“There’s a Hole in My Bucket.” A Parody.
Imagine these lyrics in this song between Presidents Biden and Zelenskyy about continuing support for the War in Ukraine. It’ based on an old children’s song depicting the futility of being stuck in a cycle of never-ending action without achieving anything. That’s overstated in the case of Ukraine, but America seems to be moving in that direction. (Edit: Based on comments, I should have said, the Republicans seem to be moving in that direction, not America. A distinction without too much of a difference this year.)
There’s a hole in our bucket, dear Volo, dear Volo…
Then fix it dear Joey, dear Joey…
With what shall I fix it, dear Volo, dear Volo,
with what shall I fix it, dear Volo, with what.
If you recall the song, straw is recommended to fix the hole (straw, of course, is a temporary fix), but the straw is too dry. So, the song goes on and on, coming full circle to getting a bucket of water to soften the straw that can be used to plug the whole. But the bucket has a hole in it.
America’s “buckets” of aid and weapons for Ukraine are starting to have holes in them, real and imagined. There are four holes by my count. The fourth one is the least known, but potentially a case of history repeating itself, again.
Hole #1: Legislation has been introduced in the US House of Representatives, to propose cutting off support to Ukraine. It is only a Resolution, not a proposed law, but it is gaining momentum. Known as H. Res. 113 Ukraine Fatigue Resolution, it was introduced with some fanfare by 11 Congress members in February this year that paved the way for 70 Republicans to vote against continuing the funding for Ukraine when the Defense Department appropriations bill was voted on in July, a short month ago. While this represents only one-third of the number needed to end Ukraine support in the House, it is a bigger hole than expected.
Hole #2: The top-two leading candidates for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, are not supporters of the US backing of Ukraine in the War. The rising Millennial in the group, Vivek Ramaswamy, with zero government experience and no foreign policy awareness, would freeze the defense lines in Ukraine as they are today and block Ukraine from joining NATO in exchange for Russia making some imagined concessions about China. Vivek is at best vague, gauzy, enigmatic. He acknowledged after the debate, while campaigning in Iowa, that his position was “a win for Putin,” but he had the temerity to leave it at that.
Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review, writing about the first Republican Presidential Debate, says, “Ron DeSantis could have gone along with most of the field in automatically supporting more aid for Ukraine. Instead, he joined Vivek Ramaswamy in wondering why Americans should pay more than Europeans for Europe’s security. The foreign policy debate in the G.O.P. is serious and intense, even if debates like this are more intense than serious. Gov. DeSantis and Ramaswamy point toward a new direction for U.S. strategy, not only in Europe but globally, while Nikki Haley and Mike Pence want to continue down the path set by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush after the Cold War.”
Hole #3: General public support is starting to wane, and like other issues, starting to polarize. A recent CNN poll shows that 71 percent of Republicans oppose new funding for Ukraine while 62 percent of Democrats support new funding.
Jason Willick, a columnist for the Washington Post, sees the way the Biden administration approached Covid and Ukraine as two foreign-based issues that have “driven Republican populism in the 2020’s.”
And it’s just not in America, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was president of France from 2007 to 2012, said that reversing Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “illusory,” ruled out Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO because it must remain “neutral,” and insisted that Russia and France “need each other.”
According to the New York Times, he told Le Figaro. “European interests aren’t aligned with American interests this time,” he added.
Hole #4: The short-sighted trio of Trump, DeSantis and “the skinny guy with a funny name,” are already channeling Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, both former presidential candidates who went on to be president, buy saying they had a plan to end the war and crisis of their day. In 1968, Richard Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. He won and the war ended soon their after. About ten years later, in 1979, Ronald Reagan said he has a secret plan to bring the hostages home from Iran and he did. (He didn’t tell us about his other secret plan to back-door support for the Iran-Contra Affair in Nicaragua.)
Now, former president and a four-times indicted Republican candidate for President, says he can end the War in Ukraine “tomorrow,” day-one, January 20, 2025, if it is still going then. DeSantis and Ramaswamy don’t have a plan…yet. And Joey will stick with the plan he has and hope the War in Ukraine ends this year or early next year before the people’s votes start to count. But, as the saying goes, “hope is not a strategy.”
