The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has a new piece analyzing future Republican presidential primary also-ran Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to cut off U.S. military aid to Ukraine and what it might mean for the Republican primaries at large. Ramaswamy’s “peace” plan for Ukraine boils down to cutting off U.S. aid so that the country no longer has hope of regaining its lost territory, after which Ukraine will be forced to accept the Russian annexation of that territory, which means people like Vivek Ramaswamy don’t have to be bothered with hearing about it anymore and can move on with their lives.
Ramaswamy is an unserious contender, a gadfly who will likely exist on the debate stage mainly as an excuse for the top contenders to take a few sips of water after trading newly invented insults, but advancing such proposals likely will encourage both seditionist Donald Trump and ambition-bot Ron DeSantis to express their anti-Ukraine views more fully. Blake undersells the extent to which both top contenders have dismissed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as something beneath U.S. interest. Although Republican primary contenders don’t need Ramaswamy’s encouragement to belittle Ukraine’s war, it opens an opportunity to whine about how upstanding Republican taxpayers shouldn’t be spending money to protect the world against Trump’s best authoritarian friend.