As a country, the United States takes pride in its key role in defeating Nazism.
Do not forget, however, that part of the conservative politicians of that time were opposed to the intervention in the Second World War. They argued that it was a matter of Europe, with no relation to the interests of the Americans themselves.
That state of opinion was captured in all its magnitude by Philip Roth in the magnificent novel La conjura contra América.
Defeated Hitler, the Soviet Union became the enemy, the communist empire that threatened capitalism. It didn’t matter if you were a Republican or a Democrat, the existential threat of the USSR, and then Russia, united everyone. Even at the confluence, there was less harsh condemnation among the progressives.
But Trumpism arrived and this isolationist movement, to which multilateralism is allergic, turned the tide of history. Only me matters.
During the Obama administration, Ron DeSantis criticized the president of the United States for his blandness towards Vladimir Putin and appealed to the toughness of Ronald Reagan, when he was still the great Republican reference.
That DeSantis feeds presidential aspirations and for that he acts like a little Trump. Since the former president boasts of his friendship with Putin (he has said that with him there would not have been a war, because he would have let Russia annex territories from Ukraine), so does DeSantis, which gives points among Trumpists.
Votes are loves. DeSantis alienated himself from Trump and proclaimed that aid to Ukraine is not in “vital interests” of the United States. “Biden’s blank check distracts our country from the most pressing challenges,” he said. And he clarified that “a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” is not one of the problems.
His words prompted an angry reaction from the hawks of the Grand Old Party. “There is no place for Putin apologists in the Republican Party,” said former Vice President Mike Pence, another potential White House contender.
“Yes”, replied Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the UN and already declared a participant in the 2024 presidential elections, on whether stopping the Kremlin is vital. “If Russia wins, there is no reason to think it will slow down. For the United States, Ukraine’s victory is much better,” he said.
The senator for Florida Marco Rubio assured that he did not understand the goal of the governor of his state, while Chris Christie, another who dreams of being a candidate, criticized “a naive and complete misunderstanding of the historical context”.
Senator Lindsay Graham, Trump’s good friend, also spoke. “It is not a territorial dispute, it is a flagrant aggression. It is a huge miscalculation to assume that it is not in our national interest,” DeSantis corrected. “The Neville Chamberlain approach to aggression (British Prime Minister who gave Hitler what Trump would give the Russian president) never ends well. This is an attempt by Putin to rewrite the map of Europe with weapons”, he insisted.
