WASHINGTON — Hours before the House voted this month to approve $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, lobbyists affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, the prominent conservative think tank, privately urged Republicans to oppose the measure. to resist.
In a move that caught the attention of conservatives across Washington, the group’s chairman, Kevin Roberts, released a scorching statement — the headline blared “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last” — labeling the measure reckless and thoughtless.
“America is grappling with record inflation, debt, a porous border, crime and energy depletion,” said Mr. Roberts, “but progressives in Washington are prioritizing a $40 billion aid package to Ukraine.”
The Heritage Foundation’s stance helps explain why 57 House Republicans ultimately voted against the package, in the strongest display of opposition in the party’s ranks to Congress’ growing support for Ukraine’s attempt to fend off the Russian invasion. It reflected the growing potency of the “America First” impulse in the Republican Party, and how deeply it has filtered down to the opinion leaders who shape its policy worldview.
And it was a preview of the growing challenge facing the party’s leaders, who have struggled to keep the anti-interventionist forces in their ranks at bay should the war continue, as US officials believe it will, whatever the government does. -Biden to seek approval for another tranche of aid in the coming months.
In an interview, Mr. Roberts pledged to “fight” “at every step” against any similarly structured bill.
The stance also reflects a profound shift at the Heritage Foundation, an organization conservatives have long viewed as an intellectual and policy guide.
For years, the group advocated aggressive foreign policy, enthusiastically supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, more recently, criticized President Barack Obama for “always” trying to “find the bare minimum level of military power he can get away with.” . †
But more recently, his lobbying branch has embraced the anti-interventionist fervor that defined President Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy and overran the Republican Party.
On Thursday, Mr. Roberts released a podcast interview with Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, one of only 11 Senate Republicans to oppose the aid package for Ukraine and the author of a recent op-ed entitled “No to Neoconservatism.”
“Neither you nor we intend to reject opposition to an aid package from the heroism we have seen in Ukraine,” Mr. Roberts to Mr. hawley. “But I can at least speak for Heritage and say, ‘We’ve had enough of normal business.'”
The core principles of the organization have long been based on promoting free enterprise, limited government and strong national defense. But it has increasingly fed on rising populism in the party, first during the rise of the Tea Party and then during the Trump administration, stocking some of the most prominent members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet. and boasted that nearly two-thirds of her ideas had been implemented or embraced by his White House during his first year in office.
“What was surprising about this moment was Heritage, which has always been tough on Russia, strong on NATO and guided by the mantra of ‘What would Reagan do?’ took a really strange turn,” said Eric Sayers, a current non-resident at the American Enterprise Institute who began his career at Heritage as a junior staffer.
The move, Mr Sayers said, reflected the organization’s preponderance “of more populist forces focused more on following the right than leading it.”
Calling himself a “recovering neocon” in an interview, Roberts said Heritage’s stance on the aid package reflected “a genuine skepticism among the conservative base about the entrenched conservative leadership in foreign policy.”
The country’s financial situation, he said, forced us as a movement to determine that there are many heroic people around the world who will have to rely on the resources of other countries. That doesn’t mean America shouldn’t be involved, but we should be less involved.”
His argument echoed the policies behind many of the policies Mr Trump put forth when he complained that NATO allies were not spending enough on shared defense costs and argued for a smaller US military footprint around the world.
It is a position taken by a growing number of conservative groups. Citizens for Renewing America, an organization led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former budget director, lobbied against Ukraine’s latest bailout, saying it “would put the United States on the hook for greater involvement in the war during the war.” remainder of President Biden’s mandate. tenure.” Mr. Vought also has lobbied against Finland and Sweden into NATO.
So is Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group funded by the Koch Network, which called it “a mistake for Congress to accelerate yet another large-scale aid package to Ukraine while the Biden administration has repeatedly sent confused and mixed signals.” sent about the desired end-state in Ukraine.”
But while those groups have long taken stances against deeper US involvement in what they consider unwise military missions abroad, Heritage’s stance is more recent.
In the months leading up to the vote on Ukraine’s relief bill, Heritage policy experts argued for an aggressive US role in the conflict, including massive amounts of aid. A report said the United States “must ensure that its massive humanitarian aid helps the Ukrainian people survive the Russian war of aggression”.
War between Russia and Ukraine: important developments
Another report, published in April, stated: “A sovereign Ukraine is necessary for overall European stability, which is in the interests of the US and NATO. In many ways, Ukraine will decide the long-term stability of the transatlantic community. The US must act accordingly.”
James Wallner, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute who led previous policy research at Heritage, said the discrepancy between the tone of the reports and the group’s opposition to the relief bill reflected a situation at the think tank “where the tail begins to wag the dog” and politics, not policy principle, begins to guide decisions.
“I always ask what happens if this base army you are creating conflicts with policy research,” Mr Wallner said in an interview. ‘Are you just doing what the base army wants? And if so, are you still a government agency doing groundbreaking research? I don’t think you can have both at the same time, and I think that’s the challenge.”
Top officials of the organization claim no shift has taken place.
Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage’s lobbying operation, framed the vote against the aid package as a protest against the “binary choice” she said Democrats had set up “between supporting the great people of Ukraine and handling a long list of concerns we have here in the United States.”
“We’re not in the isolationist crowd,” said Mrs. Anderson. “Heritage has never been that. But we think it’s perfectly reasonable to express caution and concern, and we’re really encouraged that so many members have echoed those concerns.”
Mr Roberts insisted Heritage was still guided by “the Reagan principle of peace through strength” and said the think tank would have supported an aid package closely aligned to provide the Ukrainians with weapons.
“What I’ve found frustrating among all the commentary over the past few weeks,” said Mr. Roberts in the interview with Mr. Hawley, “is that we are somehow dishonest in saying, ‘Why can’t we build the wall? on the southern border? Why can’t we solve problems at home?” People thought that meant we were making excuses to oppose the Ukrainian bill, and it seems like a very legitimate criticism, not just to us in the think tank world, but to the average American.
But he also admitted Heritage’s stance reflected a broader “evolution in the movement” that “would require us to be much more careful about our more limited resources that we can devote to foreign policy.”
When Mr. Roberts was selected to lead Heritage in October, in an op-ed explaining his vision for the think tank, part of his job would be to “open the movement to fresh American air and to the people who we’re looking to serve.”
“It’s the job of conservatives within the beltway to better connect with conservatives outside the beltway,” Roberts wrote, “and not the other way around.”