Biden's National Security Supplemental Request Is Floundering | Opinion

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an unannounced trip to Kyiv this week to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The visit occurred when the mood about Ukraine's prospects in the 21 month-long war are increasingly pessimistic. Notwithstanding Zelensky's admonitions and small Ukrainian tactical advances in Kherson's left-bank, the frontlines have barely moved over the last five months. The Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in early June has turned out to be a flub, running into Russian trenches, minefields, and artillery fire. The last significant Ukrainian gain happened one year ago, when Russian troops withdrew from Kherson after finding it too logistically difficult to defend the riverside city.

Austin's visit was an attempt to buttress Ukraine's morale in the face of what will be a grueling winter of Russian air attacks on the Ukrainian energy grid. He reiterated what his boss, President Joe Biden, has said robotically ever since the war erupted in February 2022: The United States will support Ukraine's war effort for as long as it takes. "I wanted to reassure the leadership that the United States of America will continue to support Ukraine," the defense secretary said during a briefing in the Ukrainian capital. "We talked about the things that we're going to continue to do to make sure that they have what they need to be successful on the battlefield."

The problem from the Biden administration's standpoint? These aren't assurances they can give. Congress, not the president, determines how long Washington can keep up the support. As the U.S. Constitution states, the legislative branch is the body responsible for writing the checks; the executive simply spends the money.

Austin's comments are therefore more symbolic than substantive. While the White House would very much like to continue Ukraine aid in perpetuity, it needs Capitol Hill's cooperation to make it happen. That's much easier said than done. A growing number of Republican lawmakers, particularly in the House of Representatives, are getting tired of authorizing and appropriating aid packages to finance a war they view, at best as a stalemate and at worse as a money-suck. Zelensky and his senior advisers may be alarmed and angry about such perceptions, but the perceptions are there regardless and it doesn't do Kyiv any good to ignore it.

The beginning of this saga began in late October, when Biden released a national security supplemental request to Congress that totaled $106 billion. About $61 billion, or 57 percent of the entire supplemental, was earmarked for additional military aid for Ukraine. The administration hoped that Congress would take up the supplemental immediately, and perhaps in parallel with funding the government, bring it up for a vote.

About a month after the supplemental was published, it's still sitting on the shelf. House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and a good chunk of the GOP conference don't like the idea of passing the entire thing as if it were one, big lump-sum. Biden's package not only includes aid for Ukraine, but military equipment for Israel and Taiwan as well. While some lawmakers try to make the case that all of these issues are interconnected, the argument doesn't pass the laugh-test. The war in Ukraine has nothing whatsoever to do with lingering tension in the Taiwan Strait, and the tension in the Taiwan Strait has nothing whatsoever to do with the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Biden's Oct. 20 primetime address to the nation was designed, in part, to argue the opposite. By mending the conflict in Gaza with the conflict in Ukraine, the supplemental would theoretically be more palpable to lawmakers across town who would otherwise have difficulty justifying why more taxpayer money was being sent to the Ukrainian army.

Biden's message fell flat. While the speech for the most part was received well by the foreign policy commentariat, not even the most impassioned plea can make up for a bad argument. Biden's themes about democracies fighting autocracies and civilized countries slaying shameless brutes can't bridge the fact that each one of these hotspots is different historically and geopolitically.

The so-far controlled turmoil between China and Taiwan, replete with Chinese fighter and bomber aircraft challenging Taiwan's air defense systems through fly-overs, is an extension of a major rift that began in the late 1940s, when the Chinese communists forced the nationalists to flee to the island. That rift, in a way, never stopped.

The war in Ukraine is based on the threat perception and impulses of a Russian political establishment, led by President Vladimir Putin, that felt burned by NATO expansion and never really bought into the notion that Ukraine was an independent country. The war in Gaza, meanwhile, isn't about geopolitics at all but about a terrorist group's deep hatred toward Israel, which Hamas views as an illegitimate, alien creation worthy of destruction.

In short, the differences between these three global flashpoint are stark. It's no wonder why Biden is having a tough time persuading Congress to act on his supplemental. The overall case rests on a weak foundation.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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