Wang Yufan is an assistant researcher at the Institute of American Studies, China Institute of International Studies
Recently, the U.S. Senate has pushed for a spending bill that includes U.S. aid to Ukraine, and has postponed the Christmas holidays. For months, the U.S. Congress has been deadlocked over foreign aid allocations, failing to reach a consensus on additional aid for Ukraine, and Biden's invitation to Ukraine's Zelensky to visit the United States to lobby members of Congress has also failed. The U.S. Congress has been unable to pass a new appropriations bill by the end of the year, but aid to Ukraine will run out by the end of the year.
The issue of aid to Ukraine has been embroiled in the bipartisan struggle in the United States, and its appropriations bill is "difficult to deliver" to highlight the intensification of political polarization in the United States. The protracted Ukraine crisis, coupled with the outbreak of a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict to distract the United States, Trump's "America First" concept has increased its influence in the Republican Party, and more and more Republicans are unwilling to continue to support Ukraine. According to a Pew Research Center poll in early December, a whopping 48 percent of Republicans believe the United States has provided too much aid to Ukraine, compared with 16 percent of Democrats who say the same. Republican right-wing conservative Senator Vance bluntly said that the existing aid has not contributed to the end of the Ukrainian crisis, and does not believe that providing more military aid can help Ukraine defeat Russia.
The key point is that aid appropriations for Ukraine are not the only bills constrained by political polarization, and data released by the US Congress show that this Congress will pass only 31 bills in 2023, making it the least efficient Congress in 50 years. The approach of the first year of the United States will further amplify the differences between the two parties, and the US aid bill for Ukraine may become a victim of "veto politics".
The "difficult birth" of the US aid bill to Ukraine also shows that US foreign policy is being coerced by domestic political struggles. When discussing the aid bill, the Republican Party insisted on reforming it with the U.S.-Mexico border policy, asking Biden to take steps to ease the border crisis before pushing for foreign aid. Johnson, the new speaker of the US House of Representatives, has repeatedly said that if Biden**'s border policy does not change fundamentally, Congress is unlikely to reach an agreement on more aid to Ukraine. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has always supported U.S. aid to Ukraine, also expressed a similar position to Johnson. On the other hand, Biden is also facing pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party, who insist that U.S. immigration policy has nothing to do with U.S. aid to Ukraine, saying that agreeing to negotiate with the Republican Party is tantamount to promoting "right-wing racism." Jayapal, chairman of the "Congressional Progressive Caucus", has put pressure on Biden to veto aid to Ukraine on the premise of sacrificing the migrant asylum policy. This shows that US foreign policy is increasingly being constrained by American partisan struggles.
The "difficult birth" of the US aid bill to Ukraine will make Biden face an unfavorable situation in 2024**. The Republican Party's hyping up of the border immigration issue and the aid to Ukraine issue will increase voters' attention to the immigration issue and make Biden face more pressure on this issue. After Biden lifted Trump-era immigration restrictions, the number of migrants at the southern border of the United States hit an all-time high. The influx of immigrants into New York, Chicago and other Democratic-run cities has led to extreme dissatisfaction with the federal government at the local level of the Democratic Party. The Republican candidate has also slammed Biden on this, and the main Republican candidates such as Trump, DeSantis, and Haley have made tough immigration policies such as expanding the immigration detention system, strengthening border patrols, and mass deportations the core content of their campaign platforms. And if Biden supports tough immigration enforcement measures, the Hispanic voters that are his base may be further lost. November polling data from The New York Times and Siena College show that Biden's lead in approval ratings among Hispanics has fallen to single digits.
Biden has put "values diplomacy" at the center of his foreign policy, attaching importance to maintaining global "democracy" and emphasizing the need to deepen cooperation with members of the "free world". He described aid to Ukraine as an action to defend the values of "democracy" and "freedom", using the Ukrainian crisis as a tool to co-opt "democratic" allies such as Europe. Therefore, if the US Congress refuses to provide more aid to Ukraine, it will make Biden's diplomatic agenda and promises to allies "pay lip service."
U.S. lawmakers will return to Congress in January 2024, but they will first push through the expiring appropriations bill to avoid a shutdown. As the Ukraine crisis continues to ferment and the differences between the two parties in the United States on the position of aiding Ukraine intensify, voters' attention to U.S. foreign policy and global leadership may rise, and the debate and policy direction of the United States on this issue are worth paying attention to.
Editor: Tang Hua, Jiang Xinyu, Zhang Yanling.