MAGA Foreign Policy: "Not Another Penny for Ukraine!"

[Dill]

I was considering a thread on “The Coming Chaos”—i.e., what happens if Repubs contest a dozen or so elections, Dems lose the house, and “investigations” into the DOJ and FBI begin, along with Biden’s impeachment.  

Too much for one thread, and perhaps too early. But the foreign policy question is not. Trump praised and befriended dictators, let our NATO allies know they were a burden, pulled us out of the Paris Agreement, blew up the Iran Deal, and negotiated an Afghanistan pull out without consulting their government. If there is a “Trump Doctrine,” it’s trajectory is disruptive and dismissive of responsible international leadership.

So now MTJ has promised to defund our program of aid to Ukraine if the GOP takes over the House. That fits the disruptive and chaotic Trump precedent.

But if GOP win back the House, will that only mean a brief fight among Republicans, with the Greene Party toeing the McCarthy line? Or will the MAGAs grind down their leadership over the next year with obstruction, getting concessions like funding reductions? Or is there some unforeseeable third outcome which includes elements of both—the Ukraine funding continues, but the fracture weakens party unity still needed for upcoming political vendettas, tax cuts, and budget votes?  

I would be more confident of the first option if we had not seen such terrible and unpredictable political swings over the last decade. The second would require a lot of destructive brinksmanship, likely during votes on the debt, for they’d have to get the entire GOP membership on board. A portion of the base would have to do a 180 as well, to threaten MJT opponents. Could the linkage to immigration and controlling our own border bring the majority of the MAGA base along, and party leadership with them?

Might the internecine fight though, if there is one, have international effects, emboldening Putin and allies, discouraging U.S. allies and friends of democracy, advancing the narrative of our unreliability and fouling other policies in wholly unforeseen ways? 

Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine’
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3719467-marjorie-taylor-greene-under-republicans-not-another-penny-will-go-to-ukraine/

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) promised on Thursday that “not another penny will go to Ukraine” if Republicans retake control of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
“The only border they care about is Ukraine, not America’s southern border,” Greene said of Democrats at a Trump rally in Sioux City, Iowa. “Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. Our country comes first. They don’t care about our border or our people.”

The Ukrainians are publicly confident the funding will continue.


Ukraine Reacts to Marjorie Taylor Greene's Vow to Defund                          
https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-ukraine-support-midterms-kyiv-1756954

Kyiv is confident that rhetoric about cutting military aid to Ukraine will not change Washington's commitment to fighting Russian aggression, no matter what happens in next week's U.S. midterm elections, Ukrainian MPs told Newsweek.
. . . Sviatoslav Yurash, a Duma for President Volodymyr Zelensky's Servant of the People Party said that he was "very confident in bipartisan consensus in the U.S. on the matter of supporting our struggle" following the midterms no matter who controls the House.