker instead saying he would propose alternatives with some "important innovations." In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Johnson floated three possible innovations: sending aid to Kyiv in the form of a "loan" instead of a grant; using seized Russian assets as a way to fund Ukraine; and tying the passage of more aid to legislation that would end a hold on new exports liquefied natural gas. Whether any of these options will be able to get through a fractured House remains unclear.
—Russia's defense minister warned his French counterpart on Wednesday against sending French troops to Ukraine while also noting that Moscow was prepared to take part in negotiations, according to the Associated Press. This was the first time since October 2022 that the two defense ministers had spoken and came in response to comments from French President Emmanual Macron in February in which he did not rule out the possibility of NATO troops being sent to Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal published a profile of Macron on Wednesday that sought to explain how he had gone to one of the leading NATO proponents of having dialogue with Vladimir Putin to floating the possibility of having Western boots on the ground.
"In recent weeks, Macron has begun using dark rhetoric to prepare the French public for the possibility of a more direct confrontation with Moscow, warning that if Ukraine falls then a host of Central and Eastern European countries would be next," according to the Journal.
U.S. State Department news:
— In two press briefings held this week, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller fielded few questions on the war in Ukraine. In Monday's briefing, he was asked about an upcoming meeting between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"So we have made clear that we have concerns with the, I think, full-scale partnership – I'm going to get the words exactly wrong – that we have seen between Russia and China," Miller said. "We have made very clear that we don't want to see China do anything to help support Russia's aggression in Ukraine, and we will continue to make that clear."

The State Department said on Monday that it has found no evidence that Israel is violating a recent directive that recipients of U.S. military aid comply with international human rights law.In February, partly due to pressure over support for Israel's war on Gaza, the Biden administration issued a national security memo that required any country receiving military aid from Washington while participating in an active armed conflict, to issue "credible and reliable written assurances" that they will use weapons funded by the U.S. in accordance with international law, and that they "the recipient country will facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance and United States Government-supported international efforts to provide humanitarian assistance."Sunday was the deadline for Israel, along with the six other countries deemed to meet the criteria — Colombia, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Ukraine — to issue these assurances. "For these seven countries (...) we have received written assurances that are required in the memo," State Department spokesman Matt Miller said during a press briefing on Monday. "In each case, these assurances were made by a credible, high-level official in the partner government who has the ability and authority to make decisions and commitments about the issues at the heart of the assurances." "We've had ongoing assessments of Israel's compliance with international humanitarian law," Miller added. "We have not found them to be in violation, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or the provision of humanitarian assistance. We view those assurances through that ongoing work we have done." The announcement came shortly after the U.S. abstained from a resolution that demands an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — the first sign of public disagreement between Washington and Tel Aviv. The Biden administration will now have 90 days to provide Congress with a report on whether the Israeli government has abided by its assurances.This determination by the administration comes despite recent opposition from progressives in Congress to rule that the Israeli government's assurances were credible."The current circumstances on the ground in Gaza, the many statements made by the President and other senior Administration officials, and the recent IPC assessment that:'famine is imminent' – make it abundantly clear that Netanyahu's government is not doing nearly enough to allow aid to reach starving and otherwise desperate people in Gaza," 17 senators wrote the White House on March 22. "As a result, we believe it would be inconsistent with the letter and spirit of NSM-20 to find that assurances made by the Netanyahu Government meet the required 'credible and reliable' standard at this time. Such a determination would also establish an unacceptable precedent for the application of NSM-20 in other situations around the world."The letter's signatories included Sens. Chris van Hollen (D-Md.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)Six House Democrats made a similar case in a letter sent on March 23. "[T]he Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has restricted the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza by placing onerous burdens on the oversight of aid, severely limiting entry points for aid delivery, and arbitrarily preventing food, medicine, and other supplies from entering Gaza," wrote Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine). "Given the catastrophic and devolving humanitarian situation in Gaza, we urge you to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act (Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act) and, as required by that law, make clear to the Israeli government that so long as Israel continues to restrict the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the continued provision of U.S. security assistance to Israel would constitute a violation of existing U.S. law and must be restricted." The determinations match with assessments made with leading humanitarian organizations and human rights groups.Miller maintained that the current assessment was part of an ongoing process that "requires a fact-intensive analysis of relevant factors related to international humanitarian law," but that "as of yet, we have not made a conclusion that Israel is in violation of international humanitarian law."Reports last week suggested that officials at the State Department and USAID had expressed "deep skepticism" over ambassador to Israel Jack Lew's assertion that Israel's claims of compliance with international law were credible.

As the nearly $100 billion Senate-passed national security supplemental continues to stall in the House of Representatives, lawmakers are looking for alternatives. One idea that has been circulating Capitol Hill this week: formatting the next tranche of funding as a waivable loan instead of a grant in an effort to convince skeptical Republican members. But so far, the plan seems to have caused confusion among supporters of further aid to Kyiv, and has seemingly not meaningfully moved its opponents — and Johnson's striking of a deal with Democrats to fund the government has put him in an ever more precarious political position. The House passed its government funding legislation on Friday before heading off on a two-week recess. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said that he expects to tackle the foreign aid supplemental next without committing to what the legislative vehicle will do."There's a number of avenues that we've been looking at to address that. And I'm not going to say today what that is," Johnson said about how he will approach the bill. "I have not specifically talked about the mechanism of funding Ukraine. We're talking about the whole supplemental and all these pieces, whether they would go individually or as a package, all those things are being debated and discussed internally."The speaker has refused to bring the Senate-passed supplemental package — which includes $60 billion for Kyiv, $17 billion for Tel Aviv— to the House floor. While he has maintained that the House GOP conference was searching for other ways to pass foreign funding, his dithering inspired two groups of House members to pursue discharge petitions that would force a bill to the floor over leadership's objections. One, introduced by Rep, Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), would bring the Senate-passed bill to the House floor, currently has 186 signatures. On Thursday, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who is retiring on Friday, became the first Republican member to add his name to the petition. The other, a bipartisan measure led by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) that would provide $66 billion in defense-only funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan — removing the humanitarian assistance for Kyiv and Gaza that is in the Senate bill — and includes border security provisions, has 15 signatures. Either petition would need 218 signatures in order to succeed,Former President Donald Trump floated the idea of loaning aid to Ukraine in February amid the Senate battle over the supplemental. "They want to give them $60 billion more," Trump said. "Do it this way. Loan them the money. If they can make it, they pay us back. If they can't make it, they don't have to pay us back."Although at first it appeared like just another off-the-cuff idea from the 45th president, a series of reports this week indicate that congressional proponents of sending more aid to Ukraine are either supportive of the idea or understand that it may be the only way to get enough members on board to pass Ukraine-related legislation. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the few senators to endorse the idea during floor debate in February, said he raised the idea with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a recent visit to Kyiv. Graham, in a statement released on Monday, said that he told Zelensky "no-interest, waivable loan is the most likely path forward."According to reporting from Politico, about $12 billion of the $60 billion in aid would be loaned, since the remaining funds will technically be spent to support the U.S. weapons industry. Johnson has also offered support for the idea, calling it "a common sense suggestion." But he will likely continue to feel political pressure from both sides over Ukraine aid. Members of the Freedom Caucus sharply criticized Johnson for his handling of government funding negotiations, which could limit his political capital on other issues. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has already filed a "motion to vacate" that could possibly remove Johnson from the speakership, though it is unclear whether the motion will ever be voted on. Some Democratic members have already pledged to save Johnson if he agrees to bring the national security supplemental to the floor. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has also come out in opposition to the loan idea, telling reporters that the process would take too long and "the best way we can get Ukraine the help they need is for the House to pass the Senate bill." Democrats have offered similar hesitations. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) both noted that time was of the essence and passing already-existing legislation was their preferred path.Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that it was "one of those back-of-the-napkin ideas that sounds really good until you actually try to operationalize it." Nonetheless, the Democratic members were not willing to completely dismiss the plan. Murphy said he would be "interested to hear more" and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said it would be "worth considering."Given that the plan is associated with Trump, many Democrats have neglected to wholeheartedly back it. But if they sense that it is a way to win over enough Republican votes it's possible that they could change their minds. "If there's a way to structure money to Ukraine in a way that gets Republican votes, then I'd sure take a hard look at that," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) "Democrats support aid to Ukraine. Whether you call it a loan, or whatever, get 'em some resources," added Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee. "You've got to get them some help. So if it comes in a loan, it's help; if it comes as an aid package with no requirements, it's still help."The U.S. occasionally offers foreign aid in the form of a loan. Approximately 10% of the post-World War II Marshall Plan, which totaled about $13.3 billion in aid — or more than $200 billion adjusted for inflation, was implemented through loans. On Monday, the State Department announced that it will loan $2 billion to help Poland rebuild its military. It represented the first use of a military aid loan via the State Department's Foreign Military Financing since 2017, according to Defense One. As Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), has already acknowledged, the loan will ultimately serve the same purpose as a grant. "If that gets some people over the line, fine, because ultimately, Ukraine is not going to pay back the loan to the U.S., it's going to be a loan that's forgiven," he said. That reality seems to pose a problem for long-time opponents of Ukraine aid. ""My question would be, what are you going to collect? You've got a war-torn country that basically doesn't have an economy," Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told Business Insider on Thursday. "So how do you get paid back?"While the growing popularity of this option signals that supporters of Ukraine aid are searching for a Plan B, so far those who have voiced support for it are primarily those who already supported aid to Ukraine to a certain extent. Ultimately, if Johnson wants to keep the support of his caucus, and perhaps his job, he will need to convince long-time skeptics of aid to go along with this proposal. So far, there is little evidence of movement on that front.

Vladimir Putin extended his rule over Russia after claiming a fifth term as president over the weekend in a predetermined election in which he faced little opposition. Leaders of middle powers who have maintained neutral stances during the war in Ukraine used congratulatory phone calls with Putin to stress the importance of bringing the conflict to an end and signal their willingness to help play a constructive role in future negotiations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "expressed Turkey's readiness to play any facilitating role in returning to the negotiation table for Ukraine," according to a statement released by his office. Ankara has pursued a balancing act throughout the war, providing military support to Ukraine but refusing to join the Western sanctions effort targeting Moscow. Turkey also played a key role in the now-defunct Black Sea grain deal, one of the few diplomatic breakthroughs through the first two years of conflict, and earlier this month offered to host a summit between Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
Indian President Narendra Modi made a similar push in the aftermath of Russia's elections, as he spoke to both Putin and Zelensky, emphasizing the necessity of "dialogue and diplomacy," between the two nations, reported the Times of India.
"Unlike China, India has not drawn up any peace plan, or made any specific offer to mediate, but has long maintained it will be happy to facilitate any international peace effort," according to the report. "Zelenskyy expressed gratitude for India's support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, humanitarian aid and 'active' participation in Peace Formula meetings, as he invited Modi to Ukraine and hoped India will attend the inaugural Global Peace Summit in Switzerland."
Following its role as G20 host in 2023, world leaders and analysts expressed optimism that New Delhi could emerge as a peacemaker in the war.
Zelensky has been working to win over these middle powers and the rest of the Global South to sign on to his vision of a peace formula and participate in the planned summit in Switzerland that Russia has not been invited to. As outlined in Diplomacy Watch earlier this month, Kyiv has offered tepidly to welcome China's role in this effort, seeing Beijing as having leverage over parts of the rest of the world.
But Politico reported on Monday that Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to France in May, looking to convince European leaders to invite Putin to future peace talks. If Moscow is not included, Beijing may boycott any upcoming summits.
"That message was amplified, [officials] say, during Chinese special envoy Li Hui's European tour earlier this month to discuss the future of Ukraine," according to Politico.
Kyiv has signaled some openness to having Russia at later talks, after the summit in Switzerland that it hopes will take place this summer.
"There can be a situation in which we together invite representatives of the Russian Federation, where they will be presented with the plan in case whoever is representing the aggressor country at that time will want to genuinely end this war and return to a just peace," Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, said in late February.
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— While the next tranche of Ukraine aid continues to get held up in the U.S. House of Representatives, two Biden administration officials traveled to Europe this week to express their optimism that Washington will eventually provide Kyiv with more funding. Speaking ahead of a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said "The message today is clear: The U.S. won't let Ukraine fail. This coalition will not let Ukraine fail and the free world won't let Ukraine fail."
Meanwhile, national security adviser Jake Sullivan made a secret visit to Kyiv, "in a trip aimed at reaffirming U.S. support for the beleaguered ally," according to The Washington Post. "You should believe in the United States," Sullivan told reporters during this trip. "We are confident we will get this done. We will get this aid to Ukraine."
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was also in Kyiv on Monday, and he urged Ukrainian lawmakers to pass a mobilization law that would lower the age of eligibility to the draft from 27 to 25. "I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can't believe it's at 27," Graham said. "You're in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27."
As Jack Hunter noted in Responsible Statecraft this week, Graham notably voted against the aid package that passed the Senate last month. "So it shouldn't be surprising that despite encouraging Ukraine's young men to fight in a war many of them don't believe in and don't want to die in, Graham actually voted against the last Ukraine aid package because it did not include funding U.S. border security," writes Hunter. "So he was comfortable withholding money for a war over politics — a war he proclaims to believe in deeply — while urging citizens of a foreign country to march into oblivion."
— Russia fired more than 30 missiles into Kyiv on Thursday, the first such attack against the Ukrainian capital in six weeks, according to AP. "Air defenses shot down all 31 of the missiles, though the falling wreckage still damaged apartment buildings and injured 13 people, including a child, officials said," reported Reuters. "The heavy attack on Kyiv came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to 'respond in kind' to recent Ukrainian aerial attacks on the Russian border region of Belgorod, which have embarrassed the Kremlin and which Russian officials say have killed civilians."
U.S. State Department news:
In response to a question about the Polish foreign minister's claim that whether or not Ukraine succeeds in its defense against Russia is a question of U.S. credibility, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel defended Washington's response to the war."I think that when it comes to our credibility, you needn't look any further than the immense support that the United States and its allies and partners have provided to our Ukrainian partners since February of 2022, and that work is going to continue and we're going to continue to do so in close coordination with our allies and partners," Patel said. " It is because, of course, the courageousness and the heroism of the Ukrainian people, but also the convergence with our partners in Europe and others around the country that we have been able to continue to support Ukraine in the way that we have and it has been able to defend itself so fiercely."

"America was ready for renewal. The world was there to remake. There were at least two more years to get it done."So concludes Alex Ward's recent book "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy after Trump," a detailed account of President Joe Biden's first two years in office. Ward's deeply reported narrative ends in late April of 2023, with national security adviser Jake Sullivan delivering a speech at the Brookings Institution that symbolically brought the neoliberal era to an end.The story that Ward — national security reporter at Politico — tells is a compelling one. Biden's foreign policy team — led by consummate DC insiders who dubbed themselves "the A-team" — understood their mandate as working to bring Washington out of the abyss of the Trump years. Watching Donald Trump win the White House had led to a soul-searching moment for Democrats in the foreign policy establishment, pushing those who eventually became Biden's braintrust to embrace a new paradigm. "Sullivan had changed during the Trump years after working to define a progressive foreign policy, one that would appeal to denizens of the heartland as well as the well-heeled and well-intentioned urban elites," writes Ward. "The Democratic candidate, having watched his opponent in the Oval Office and the campaign trail, had also come to the conclusion that the usual message on foreign policy needed a first-page rewrite." The party would work to overturn what they perceived as the ills of Trumpism by re-embracing international allies and partners, and restoring American global leadership of the global "rules-based order." But, Ward writes, "force would be used only when the foundations of the world that the United State had helped build since 1945 were at risk. Otherwise, the guns would be holstered." The theme that Sullivan and others settled on to define Biden's foreign policy was "a foreign policy for the middle class." At times, Ward treats this approach with a critical eye, pointing to a number of inconsistencies in administration policy. But the ultimate narrative arc in the book is more clean: After a rocky start, with the nadir being the courageous but poorly managed conclusion to the United States' two-decade war in Afghanistan, the Biden administration recovered its mojo with its response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.Despite some bumps in the road, Biden and his team had begun to rebuild U.S. foreign policy, with a renewed focus on working with allies, upholding democratic norms, and protecting the so-called rules-based international order.That story has changed dramatically since the book's conclusion, which brings the reader up to April 2023, nearly a year ago. A lot has happened since then, and not so much in favor of Ward's narrative arc. If it were a classic VH-1 Face the Music episode, this is the exact point where the clouds roll in on our A-Team and everything goes careening off track, perhaps forever.And so, the response to the war in Ukraine is presented by Ward as a success. The methodical and comprehensive preparations in the months leading up to the invasion serve as a foil to the haphazard approach that marked the withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to Ward, the Biden team prepared for many possible contingencies, even though the political leadership in Ukraine was doubtful of U.S. intelligence that suggested an invasion was likely.The final chapter of "The Internationalists," before the epilogue that lays out Sullivan's speech at Brookings, features Biden's triumphant visit to Kyiv. During his address in the Ukrainian capital, says Ward, the president "wanted to prove that Bidenism worked — and the world just needed more of it." For Biden, Russia's invasion had served as a global test of democracy, and democracy had prevailed. Over the last year, however, the war has reached a "stalemate" — others say a war of attrition, with Moscow winning it. Despite these changing realities, the Biden administration has proven unwilling and unable to shift its strategy or messaging away from an understanding of the war as a fight for democracy that can only be won through military means. The message is losing favor in Washington, particularly among congressional Republicans, and politics in Washington have moved slowly against continued aid for Ukraine.Meanwhile, in its reaction to the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, the Biden administration has squandered any global legitimacy and consistency it had built in its first two-plus years in power, and undermined its message on the war in Ukraine. In just over five months, the White House has laid bare the hypocrisy and inconsistency of its stated commitment to human rights and the international order and left Washington isolated on the world stage. Things were different in May 2021 when war broke out in Gaza. Just like today, Biden chose to fully back Israel's war publicly while reportedly pressuring the Israeli prime minister behind closed doors. Biden chose to negotiate "methodically and quietly" with Benjamin Netanyahu and opted against playing a significant public role. The White House, according to Ward, welcomed the pressure from their left flank that played a role in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, reached after 11 days of conflict. It was, according to the author, indicative of Biden's broader foreign policy vision: "Core issues that challenge the world order or America's leadership get his full effort. Everything else, the United States will help if it can."The response to that war is treated by the administration as a success, as it helped keep the conflict relatively short and contained. The opposite has resulted from that strategy today. Biden continues to publicly back Israel's war, both rhetorically and materially. Despite a breathless string of reports that Washington has privately expressed its "frustration" or "concern" with Tel Aviv, Israel's war continues seemingly without restriction as the Palestinian death toll surpasses 30,000. The White House has been largely dismissive of progressives calling for a sustainable ceasefire, and the risk of a regional conflagration persists.The Biden administration's response to what is happening in Gaza has also blatantly betrayed any ostensible commitment to human rights and international law, which had been so important to the White House when it came to Ukraine. "The reason the administration was set to dive headfirst into intense preparations was to defend the rules-based international order," Ward writes about Biden's mindset after receiving intelligence that Russia might go into Ukraine in late 2021. "If Putin succeeded in wiping Ukraine off the map, the world America helped build would crumble on this administration's watch." The White House has consistently made the case that the stakes of Russia's invasion of Ukraine are the future of democracy itself. The Biden administration has lambasted Moscow's violations of international law. In April 2022, Biden even accused Vladimir Putin of committing genocide in Ukraine. Yet when the International Court of Justice ruled earlier this year that it was "plausible" that Israel was carrying out a genocide in Gaza, the White House called the accusation "unfounded." Administration officials have consistently refused to condemn alleged Israeli war crimes, including the bombing of hospitals and the forced displacement and starvation of the civilian population. Instead of pushing for a ceasefire, the U.S. has continued to support Israel's war. Biden himself often ties the wars in Ukraine and Gaza into one larger, global project, including the ongoing effort to pass a spending package that combines $60 billion in aid for Kyiv with $17 billion for Tel Aviv.In addition to Joe Biden's campaign slogan of "a foreign policy for the middle class," Ward tries to tack on a few more principles that could define the president's approach. "He had developed a doctrine of sorts over two years in office," Ward writes. "Stand true with allies. Defend democracy. Avoid escalatory conflict. Preserve the rules-based order." On almost every count, he has failed to live up to those lofty goals.

The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that could lead to the banning of video sharing platform TikTok. The legislation, which passed by a vote of 352-65, would require the Chinese tech company ByteDance to divest its holdings in the social media platform, or see TikTok be banned from U.S. app stores.
The bill was widely expected to pass after it made its way through a House Committee on Energy and Commerce committee markup by a unanimous 50-0 vote last week. But opposition to the legislation gained some steam in recent days, with lawmakers spanning the political spectrum expressing concerns over the rushed process, possible first amendment violations, and privacy. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) entered a briefing from the Biden administration yesterday "open" to supporting the legislation, which the president has said he will sign if it reaches his desk. But according to NBC News' Sahil Kapur, Pocan found the briefing "so uncovincing" and he eventually voted against it. ""It's very big brother-ish," Pocan said.
In the end, 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans opposed the legislation. An overwhelming majority of Republicans supported the bill despite last-minute opposition from former president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Supporters of the bill say that it would allow the president to designate certain social media apps and websites that are owned by foreign adversaries as a national security threat. But many Republicans who spoke during the floor debate argued that it was a way to increase the power of the national security state.
"[Supporters of the bill have] described the TikTok application as a Trojan horse. But there are some of us who feel that, either intentionally or unintentionally, this legislation to ban TikTok is actually a Trojan horse," Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said during a statement on the floor on Wednesday. "Some of us are concerned that there are First Amendment implications here. Americans have the right to view information. We don't need to be protected by the government from information. [...] We also think it's dangerous to give the president the power to decide what Americans can see on their phones and their computers."
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, agreed. "One of the key differences between us and those adversaries is the fact that they shut down newspapers, broadcast stations, and social media platforms," he said in a statement shortly before voting. "We do not. We trust our citizens to be worthy of their democracy. We do not trust our government to decide what information they may or may not see."
"Really what you're saying here is if you're not fully engaged with America's three-letter agencies in content moderation, we plan to TikTok you," added Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). "And this bill isn't just limited to TikTok. It's a coercive power that can be applied to others."
Some progressive Democrats, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) spoke out against the rushed process, as the bill went from committee markup to floor vote within four days, arguing that more overarching data privacy laws were needed. "There are serious antitrust and privacy questions here, and any national security concerns should be laid out to the public prior to a vote," Ocasio-Cortez said in a post on X.
"This is a blunt instrument for serious concerns, and if enacted, would mark a huge expansion of government power to ban apps in the future. Instead, we need comprehensive data privacy legislation, alongside thoughtful guardrails for social media platforms – whether those platforms are funded by companies in the PRC, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or the United States," said Jacobs in a press release.
"We can't credibly hold other countries to one set of democratic values while giving ourselves a free pass to restrict freedom of speech. The United States has rightly criticized others for censorship and banning specific social media platforms in the past," she added. "Doing so ourselves now would tarnish our credibility when it matters most and trample on the civil liberties of 150 million Americans."
The bill will next head to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. Following the vote, Senate Intelligence chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and vice chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) put out a statement endorsing the legislation, saying they were "encouraged" by the vote and "looked forward to working together to get this bill through the Senate and signed into law." Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has so far not committed to bringing the legislation to the floor for a vote.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has vowed to work against any effort to push the bill through the Senate quickly, saying the bill "makes no sense whatsoever," adding that it was a First Amendment violation. Paul blocked a similar effort to ban the app last year.

Chinese diplomat Li Hui, the Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs, traveled to Ukraine, Russia, and elsewhere in Europe this week in what he described as an effort to build consensus among various parties for eventual peace talks. It is Li's second round of shuttle diplomacy since Russia's invasion just over two years ago. The diplomat first traveled to Russia and Ukraine in May 2023, shortly before Kyiv launched its unsuccessful counteroffensive.The latest visit also comes at a crucial time in the war, as Russia recently made its first major territorial gain in months, and the next tranche of aid from the United States continues to be held up in Congress.During his trip, Li is also expected to visit Brussels, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw to get a sense of whether, given these developments, thinking in European capitals has changed, and there is an opportunity for Beijing to assume the role of peacemaker.Reports suggest that there is little optimism for any substantial breakthroughs during the trip. "Beijing's continued diplomatic and economic support of Russia since the war has been a sticking point in relations with Europe, which said its trust in Beijing has eroded as it steps up scrutiny of its trade with China," according to Bloomberg. "There's also skepticism over China's 12-point peace proposal issued in February 2023 to end the war." The Bloomberg report adds that the Ukrainian ambassador in Beijing has also been given the "cold shoulder," as only a handful of his more than 40 requests to meet with Chinese ministries have been granted.Public opinion polling also shows that Ukrainians have an increasingly negative view of China and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, however, has made clear that he wants China to be present at the series of "peace summits" that Ukraine and its allies have put together since last summer. "Ukrainian people see China as a hostile country. But at the same time, the Ukrainian president and officials still want to see China at the same table with other countries to discuss [Zelensky's] peace talks," Vita Golod, chair of Ukrainian Association of Sinologists, told the South China Morning Post. "I think Ukraine still sees a Chinese mediating role because China is the only country who is welcome to Moscow and Kyiv at the same time." Kyiv may also welcome Chinese involvement in mediation because it may legitimize Ukraine's stance with the Global South, which Zelensky has been trying to win over since the start of the war. As the SCMP article notes, Ukraine is unlikely to have confidence that Beijing can act as a neutral arbiter, given China's perceived closeness to Moscow. . "On his last trip to Kyiv, Li was given a list of steps China could take – short of condemning Russia – to help Ukraine," according to the SCMP. "These included working to return children transported to Russia; maintaining the openness of the Black Sea grain corridor; and helping ensure the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, which has been occupied by Russian forces."Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said that Chinese "efforts point to one goal: that is to pave the way for ending the conflict and starting peace talks." "Past experience shows that a conflict when prolonged tends to deteriorate and escalate even beyond the expectations of the parties involved," he added. "In the absence of peace talks, misperception and miscalculation will accumulate. (...) China supports the holding of an international peace conference at the right time" When China first indicated interest in playing a peacemaking role, Washington tepidly endorsed the possibility, but there is little indication that the two countries are willing to work together to end the conflict. In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Sunday that he hopes that Ukraine and Russia can negotiate a cessation of hostilities soon, given the current battlefield dynamics. "On the issue of Ukraine, our view is that both sides have reached the limits of what they can get by war. We think that it is time to start a dialogue for a ceasefire," Fidan said, according to the online Turkish media outlet Duvar. "That doesn't mean recognizing the occupation [by Russia], but issues of sovereignty and ceasefire should be discussed separately." Ankara has remained non-aligned during the conflict, providing Ukraine with some military support but refusing to join Western sanctions on Moscow. On Thursday, the Turkish president's office announced that Zelenksy would visit Istanbul for talks with his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday. — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) maintains that he is in no rush to bring the foreign aid bill that passed the Senate in mid-February to the House floor. There are two discharge petitions, one led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the other by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), that are looking to collect signatures that could force the bill to the floor over the Speaker's objections. "In the end, this all comes down to trust, which is in short supply in the Capitol right now," according to a report in Punchbowl News. "Can Democratic leadership work with Republican Ukraine hawks on a discharge petition that would force Johnson's hand? Is there any way Johnson and House GOP leaders [can] seek a deal with Democrats on this?"— Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been unable to forge a political consensus in Ukraine over the recruitment of thousands of new soldiers that he says are necessary to combat Russian attacks, according to The Washington Post. The lack of a clear plan "has fueled deep divisions in Ukraine's parliament and more broadly in Ukrainian society. It has left the military relying on a hodgepodge of recruiting efforts and sown panic among fighting-age men, some of whom have gone into hiding, worried that they will be drafted into an ill-equipped army and sent to certain death given that aid for Ukraine remains stalled in Washington," according to the Post. "The quandary over how to fill the ranks has confronted Zelensky with perhaps the greatest challenge to his leadership since the start of the February 2022 invasion."— A Russian missile struck the Ukrainian port city of Odessa while Zelensky was there on Wednesday. The attack hit approximately 500 to 800 meters away from Zelensky, who was visiting Odessa alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a source told Reuters. "We witnessed the strike today," Zelensky told reporters following the strike. "You see who we're dealing with; they don't care where to hit. I know that today there were victims, I don't know all the details yet, but I know that there are dead, there are wounded." U.S. State Department news:State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was asked about the attack on Odessa during a press briefing on Wednesday. "I think the strike is yet another reminder of how Russia continues to strike Ukraine every single day, and it's a reminder of Ukraine's need for air defense interceptors, and it's a reminder that the United States Congress needs to take action, as we have called on them to do, to support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression," Miller said.

Debates over foreign policy have played an unusually significant role in the intra-Republican party debate over the last year. Disagreements over aid for Ukraine were a driving force behind former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy's ouster from his leadership position last October. When Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) endorsed Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, he cited his foreign policy record as the primary reason, and Nikki Haley has made her aggressive brand of foreign policy central to her challenge to Trump.Now, the Republican Party will undergo another meaningful transition. Mitch McConnell, who has led the Senate Republican conference since 2007, announced last week that he will step down from his long-held perch following November's elections and retire from the Senate at the end of his current term. While McConnell's decision is not explicitly about foreign policy, it is a signal that the party's views on a number of major issues, including America's role in the world, are changing."It's a body blow for the establishment, interventionist wing of the GOP," Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest and author of two books on Republican foreign policy, tells Responsible Statecraft.To be sure, there are other elements at play. McConnell is 82. He's had a number of health events in public in recent months. A Trump return to the White House looks like a distinct possibility, and, given McConnell's apparent distaste for the former president, the Kentucky Republican may not want to contend with the pressure of working with him for another four years. Nevertheless, there are reports that McConnell is considering endorsing Trump for a second term.The majority leader, however, has said that he will serve out the rest of his term, which expires in January 2027, so the decision was not entirely informed by his personal life. "It suggests to me that some of this does have to do with the changing composition of the Senate Republican Conference," Jim Antle, executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine, tells RS.The dynamics of that changing composition are clear: During a vote in the Senate last month on legislation that would provide foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel, 18 of the 30 Senators who were first elected before 2016 supported the bill; only four of the 19 who came to office since voted in favor.McConnell's Foreign Policy LegacyThe post-Trump years have been atypical for McConnell. During his nearly 40 years in the Senate and his 16 years as party leader — the longest such tenure in history — McConnell has rarely made foreign affairs a policy priority and has, despite criticism from conservative activists, laboriously tried to avoid inserting himself into intra-party disputes.But after his relations soured with the former president, McConnell became a symbol of the Republican old guard in Washington that was working to reverse Trump's effects on the party — with a focus on one issue in particular."Of all the ways Trump has reshaped the Republican Party, it's clear that McConnell sees the drift toward isolationism as the most pernicious — particularly at a moment when the fate of Ukraine and perhaps even NATO countries could be determined by the resolve of the Republican Party," Politico's Jonathan Martin reported last summer."I didn't really think he was that important on foreign policy until the Republican consensus on foreign policy started being challenged. And he was a leader in pushing back against those challenges," says Antle."McConnell's legacy is often considered domestic. It certainly was his area of interest," adds Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative. "But I think, time and again, McConnell showed himself to be essentially a kind of unreconstructed George W. Bush-style Republican on foreign policy, and really did sort of stick his neck out there as the years went on."However, McConnell's brand of conservatism, particularly on the foreign policy front, has been going out of style. It is reviled by more right-wing members of the party, and old Republican purveyors of it are aging out and retiring.The conservative House Freedom Caucus mocked the departing Senate leader after his announcement, focusing on his recent rhetoric on foreign policy. "Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine)," the group posted from their account on the social media platform X.What's Next?The Senate can be a slow place to transform. Six-year terms mean that Senators are not as subject to the whims of the voter base as their counterparts in the House. The most oft-mentioned replacements for McConnell are the so-called "Three Johns" — Thune of South Dakota, Cornyn of Texas, (the third, Barrasso of Wyoming, has announced on Tuesday that he was forgoing the opportunity to replace McConnell to run for the second leadership spot instead). They are more in the mold of the current majority leader in that they have a more temperamentally conservative approach to politics, unlike some newer GOP politicians who are willing to overthrow institutional norms in Washington.Even though the Senate was a place for more establishment Republicans to have some level of power during the Trump years, Mills argues that the more "America First" wing of the party is more aware of and prepared to push for control of these levers of power. "I do think we're getting to the point now, where the Senate Leader is high profile enough that they can't be this major outlier on the policy," he tells RS. In addition, he says, anybody in the party who has national aspirations will have to advocate for some degree of foreign policy restraint.In terms of policy, the most crucial question confronting Congress is the future of aid to Ukraine. McConnell has been a strong advocate for continuing aid and, for the time being, the spending package is stuck in the House of Representatives. If the House blocks passage of the bill or passes a different version of it, the Senate GOP's position on the issue will once again be tested. The Republican conference had largely been supportive of aiding Ukraine, but the most recent bill passed with support from fewer than half of the members.Despite facing criticism from conservative activists, McConnell has rarely been on the losing side of any debates within the Republican Party during his time as leader, says Antle. Ukraine aid could prove to be a significant exception. And perhaps, given his stance on the issue, McConnell may feel that his voice is better placed elsewhere in the caucus."Maybe now he wants to play more of a Mitt Romney role. Where he's seen as this elder statesman within the party, but he has the freedom to criticize Trump," Antle tells RS. "This is me speculating. But I think it's informed speculation. He may feel that he's reached a point where herding cats in private is less important than speaking out against some of these things in public."The Trump FactorWhere the next Senate GOP leader falls on this and other related issues will depend largely on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. Trump has reportedly already been involved in the jockeying over McConnell's successor behind-the-scenes, urging Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to run. Regardless of who the leader ends up being, they will likely need to be loyal to Trump personally, but the former president may be more flexible when it comes to his policy agenda."If Trump really wanted to push somebody who was different from McConnell on foreign policy, I think he could have an impact, but I don't think that those are the kinds of considerations that he's going to make," says Antle. "But it does suggest, I think, that that wing of the Senate Republican Conference is only going to get bigger and the kinds of pressures McConnell was resisting, are going to become more difficult to resist."Heilbrunn, on the other hand, contends that if Trump is elected, the battle for Republican foreign policy will effectively be over. "The one thing he actually cares about is foreign policy," he tells RS, adding that Trump will not settle for a Senate advocating for a different approach, and will be "pushing for someone who will be subservient to him."If Trump loses, however, there will be a more contested battle over how the Republican Party may understand the country's role in the world. While Cold War-era hawks have definitely lost the power they once had within the party, they could make the case that Trump represented a short-term outlier if he loses another election.Even if Trump loses, Mills says, "I'm still pretty bullish on the restraint end of the Republican Party," because the momentum in the party's base is aligned with that movement. Foreign policy, he says, is only growing more salient for GOP primary voters.In addition, younger and more recently elected Republicans' views on foreign policy can harken back to the GOP from before the Cold War, which often opposed foreign intervention. In this telling, Cold Warriors like McConnell and the neoconservatives that populated the George W. Bush administration are actually the outliers in the party's history."I think that what Trump represents is an older and probably more durable tradition," says Heilbrunn.

UPDATE 3/1: The motion to discharge Paul's resolution failed in the Senate last night by a vote of 13-79. Nine Democrats and four Republicans supported the measure. "Unfortunately, history prepared us for Senator Paul's joint resolution of disapproval to fail. Congress has never passed a joint resolution of disapproval to stop an arms sale in part because they would need a veto-proof majority in both chambers in order to override a presidential veto," Jonathan Ellis Allen, a research associate at the Cato Institute, told RS after the vote. "Absent a major change in arms sale policy that requires Congress to vote to approve – rather than disapprove – each sale, the president will continue to have the power to use weapons transfers as a tool of foreign policy with little oversight from Congress."Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) plans to force a vote as early as today on a resolution that would prohibit the sale of F-16 fighter jets and other military supplies to Turkey — a $23 billion package that the Biden administration approved last month.Paul's opposition to the sale is a result of concerns over Ankara's record of alleged human rights abuses domestically, and what Paul says is destabilizing and dangerous behavior in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, as well as a pattern of acting against the rule of law and U.S. interests. The senator first introduced the resolution on February 7."Turkey's President praised Hamas as a 'liberation group,' Turkey's military fired at our troops in Syria, and Turkey's police imprison those who dare to criticize the leader. That doesn't sound like the actions of an 'ally' deserving of $23 billion worth of American firepower," Paul said in a statement provided to RS. As three scholars from the Cato Institute explained in an op-ed late last year, Washington has continued to send valuable aid to Turkey while simultaneously squandering any leverage it has in the relationship."The U.S. will continue to send weapons and security assistance to its NATO ally, in part with the hope that such reassurances and arms sales will provide the U.S. with leverage over Turkey," wrote Jordan Cohen, Jonathan Ellis Allen, and Nardine Mosaad. " Unfortunately, U.S. support for Turkey does the opposite of providing leverage and simultaneously hurts American security while destabilizing a region that Washington seems unable to ignore." The State Department announced the sale of $23 billion of 40 F-16s, along with the necessary tools to modernize its 79 fighter jets from its current fleet after 20 months of negotiations that centered around welcoming Sweden into NATO. While the Biden administration said in July 2023 that it would move forward with the sale following signals from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he would approve Sweden's membership, Congress demanded more concrete steps before they green-lighted the sale. In January, Erdogan signed the documents that officially ratified Sweden's NATO ascension — later that day, the State Department notified Congress that it had approved the sale.The parliament in Hungary, the final holdout on Stockholm's looming admittance to NATO, voted to approve their membership on Monday. In the past, other senators have expressed concern over Erdogan's authoritarian tendencies and Turkey's foreign policy. "My approval of Turkey's request to purchase F-16 aircraft has been contingent on Turkish approval of Sweden's NATO membership. But make no mistake: This was not a decision I came to lightly," Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in January. "While Turkey plays a critical role in the region as a NATO ally, there is an urgent need for improvement on its human rights record, including the unjust imprisonment of journalists and civil society leaders, better cooperation on holding Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine, and on lowering the temperature in its rhetoric about the Middle East," Cardin added.Congress has never successfully used a joint resolution of disapproval to block a proposed arms sale. Passing such a measure would require getting through both chambers of Congress and securing a veto-proof majority in the Senate. Reporting from when the State Department announced the deal in January indicated that there was not sufficient support in Congress to block the deal.

A bipartisan group of senators expressed, in the words of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), "grave skepticism" over President Joe Biden's approach to trying to de-escalate tensions with the Houthis in the Red Sea, grilling administration officials about the legal authority and strategic effectiveness of their policy during a hearing on Tuesday.Sens. Kaine, Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.) led the way in questioning witnesses Timothy Lenderking, the State Department's special envoy for Yemen, and Daniel Shapiro, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, during testimony in front of the subcommittee on the Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterrorism. The witnesses spoke out against ongoing Houthi attacks saying that it was causing major disruptions to the global economy, jeopardizing diplomacy between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and risking further regional escalation in the Middle East. "These attacks which affect the entire region cannot go unchallenged," said Shapiro. That response, according to Shapiro, has included striking over 230 Houthi targets, which, he claimed "likely destroyed hundreds of Houthi weapons."Kaine, Murphy, and Young, who, along with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent a letter to the White House in late January pressing the administration on its strategy, took the opportunity to ask its representatives the questions directly.All three Senators pushed the witnesses on the legal authority and historical precedent the administration was operating under as it carries out a series of airstrikes. The administration officials maintained that the President's article II authorities served as justification. "Article II self-defense means you can defend U.S. personnel, you can defend U.S. military assets, you probably can defend U.S. commercial ships. But the defense of other nations' commercial ships? In no way and it's not even close," said Kaine. "It is, in my view, laughable to call that self-defense." Young also focused his line of questioning on the administration's theory of deterrence. As Biden himself has admitted, strikes against Houthi targets have not stopped the group's actions in the Red Sea. When pushed by Young, Shapiro said "until they stop, we are not done" with airstrikes. Shapiro effectively declined to answer Young's follow-up question over what level of military activity the administration thought necessary to deter the Houthis, and what level of military activity they would be willing to pursue to reach that endpoint. As Murphy later noted, 23,000 Saudi airstrikes in Yemen between 2015 and 2022 — some of which had hit the same places that U.S. strikes were now targeting — failed to alter the Houthis' calculus, and there was little evidence that more limited airstrikes from Washington today would have a different result.One point of animated discussion and disagreement during the hearing was on one path that some senators thought could push the Houthis to stop their aggression: pushing for a truce in Gaza. There was quite a bit of skepticism over the Houthi claim that its aggression was a result of Israel's brutal war on Gaza and Washington's continued support for it. Murphy called this claim "ridiculous on its face," Young said it was "parroted rhetoric," Lenderking argued that tying the two issues together was "entirely an illegitimate linkage," and Shapiro stated that the situation was "entirely unrelated to Israel." All pointed to the fact that Houthi attacks were "indiscriminate," as Shapiro put it, and had targeted a number of non-Israeli ships.Yet, as Kaine and Sen. Chris van Hollen (D-Md.) noted, Houthi attacks notably decreased during a short-term truce in Gaza in late November and early December 2023. "I am a little disappointed that you so quickly try to pull cold water on the idea that this is connected to the war in Gaza. These attacks started, Secretary Shapiro, as you said on November 19," said Kaine. "I think the most natural interpretation of this is the Houthis, seeing some suffer in the region, are saying others are going to suffer in the region until we've figured out a response." He added that the U.S., in his opinion, will not be able to re-establish deterrence until they get a hostage deal that leads to a longer truce in Gaza.When challenged by Van Hollen, Shapiro did acknowledge that attacks declined during the first truce, but argued that the trend could have been coincidental, and that other periods of calm in the Red Sea had come after rounds of airstrikes.Right after calling the linking of the two issues "entirely illegitimate," Lenderking seemed to admit a ceasefire could ease tensions, while also suggesting that the Biden administration was not prepared to push for that outcome. "The fact that they continue this and have said publicly that they will not stop until there's a ceasefire in Gaza is an indication that we're not yet at the point, unfortunately, where they do intend to dial back," he said. The hearing also featured more partisan attacks on the administration's Middle East policy and no senators expressing outright support for its strategy, demonstrating a level of frustration among some of the Senators most involved in regional affairs over Biden and his team's approach.That anger also extended to protesters who interrupted proceedings on two occasions. "You all know exactly how to stop the blockade in the Red Sea," one of them said. "And that's to stop support for the genocide in Gaza."

The so-called GOP "civil war" over the role the United States should play in the world made headlines earlier this week when the Senate finally passed a national security supplemental that provides $60 billion in aid for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. The legislation, which was supported by President Joe Biden and the overwhelming majority of the Senate's Democratic caucus, proved more controversial among Republicans. Twenty-two GOP Senators voted in favor of the legislation, while 27 opposed it.An analysis of the votes shows an interesting generational divide within the Republican caucus.Each of the five oldest Republicans in the Senate — and nine of the ten oldest — voted in favor of the supplemental spending package. Conversely, the six youngest senators, and 12 of the 14 youngest, opposed it. Equally striking was the breakdown of votes among Republicans based on when they assumed their current office. Of the 49 sitting GOP Senators, 30 were elected before Donald Trump first became the party's presidential candidate in 2016. Eighteen of those 30 supported the aid legislation. Of the members who came to office in 2017 or later, only four voted to advance the bill, while 15 voted against. The difference in votes among those elected since 2016 is likely partly attributable to Trump's unconventional approach to foreign policy. The Republican party establishment during the Cold War and Global War on Terror is often associated with hawkishness, including towards Russia. While the party has always carried some skepticism toward foreign aid, some of the most significant spending increases have taken place during the presidencies of Republicans Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Trump, however, won in 2016 in part for his open disdain for mission creep after the GWOT, what he called the failed war in Iraq, and foreign aid he believed made countries dependents rather than reciprocal partners and allies."[Trump] certainly created the cognitive space," Brandan Buck, a U.S. Army veteran and historian of GOP foreign policy, tells RS. "He's more of an intuitive thinker than a person of principle, but I think him being on the scene, prying open the Overton window has allowed for a greater array of dissenting voices." Others have argued that the trends are perhaps also indicative of the loyalty that Republicans who assumed their offices during the Trump presidency feel toward him. Trump spoke out forcefully against the legislation in advance of the vote. "WE SHOULD NEVER GIVE MONEY ANYMORE WITHOUT THE HOPE OF A PAYBACK, OR WITHOUT "STRINGS" ATTACHED. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA SHOULD BE "STUPID" NO LONGER!," the former president wrote on the social media platform Truth Social the weekend before the vote. The vote cannot only be explained by ideology, as some typically hawkish allies of Trump, like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) ultimately voted against the package. Graham is a staunch supporter of Israel, has voted for previous Ukraine aid packages, and in the past called aid for Ukraine "a good investment" and "the best money we've ever spent." By the time the vote on the most recent spending package came around, Graham was lamenting the lack of border security provisions and echoing Trump's argument that aid to Ukraine should be a "loan."Meanwhile, Senators took note of the generational gap, and the debate spilled over into the public."Nearly every Republican Senator under the age of 55 voted NO on this America Last bill," wrote Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), 48, on the social media platform X. "Things are changing just not fast enough." Schmitt was elected in 2022."Youthful naivety is bliss, the wisdom of age may save the west," retorted Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) "Reagan may be dead, but his doctrine saved the world during less dangerous times than these. If the modern Marx (Putin for the youngsters) restores the USSR while we pretend it's not our problem, God help us." Cramer, 63, was sworn in in 2019, making him one of the handful of recently elected senators to support the aid legislation. "I like Kevin, but come on, man, have some self-awareness," Sen. J.D. Vance fired back. "This moment calls out for many things, but boomer neoconservatism is not among them."Vance, who at 39 is the youngest Republican member of the Senate, noted in his post that "the fruits of this generation in American leadership is: quagmire in Afghanistan, war in Iraq under false pretenses." He said younger Americans were disillusioned with that track record. Buck, who served several tours in the Afghanistan war, and whose research includes generational trends in U.S. foreign policy thinking, pointed out that there is strong historical precedent for believing that age and generation affect how members of Congress view America's role in the world. "It's certainly not unusual for there to be generational trends in foreign policy thinking, especially within the Republican Party," Buck told RS. Following the end of World War II, he said, it took "a full churning" of the conservative movement to replace old-school non-interventionist Republicans and to get the party in line with the Cold War consensus. "I think what we're seeing now is something similar but in reverse with a generation of conservatives."He added that the failures of the War on Terror resulted in a deep skepticism of the national security state and the Republican party establishment. Opinion polling and trends show that the American public that grew up either during or in the shadow of the disastrous military campaigns in the Greater Middle East is generally opposed to military intervention and more questioning of American institutions."All the energy on FP [foreign policy] in the GOP right now is with the younger generation that wants fundamental transformation of USFP [U.S. foreign policy]," noted Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, on X. "The self-satisfied, insular neocons who loathe their voters' FP views are a dying breed."

As Russia's war in Ukraine approaches its two-year anniversary, President Vladimir Putin has reportedly had his suggestions of ceasefire rejected by Washington. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Russia had approached the United States through intermediaries in late 2023 and early 2024 to propose freezing the conflict along the current lines. Washington reportedly turned down the suggestion, saying that they were not willing to engage in talks if Ukraine was not a participant."Putin was proposing to freeze the conflict at the current lines and was unwilling to cede any of the Ukrainian territory controlled by Russia, but the signal offered what some in the Kremlin saw as the best path towards a peace of some kind," according to Reuters, which cites three anonymous Russian sources. The plan, one of the sources told Reuters, was for national security adviser Jake Sullivan to meet with the Russian counterpart to hash out the details. But after meeting with other senior officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Director Bill Burns, "Sullivan told Ushakov that Washington was willing to talk about other aspects of the relationship but would not speak about a ceasefire without Ukraine, said one of the Russian sources," according to Reuters. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that there is no point in negotiating with Putin and has maintained that he will never accept Russia controlling any part of Ukraine."Everything fell apart with the Americans," one of the sources told Reuters, saying that Washington did not want to pressure Kyiv into reaching an agreement. The sources also added that given the U.S. reaction to a potential ceasefire, Moscow saw little reason to reach out again. Both Washington and Moscow have denied the reporting. The Kremlin "never made any kind of proposal to us nor have we seen any signs that Putin is sincerely interested in ending the war," an unnamed U.S. official told Politico's NatSec daily on Tuesday. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that the report that Russia had made such an offer was "not true." Despite Washington's insistence, this is the latest piece of evidence that Putin may have pursued a ceasefire in recent months. The New York Times reported late in 2023 that the Russian president had quietly been sending signals to the West that he was prepared to freeze the conflict. "The signals come through multiple channels, including via foreign governments with ties to both the United States and Russia," the Times reported. "Unofficial Russian emissaries have spoken to interlocutors about the contours of a potential deal that Mr. Putin would accept, American officials and others said." The report also revealed that Putin had been interested in a potential ceasefire as far back as the fall of 2022, following Ukraine's successful counteroffensive. As journalist Leonid Ragozin explained in al-Jazeera earlier this week, this may be an effort to pressure the West to negotiate on Putin's terms."What Putin is trying to achieve is making the West face its moral dilemma which boils down to the cost and benefit of resisting his aggression," Ragozin writes. "The continued support for Ukraine's military effort will cost thousands of lives and devastate Ukraine even further, while success is hardly guaranteed." In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— The prospects for the next tranche of U.S. aid for Ukraine saw the first glimmer of optimism in months, but the chances that it becomes law remain murky. After a tumultuous negotiation, the Senate passed the $95 billion national security supplemental, which includes approximately $60 billion for Kyiv. The legislation next goes to the House of Representatives, which has been more skeptical of sending aid, and where leadership so far appears unwilling to bring the bill to the floor. Supporters believe that if the House voted on the package, it would pass overwhelmingly, and some have floated pursuing legislative maneuvers that would allow them to supersede leadership and bring the legislation to a vote. — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he spoke with Paul Whelan, the U.S. Marine currently detained in Russia, on Monday, according to CNN. Blinken provided few details on his conversation with Whelan, who has been detained since December 2018. When asked about a possible prisoner exchange involving Whelan or detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the Kremlin said that such matters could only be resolved, "in silence." — French President Emmanuel Macron announced in a statement that he will sign a bilateral security agreement with Ukraine on Friday. Macron did not specify what exactly the agreement will look like, but he said earlier this year that he was expecting to model an agreement after the 10-year deal that the United Kingdom and Ukraine signed earlier this year. — The Netherlands will join a coalition of countries that is providing Ukraine with advanced drones, according to Reuters. "Ukraine intends to manufacture thousands of long-range drones capable of deep strikes into Russia in 2024 and already has up to 10 companies working on production, Ukraine's digital minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said in a Reuters interview on Monday."U.S. State Department news:In a Wednesday press briefing, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller reiterated the importance of Congress passing the supplemental, stressing that it was in the national security interest of Ukraine, Europe, and the United States."A lot of that money is spent here, helps develop the manufacturing base here in the United States. And so we will continue to push for the passage of the supplemental bill, and ultimately we think – as the President said, the world is watching," Miller said. "And certainly I'm sure that when we are in Munich we will hear directly from foreign leaders that they are watching very much what Congress does. We know the Ukrainian people are watching. And as the President said, history is watching as well."