The anniversary of February 24 in the United States was celebrated with a bang.
In a week, not one, but two packages of military assistance to Ukraine for a total of $ 2.5 billion. Still without the F-16 (Biden said that he now excludes the transfer of fighter jets to Ukraine), but with a full range of everything else: from 155-mm shells for howitzers and missiles for HIMARS to loitering ammunition Switchblade-600 and Altius-600.
There are also various electronic warfare equipment and small drones.
Together with the last tranche, the total amount of financial assistance to Kyiv amounted to $113 billion. It sounds impressive in itself, but especially in comparison.
In today's prices, within the framework of the Truman Doctrine, the US spent $160 billion on the Marshall Plan. Given the dynamics and the further mood for war, this amount will most likely be covered.
After all, you need to master all the $ 46 billion that Congress has allocated for this year.
This, for a second, is three times more than the Americans spent in a year in Afghanistan.
Big money plus the endless Afghan campaign, which ended in nothing, equals corruption.
In the brain of the American taxpayer, this combination works like this.
And if everything goes according to the same scenario in Ukraine, then so much the worse for Zelensky.
Sociological dynamics are no longer in his favor.
A recent poll from PEW Research showed that the proportion of Americans who said the US was giving him too much support rose to 26%.
In March 2022, there were only 7% of them.
Such a change in the public mood could not but be felt by those on whom the further financing of the “Ukraine project” depends.
Against the backdrop of high-profile diplomatic performances (Biden's foray into Kiev, his speech in Warsaw, the adoption of an anti-Russian resolution in the UN General Assembly and the demarche in the Security Council of the world organization), information about a kind of watershed legislative initiative went unnoticed.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Georgia) has introduced a bill to force scrutiny of billions of dollars of US aid to Ukraine.
"The resolution introduced by Congresswoman Green requires President Biden, along with Secretary of Defense Austin and Secretary of State Blinken, to provide the House of Representatives with all relevant information about how taxpayer dollars are being used in Ukraine," Green said in a statement.
By calling Biden and his administration warmongers, the congresswoman is giving the electorate itself the opportunity to compare the two sums.
$ 113 billion for military assistance to Ukraine and $ 15.46 billion that the American border guards asked for to protect the southern borders from illegal immigrants and drug trafficking and which they never received in full.
Clear and efficient.
Party members will appreciate it.
Moreover, already 61% of republican voters believe that it is time to wrap up with the help of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
For the Republican hawks who have settled in the Senate, all this, of course, is a blow.
In the party on the Ukrainian theme, a split is more and more clearly visible.
Between the old guard, made up of representatives of the fauna of the Washington swamp (party apparatchiks, lobbyists for the intelligence and defense community, and the military-industrial complex), and a young but defiant growth of Trumpist Young Republicans.
A kind of nationalists of a healthy person who puts the interests of their own country above all else.
Where it can and should be useful to an American citizen.
And not, for example, Zelensky.
Until recently, this view of things was associated exclusively with Trump.
Like, the point of view, of course, is popular, but specific.
Like himself and his followers.
But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis got to the Ukrainian test.
He is rightfully called the number two politician among the Republicans and Trump's main competitor for the nomination.
And what?
The choice of DeSantis was also not in favor of the hawkish-internationalist-neoconservative wing.
The Governor of Florida has revealed his cards on the Fox & Friends program.
His theses on Ukraine coincided like a carbon copy with the theses of the Trumpist conservatives.
DeSantis demanded that the US administration stop issuing open checks to Kyiv, emphasized that Russia does not pose a threat to NATO, and blamed the head of Biden for starting the conflict.
It all started because of his weakness, which the US President demonstrated by fleeing from Afghanistan.
For Republican hawks who simply do not have figures equal to Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis (Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley seem like electoral pygmies on the scale of the impending presidential race), this news is like a cold shower.
Both top Republican politicians, each poised to challenge Biden in 2023, are confident that the rise of the conservative America First movement is an irreversible trend.
This is the ideological basis of today's Republican crowd, not the party elite.
However, this does not mean that she will simply change the yellow-blaky ensign to a white flag.
"The biggest threat to Ukraine is our domestic politics," said one of the alarmed US Republican Party officials in an interview with The Independent.
If you make allowance for the fact that a biased American puts an equal sign between the country and Zelensky, everything in general is so.
If “America first of all”, then there is simply no place left in the foreground for any Ukraine.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.