Nikki Haley’s ‘America First’ case for involvement in Ukraine
Timothy P. Carney
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BOILING SPRINGS, South Carolina — Most of Nikki Haley’s foreign policy talk is brass-tacks, pro-America patriotism.
Haley inveighs at length against foreign aid and concludes her exposition on the topic with this zinger: “When I am president, we will no longer give money to countries that hate us.”
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“We have to end the national self-loathing that’s taken over this country,” Haley said, connected to her foreign policy remarks. “The idea that they say America is bad or rotten or racist.”
Speaking of her time as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, “The most important thing that we did was we took the ‘kick me’ sign off of our backs, and America was respected again.”
You could almost call her posture a nationalist one.
Yet most Republican politicians who speak in nationalist tones are a lot less interventionist than Haley, who at this afternoon’s town hall found herself fighting off the accusation of being a “neocon.” In particular, Haley wants the U.S. to keep supplying Ukraine’s military with arms and ammunition until Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops are expelled from the country.
Haley, however, goes to lengths to make her interventionist case in terms that are more amenable to the post-Trump nationalist tone of the GOP than to the Bush-era GOP.
“I know there’s been a debate about Russia and Ukraine,” Haley said. Then she asked the question that ordinary voters always ask but that high-level politicians often skip over: “Why do we care about Russia and Ukraine?” she asked. “How does it impact the U.S.?”
After noting that Ukraine was a great ally to the U.S. at the U.N. and after swearing off plain cash transfers and U.S. boots on the ground, Haley made her case as to why the U.S. should care.
“A win for Russia is a win for China” was her first argument. Haley has made a big deal about her resistance to China at the U.N. and has pledged to take aggressive policies against China, including dramatic new export restrictions and total revocation of foreign aid.
“If Ukraine wins, it sends the biggest message to China not to invade Taiwan.” she said, adding, “It sends a message to Iran on building a bomb. It sends a message to North Korea on testing ballistic missiles.”
Haley also argued that helping Ukraine would keep the U.S. out of war in NATO countries.
“The most simple reason I can tell you that we should care about Russia and Ukraine — dictators will always tell us what they’re going to do. … Russia said that once they get Ukraine, it’s Poland and the Baltics,” she said. “When that happens, that is a war. We are trying to prevent war.”
Finally, Haley argued that supporting Ukraine militarily is not that costly: 3.5% of our defense budget, she says. “Any candidate that tells you that you have to choose between the border and Ukraine is lying to you,” Haley said. “Flat-out lies.”
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While some in the crowd were skeptical of her arguments, many of the self-described Republican centrists cheered her statements.
“I am embarrassed that we let one country invade another,” Haley supporter Ken Stoppelbein said after Haley’s remarks.