MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st July, 2023) The difference of opinion on the Ukraine conflict among Republican presidential candidates showcases the split between the party's hawkish neoconservative establishment and more anti-interventionist and anti-globalist base, experts told Sputnik.
Former US President Donald Trump has claimed to be able to facilitate a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev, going as far as to say he could do it in 24 hours if he is back to the White House. Another Republican presidential candidate, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, said in an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson that he would also negotiate a resolution to the Ukraine conflict if elected president. On the other hand, Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence, who is also in the running, said that the United States might soon have to send troops abroad to fight Russia if Ukraine loses on the battlefield.
"The Republican Party is currently divided into rival factions with differing geopolitical outlooks. The party's leadership and establishment, including most of its donor class, are still functioning within the Reaganite and neoconservative paradigm that regards Russia as a mortal enemy," political analyst Keith Preston said, adding that "other Republicans are representative of the rising anti-globalist sentiments found among the Republican base, including various economic interests that consider aid to Ukraine to be too expensive, or who regard the United States as having no vital interest in Ukraine."
Paul Gottfried, the editor-in-chief of "Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture" and Raffensperger professor of humanities emeritus at Elizabethtown College, drew attention to the fact that the Congress Republicans are almost entirely neoconservative in their foreign policy outlook while the main Republican news channel Fox News promotes an interventionist foreign policy.
"It is therefore imperative for Republican presidential candidates to walk a thin line between the neoconservative belligerence on Fox, in the Wall Street Journal, and National Review, and among Republicans in Congress, like Tom Cotton, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, and Dan Crenshaw, and the desire of many Republican voters to just get out of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict," Gottfried explained.
The expert also suggested that in the West, the sympathy for Ukraine now comes largely from what he described as "the woke Left."
"Whatever the initial feelings about the Russian invasion were on the American right, those feelings may now be overshadowed by war-weariness among many Republicans," Gottfried said.
Similarly, when asked whether the Ukraine issue is important for voters, Preston explained that by and large foreign policy is a non-issue for most US citizens as "Americans don't care about foreign policy unless they feel personally threatened by terrorism or the possibility of being conscripted."
Meanwhile, Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, who is often touted as a person capable of bridging the divide between the Republican establishment and the base, said he would seek a sustainable resolution to the Ukraine conflict that does not "reward" Russia for its special military operation. Moreover, he vowed to pursue an aggressive energy policy against Moscow, seeking to hook Europe on the United States' energy supply instead of Russia's.
Preston, for his part, sees the Florida governor as part of the neoconservative camp, despite the latter's attempts at campaigning as a Trump-lite candidate.
"DeSantis is merely controlled opposition used by neoconservatives as a decoy to steer Trump's base away from Trump and toward a candidate more to the neoconservatives liking. He is opting for a more hawkish position because he is a neocon operative," Preston told Sputnik.
