He’s losing the war against Ukraine but making advances in his campaign to dissolve NATO.
Vladimir Putin’s central objective in Europe isn’t to capture Kyiv, the Donbas, or any other part of Ukraine. It’s to weaken the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which protects most of the continent against him. And in that longstanding campaign, Putin scored two significant victories this week.
One was in France, where Marine Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, finished a close second to Emmanuel Macron in Sunday’s French presidential election. Le Pen is running almost even with Macron in polls for the April 24 runoff. She has said that if she wins, she’ll withdraw France from NATO’s command structure.
The other victory was in the United States, where 63 House Republicans, nearly a third of the GOP conference, voted against a resolution of support for NATO.
The House vote, taken on April 5, is a warning sign. Putin may be losing ground in Ukraine, but he’s gaining ground in the U.S. Congress. Three years ago, 22 House Republicans voted against pro-NATO legislation. That number has nearly tripled.
The “Putin wing” of the House GOP—useful idiots such as Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who openly spout Russian propaganda—is only a tiny fraction of the Kremlin’s target audience in Congress. They’re joined by a larger crowd of Ukraine bashers, hardcore isolationists, and right-wingers who say we shouldn’t worry about anyone else’s borders until we “secure” our own. Together, that coalition adds up to more than 20 lawmakers.
That’s a problem. But when you combine them with the NATO skeptics who voted against last week’s resolution—another 40 or so House Republicans who don’t trust alliances and who view Europeans as America’s rivals or adversaries—the problem gets a lot bigger.
The GOP’s turn against NATO is particularly worrisome because Congress has been warned, explicitly and repeatedly, about Putin’s goal of dissolving the alliance. In March 2017, after a U.S. intelligence report confirmed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs—which was then, like the rest of Congress, under Republican control—held a hearing on this subject. The hearing was titled, “Undermining Democratic Institutions and Splintering NATO: Russian Disinformation Aims.” Analysts and former officials explained to the committee how Russia had, in the words of one witness, persistently funded propaganda in the West to “fracture allied security, stoke public distrust against democratic institutions, and discredit the alliance structures that defend Europe.”
Over the next two years, other reports documented the same problem. The European Council on Foreign Relations noted Russia’s efforts to undermine support for NATO in Finland, the Czech Republic, and other countries. Foreign policy journals and articles in the American press noted rising alarm in Europe at President Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw U.S. troops from the continent or to abandon the American commitment to defend NATO allies.
On January 14, 2019, the New York Times reported that “several times” in 2018, Trump had “privately said he wanted to withdraw” from the alliance. The article said Trump had “told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.”
A few days after the Times report, House Democrats filed and brought to the floor the NATO Support Act, which reaffirmed that the U.S. was “solemnly committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s principle of collective defense as enumerated in Article 5.” The bill couldn’t completely bind Trump, but it expressed the sense of Congress that “the President shall not withdraw the United States from NATO” and that American policy was “to reject any efforts to withdraw the United States from NATO.” It also prohibited the use of federal funds “to take any action to withdraw the United States” from the alliance.
Every Democrat voted for the bill; 22 Republicans voted against it.
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One of the 22 Republicans, Rep. Scott Perry, explained why he and other self-styled hawks had voted no. In a statement to constituents, he complained that “the bill prevented the U.S. from ever leaving NATO . . . unless Congress first voted to repeal this would-be new law.” Perry wanted Trump to be free to pull America out of NATO, on his own.
Perry also argued that Trump should be free “to negotiate better terms for the United States in NATO,” as though the alliance were a trade deal. And he warned that “an ally of ours today may not be an ally tomorrow.”
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And that was all Putin needed. He didn’t need American lawmakers to love him the way Trump did. He just needed them to constrain or withhold support from NATO.
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Why did so many Republicans vote against the latest pro-NATO resolution?
Some openly reject the alliance. “NATO is a relic of the Cold War,” said Rep. Thomas Massie. “Why should Americans pay for Europe’s defense?”
Others said the U.S. should be wary of overcommitment. “We shouldn’t say that our support for NATO is unconditional,” said Rep. Warren Davidson.
But others, including Perry, complained that the resolution threatened American sovereignty.In a video statement, Perry told his constituents that the resolution “politicizes NATO” by saying “if you’re not supporting socialism, then we’re going to use NATO against you.”
This is a bizarre misrepresentation. The resolution affirmed that NATO was “founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.” Those words are literally in the alliance’s founding treaty. The resolution also called for “unwavering support to the people of Ukraine.” And it endorsed a project, jointly proposed by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to build “NATO’s capacity to strengthen democratic institutions within NATO member, partner, and aspirant countries.”
To make sure nobody misconstrued that language as an attack on sovereignty, the resolution stipulated that any NATO monitoring of “challenges to democracy” within member states would be undertaken only “when requested.”
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These lawmakers think they’re patriots. They think that by voting to limit NATO and America’s commitment to it, they’re protecting us. And that’s what makes their subversion of the alliance, from Putin’s point of view, so delicious.
It’s so much easier to serve evil when you think you’re doing good.
- Discussion
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Putin is losing in Ukraine, but he’s gaining in Congress.
Three years ago, 22 House Republicans voted against a bill that affirmed America's support for NATO. Last week, that number grew to 63.
"America First" lawmakers are serving Putin's #1 objective. https://t.co/851nZrYOpK
— Will Saletan (@saletan) April 12, 2022
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