Why the Falcon Heritage Foundation once opposed aid to Ukraine

WASHINGTON – Hours before the House votes this month to approve 40 billion dollars In military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, lobbyists from the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, especially lobbied Republicans to oppose the measure.

In a move that captured the attention of conservatives across Washington, Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Lobbying, issued an incendiary statement — its vociferous headline was “Ukraine aid package puts America last— which coined the procedure as reckless and ill-considered.

“America is struggling with record inflation, debt, porous borders, crime and energy depletion,” Anderson said, “and yet progressives in Washington are prioritizing a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine.”

The Heritage Foundation’s stance helps explain why 57 House Republicans voted against the deal, in the strongest show of opposition within the party’s ranks to Congress’ growing support for Ukraine’s efforts to stave off a Russian invasion. It reflected the increasing effectiveness of the “America First” rush in the Republican Party, and its reach to the thought leaders who shape his global political vision.

He also reviewed the growing challenge facing party leaders, who are toiling to keep anti-intervention forces in their ranks if the war continues, US officials believe, prompting the Biden administration to seek approval for another tranche of aid in the coming months.

In an interview, the group’s president, Kevin Roberts, vowed to “fight ‘any similar bill’ every step of the way.”

The situation also reflects a profound shift in the Heritage Foundation, an organization that conservatives have long considered the star of a political and intellectual guide.

For years, the group advocated a hard-line foreign policy, enthusiastically supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, more recently, President Barack Obama criticizes to ‘always’ strive to ‘find the absolute minimum of military force with which he can get away’.

But more recently, its lobbying arm has embraced the anti-intervention fervor that defined President Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy and swept the Republican Party.

On Thursday, Mr. Roberts posted a Podcast interview with Senator Josh Hawley Missouri, who is one of only 11 Republican senators to oppose the Ukraine aid package and the author of a recent editorial titled “No to neoconservatives”.

“Neither we, nor we, intend any opposition to the aid package to reject the heroism we saw in Ukraine,” Mr. Roberts told Mr. Hawley. “But I can at least talk about the heritage and say, ‘We’re tired of business as usual. “

The organization’s core principles have long been the promotion of free enterprise, limited government, and strong national defense. But it increased Fed by the rise of populism At the party, first during the rise of the Tea Party and then during the Trump administration, Store some of the most prominent members From the government of Mr. Trump and bragging about it Nearly two-thirds of her ideas have been implemented Or the White House embraced him during his first year in office.

“What was very surprising at this moment was the legacy, which has always been tough on Russia, strong in NATO and guided by the motto ‘What would Reagan do? ‘” said Eric Sayers, a non-resident at the American Enterprise Institute who began his career at Heritage as an entry-level employee.

Mr. Sayers said the move reflected the rise of an organization of “more populist forces focused on following the right than on its leadership”.

Mr Roberts, who referred to himself in an interview as a “recovering neo-conservative”, said Heritage’s stance on the aid package reflected “real skepticism among the conservative grassroots about the leadership of conservative foreign policy”.

The nation’s financial situation, he said, was forcing us “as a movement to identify that there are a lot of heroic people around the world who will have to draw on resources from other countries. That doesn’t mean America shouldn’t get involved, but we need to be less involved.”

His argument echoed the argument behind many of the policies Mr. Trump put forward when he complained that NATO allies were not spending enough on joint costs of defense and advocated a smaller US military presence around the world.

It is a position taken by a growing number of conservative groups. Citizens for America’s Renewal, an organization led by Russell Vogt, Trump’s former budget director, lobbied against the latest Ukrainian aid measures, say that “Leave the United States in a bind to increase participation in the war during the remainder of President Biden’s term in office.” Mr. Vogt has too pressed against Admission of Finland and Sweden to NATO.

So did Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group funded by the Koch Network, which called her “It would be wrong for Congress to accelerate yet another massive aid package for Ukraine when the Biden administration has repeatedly sent mixed and mixed signals about a desired end-status in Ukraine.”

But while these groups have taken longstanding stances against deeper American involvement in what they view as ill-advised military missions abroad, Heritage’s stance is more recent.

In the months leading up to the vote on the Ukraine aid bill, Heritage policy experts argued in favor of an aggressive US role in the conflict, including massive amounts of aid. One report said The United States “must ensure that its massive humanitarian response helps the Ukrainian people survive Russia’s war of aggression.”

Another reportpublished in April, declared: “Ukraine’s sovereignty is essential to overall European stability, which is in the interests of the United States and NATO. In many ways, the long-term stability of Ukraine’s transatlantic community will be decided. The United States must act accordingly.”

James Woolner, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute who previously led policy research at Heritage, said the discrepancy between the tone of the reports and the group’s opposition to the aid bill reflects a situation at the think tank “where the tail begins to wiggle and politics, not policy principle, begins to drive decisions.”

“I always bring up the question of what happens when this popular army that you create conflicts with policy research,” Mr. Wallner said in an interview. “Does it do what the SPLA wants? And if so, is it still a public policy institution that does cutting-edge research? I think you can’t have both at the same time, and I think that’s the challenge.”

Senior officials of the organization assert that there has been no transformation.

Anderson coined the vote against the aid package as a protest against the “binary choice” that she said Democrats made “between the great support of the Ukrainian people and concern for the long list of concerns we have here in the United States.”

“We’re not in the isolating crowd,” Anderson said. “Heritage has never been like this before. But we think it is perfectly reasonable to express caution and concern, and we were really encouraged that so many members echoed these reservations.”

Mr. Roberts insisted that Heritage was still guided by “the Reagan doctrine of peace through force,” and said the think tank would have supported a narrowly designed aid package to supply weapons to Ukrainians.

In an interview with Mr. Hawley, Mr. Roberts said: “What I have found frustrating in the past two weeks among all the comments, is that we are somehow cheating by saying, ‘Why can’t we build the wall at the southern border? Why can’t we tackle the problems at home? People took it to mean that we made excuses to oppose the Ukraine bill. It appears to be an awfully legitimate critique, not only to us in the think-tank world, but to ordinary Americans.”

But he also acknowledged that Heritage’s position reflected “a broader development in the movement” that would “require us to be wiser about our limited resources that we can spend on foreign policy.”

When Mr. Roberts was chosen to lead the heritage in October, he emphasized in An introduction explaining his vision For the think tank, this part of its job would be to “open the movement to fresh American air and the people we seek to serve.”

Mr Roberts wrote: “It is the task of governors within the Beltway to better communicate with governors outside the Beltway, not the other way around.”