On May 5, the House of Representatives passed the Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence Act on a large bipartisan basis, 349-42.
Thirty-four Republicans, including House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), joined eight Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in opposition. Now it will head to the Senate, where the Republican majority has the chance to send a strong message to the foreign policy establishment in Washington and around the world: wake up. The era of globalist-interventionist foreign policy is over.
This bill ostensibly is designed “to counter the influence of the Chinese Communist Party, the Iranian Regime, and the Russian Federation in the nation of Georgia,” but its effect will be increased American leverage over the inner workings of Georgian politics, through sanctions. The bill’s authors state that, “the consolidation of democracy in Georgia is critical for regional stability and United States national interests.” Whether the language was copied and pasted from previous statements about interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, or any number of other places American blood has been spilled remains unclear. The claim is also not true. Georgia is a strategic backwater and is peripheral to U.S. interests in Europe.
The bill reminds us that this is all about the “democratic wishes of the citizens of Georgia,” which include membership in the European Union and NATO.” Funny how the wishes of Georgians align so nicely with hawkish politicians, the defense industry, and broader European interests.
This foreign policy works nicely for entrenched interests with a stake in perpetuating it, including wealthy defense contractors and nations such as Germany and France that have freeloaded off American defense spending for generations while failing to invest adequately in their own capability in favor of their preference for vast social welfare programs.
These interests hunger for war (far from American shores but enticing enough for CNN) to feed the beast. The defense industry gets paid, American politicians point to jobs in their districts, Europe avoids a difficult fiscal conundrum, and we may kill a few thousand Russians for good measure. What’s not to love?
Whether or not this is what Georgians want, politicians want, Europeans want, or the defense industry wants, the important question is whether the bill represents what Americans want. The clear answer is no.
President Donald Trump’s initial rise to power, dismissed as a joke by these same establishment interests, and his comeback in 2024, dismissed as impossible by the same people, is encapsulated by his phrase, “America first.” Americans are weary of war, frustrated by the power of corrupt global institutions like the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, and the United Nations, incensed by the unwillingness to secure our nation’s borders, and disillusioned by the unfulfilled promises of financialization and globalization. All of that was policy choices made by those who put some interest above that of Americans, namely, platitudes about “regional stability” and “democracy.”
Instead, we are still mired in the war in Ukraine. And while it is a war that Russia ought not to have started, American policy makers knew it would be launched if steps were taken to do to Ukraine what the House of Representatives has now affirmed its commitment to do with Georgia: put a NATO member on the Russian border.
America’s partnership in NATO obligates us to the military defense of allies, including nuclear war. This bill would continue the U.S. on a glidepath to a situation in which we would be obliged to launch nuclear weapons in defense of a place that most Americans don’t know, care about, and can’t find on a map.
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George Washington’s guiding principle for foreign policy was in his farewell address to the nation, where he stated, “Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?” This remains the instinct of everyday Americans.
We the people understand that adding an unstable regime on the border with Russia to the NATO alliance, with all the obligatory military commitments that involves, is, to borrow from another famous American military general, nuts. The Senate should reject this bill and show voters it has heeded their call for an America First foreign policy.
Eric Teetsel is the Chief Executive Officer of Citizens for Renewing America