Boris Johnson tells Republicans why they must support Ukraine
Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in Dallas to make the case for continued US assistance to Ukraine to a heavily Republican crowd Monday.
“I just urge you all to stick with it. It will pay off massively in the long run,” he said, correctly.
Johnson’s speech contrasted not only with the views of the GOP’s two presidential frontrunners, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, but with those of Viktor Orbán.
The Hungarian prime minister has become a model of the new right-wing politics, which breaks with the traditional conservatism of Reagan and Thatcher, never mind the squishy center-right politics of Europe’s large Christian-Democratic parties.
Yet Johnson’s sentiments on Ukraine and Russia are much more representative of Europe’s insurgent, populist right than those of Orbán — notwithstanding the outsized role the latter plays in the conservative imagination in the United States, thanks to his connections with Tucker Carlson and the Hungarian government’s massive investment into conservative outreach in America through fellowships, study programs and hosting the CPAC conference in Budapest.
On Ukraine, Orbán has become an increasingly isolated actor, straining ties with his previous political allies across the continent by refusing any steps to counter Russian aggression.
For years, Poland’s governing Law and Justice party (PiS) — equally opposed to immigration and even featuring a sizable contingent of Catholic integralists — was seen as a mirror image of Orbán’s Fidesz party.
A decade ago, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński even vowed to “build Budapest in Warsaw.”
Those days are over.
While Orbán has ruled out any military assistance to Ukraine and sought to weaken European Union sanctions against Russia, the PiS-led government has been Europe’s leader both in helping Ukraine and in welcoming millions of Ukrainian refugees.
In relative terms, Poland has provided Ukraine with more than double the assistance the United States has extended (0.9% versus 0.4% of gross domestic product).
A similar story can be told of right-wing populist insurgents in the Nordic countries, which pioneered anti-immigration and Euroskeptic politics so appealing to today’s GOP: the Finns Party in Finland, the Danish People’s Party and the Sweden Democrats.
All of them have condemned Russia’s invasion and have been pushing for more military and financial assistance to Ukraine.
Sweden Democrats, furthermore, are part of a governing coalition seeking to bring Sweden into NATO, breaking with decades of comfortable neutrality and turning the country into a US treaty ally.
Enter Italy, where the conflict is not seen through the same existential lenses as in Poland, and its firebrand prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
In the past, left-wing critics have labeled her Brothers of Italy party neofascist.
Meloni is, in her own words, a defender of “God, fatherland and family” and a critic of same-sex marriage, euthanasia and the European Union.
In February 2022, she received an enthusiastic welcome at the CPAC conference in Florida.
Meloni’s take on the war is straightforward.
Ukraine is “an outpost for the security of the European continent,” she says, and it must get all the assistance it needs.
Not only that, it should be brought into the EU: “The smartest way to thank Ukrainians for what they are doing is to accelerate the possibility for them to become part of the European institutions.”
Republicans should take note.
There is nothing remotely conservative about shilling for Russian President Vladimir Putin when he is waging war against a sovereign nation in Russia’s neighborhood.
Besides an affinity between strongmen, there may be complicated historical reasons for Orbán’s behavior — most significantly his delusions about restoring greater, pre-1920 Hungary — but those have little to do with the substance of the new right-wing politics.
More important, they have absolutely nothing to do with the interest of the United States and our allies in keeping Russia and China at bay.
Johnson’s trip to Texas was a great start, but much more needs to be done to break the allure of Orbán and his idiosyncrasies among US conservatives who are looking for a way forward after 2016, in both foreign and domestic policy.
Engaging with a wider spectrum of right-of-center leaders from Europe, who share the same cultural sensibilities but also see clearly what is at stake in the war in Ukraine, would be an excellent next step, both for the GOP’s presidential candidates and for the party elites at large.
Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Twitter: @DaliborRohac
