{"id":42417,"date":"2023-04-13T06:51:35","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T14:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=42417"},"modified":"2023-04-13T06:51:35","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T14:51:35","slug":"desantis-slippery-ukraine-maneuvering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/13\/desantis-slippery-ukraine-maneuvering\/","title":{"rendered":"DeSantis’ Slippery Ukraine Maneuvering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ron DeSantis expands on his Ukraine position in response<\/a> to a questionnaire from Tucker Carlson:<\/p>\n

While the U.S. has many vital national interests \u2013 securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party \u2013 becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration\u2019s virtual \u201cblank check\u201d funding of this conflict for \u201cas long as it takes,\u201d without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country\u2019s most pressing challenges. <\/i><\/p>\n

Without question, peace should be the objective. The US should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world\u2019s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.<\/i><\/p>\n

The early coverage<\/a> of DeSantis\u2019 statement is emphasizing and exaggerating the gap between him and Biden, and this is probably just what DeSantis wants. Note that DeSantis says that the US should not become \u201cfurther entangled,\u201d which implies that he has no objection to the current level of entanglement. He attacks Biden again for a \u201cvirtual blank check\u201d position that Biden doesn\u2019t actually hold, and then goes on to rule out certain kinds of military assistance that the Biden administration has also been opposing. Like Biden, he says he worries about escalation risks and the possibility of direct conflict between the US and Russia, but he can\u2019t be seen acknowledging that Biden holds these same views.<\/p>\n

DeSantis is looking for a way to run against Biden on Ukraine without embracing full-on opposition to the policy. What he has come up with is to misrepresent Biden\u2019s position in order to make Biden seem more aggressive and reckless than he has been. Then DeSantis essentially endorses the status quo while posing as a bold critic. <\/p>\n

This is a bit reminiscent of how Mitt Romney ran against Obama\u2019s foreign policy. Because Romney didn\u2019t really differ that much with Obama on substance on most issues, he usually had to distort Obama\u2019s record to make the policy differences between them seem vast. The problem back then for the challenger was that Romney started to believe his own propaganda about apology tours and appeasement and then made a fool of himself on a regular basis. <\/p>\n

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and<\/i> Culture11, and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ron DeSantis expands on his Ukraine position in response to a questionnaire from Tucker Carlson: While the U.S. has many vital national interests \u2013 securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party \u2013 becoming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-42417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"DeSantis essentially endorses the status quo while posing as a bold critic."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42418,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42417\/revisions\/42418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42417"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=42417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}