As wars continue to rage in Ukraine and Gaza, another battle is playing out in the US Congress: which country should receive financial aid.
In recent months, Congressional Republicans have expressed growing skepticism about approving additional funds for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government as his country seeks to fend off a full-scale Russian invasion.
But this opposition has increased since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, with some Republicans presenting aid to Israel and Ukraine as a choice proposition.
“Israel faces (an) existential threat. Any funding intended for Ukraine should be immediately redirected to Israel,” said Republican Senator Josh Hawley. published on social networks two days after the start of the war.
Experts say this patchwork approach — with Republican support stronger for aid to Israel than to Ukraine — speaks to the growing power of the party’s far-right wing.
“Omitting aid to Ukraine is a concession to the far right in the Republican Party,” Richard F Bensel, a professor of government studies at Cornell University, told Al Jazeera.
Ukraine, he added, “has neither the emotional appeal of a religious ally nor the geopolitical importance of Israel, and the differences between the two issues reflect deeper divisions within the Party.” republican between secular rationalism and sectarian emotionality”.
Trump’s continuing influence
The debate over foreign aid comes amid turmoil within the Republican caucus, which struggled last month to elect a speaker to lead the House of Representatives.
After weeks of infighting, religious conservative Mike Johnson finally took the gavel on October 25, in an apparent victory for extremist and evangelical interests.
One of Johnson’s first moves was to introduce a bill providing nearly $14.5 billion in support for Israel, but no dollars for Ukraine. It passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives by a vote of 226 to 196, only to be rejected Tuesday by the Democratic-led Senate.
Robert Y Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University, said the bill’s failure speaks to former President Donald Trump’s continued influence on the Republican Party.
Trump is currently the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential election. During his term, he championed an “America First” foreign policy that saw the United States withdraw from certain international agreements, in favor of a more isolationist position.
“This (bill) is clearly a spectacle for the Trump base in the Republican Party, who are opposed to anything related to Ukraine,” Shapiro said.
Trump, he explained, has lingering resentment toward Ukraine. After all, the question of whether Trump illegally withheld military aid to Ukraine led to his first impeachment.
And then there was Trump’s warm relationship with Ukraine’s adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he repeatedly praised.
Since leaving office, Trump has remained critical of aid to Ukraine.
During campaign stops for his re-election, he called on Congress to withhold military assistance to the country, accusing it of paying “millions of dollars” to the “Biden crime family” – a reference to his Democratic rival, the President Joe Biden.
Trump is not the first leader to advocate more isolationism in American foreign policy: the sentiment was particularly strong after World War I, as the country tried to extricate itself from lingering tensions in Europe.
But Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco, told Al Jazeera that isolationism was making a comeback.
“In recent years, we have seen a growing portion of the Republican Party move away from its more overtly imperialist and interventionist foreign policy to a more isolationist foreign policy,” Zunes said.
However, the Republican Party’s strong Christian leanings make it easier to accept requests for aid to Israel.
“An exception is made for Israel, largely because of the strong influence of fundamentalist Christians who believe that the modern State of Israel is the manifestation of biblical Israel and is therefore in God’s favor,” explained Zunes.
The impact of war fatigue
Aid to Ukraine still has prominent supporters within the Republican Party, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
He called for military assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan to be consolidated, as well as more funds for U.S. border security.
“We view all of these issues as connected,” McConnell told reporters at an Oct. 31 news conference.
But general U.S. opinion is shifting toward war in Ukraine, with Republican voters in particular abandoning their initial support for the embattled country.
A Gallup poll published on November 2 reveals that 41% of Americans believe that their country is “doing too much” to help Ukraine, compared to 29% last June.
This belief is most common among Republicans, 62% of whom agree with this statement.
Some experts point to the prevalence of war weariness among the American public. The war in Ukraine has been going on for months since it began in February 2022, culminating in an apparent stalemate.
But the war between Israel and Hamas is new. It was triggered on October 7 by a surprise attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, and it has continued over the past month with constant Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip.
American public opinion reacted with large-scale demonstrations in favor of Israeli and Palestinian causes. On Saturday, a pro-Palestinian march brought together thousands of people in Washington, DC, flooding Freedom Plaza.
“Part of the problem is that more recent conflicts will receive more attention than ongoing conflicts,” Zunes said. “Another reason is that the war in Gaza is more violent. Israel has killed more Palestinian civilians in the past month than Russia has killed Ukrainian civilians in the past 20 months. »
Zunes also noted that Israel “plays an important role in advancing U.S. strategic interests in the greater Middle East,” making support for the country more urgent.
Political polarization
With Republican support waning for Ukraine, Democrats have largely led efforts to consolidate aid to the two countries.
In October, President Biden called on Congress to approve an additional funding request of $105 billion, including $61.4 billion for Ukraine and $14.3 billion for Israel.
But as Congress nears the Nov. 17 deadline to pass a budget bill — or risk seeing the government shut down — experts suspect Biden’s funding request is unlikely to pass.
Additionally, the 2024 presidential race is heating up, with polls showing Biden and Trump neck and neck. Foreign aid will likely be one of many flashpoints.
“We will not see compromise between Democrats and Republicans,” Shapiro, the Columbia professor, told Al Jazeera. “Republicans will almost certainly end up uniting to oppose anything Democratic in the 2024 elections.”
Bensel, meanwhile, spoke about the growing polarization of the political landscape. Not only does the Republican-controlled House oppose the president’s agenda, it is also at odds with the Democratic majority in the Senate.
“The disagreements between the administration and the House of Representatives – and between the two chambers of Congress – are clearly driven by the very serious partisan divisions within the nation as a whole,” Bensel said.
This political impasse is not necessarily new, he added. “What is abnormal is the seemingly irreconcilable division within the Republican Party in the House of Representatives.”
