The Strategic Significance of a Single Vote on Aid to Israel and Ukraine

The Illiberal International is coordinating their efforts against us. It’s time we do the same against them.

I, of course, am not an expert on the intramural machinations within the Republican Party in the House of Representatives that produced a bill linking aid to Ukraine to cuts in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). As a national security expert, however, I am worried about the dangerous precedent of linking unrelated issues when our vital security interests are at stake. After this bill fails, there may still be a tactical political reason that requires separate votes on aid to Israel and aid to Ukraine. But if there is a clean vote on Israel (as there was yesterday), then Speaker Johnson should also allow a clean vote on Ukraine. Remember, the last time the House voted on assistance to Ukraine, an overwhelming majority – 311 to 117 – supported continuing security assistance to Ukraine.

The best outcome, however, would be one vote on a supplemental bill that includes new aid for both Israel and Ukraine. For many years, our adversaries – Russia, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah – have strategically coordinated their activities against the United States, our allies, and partners. (On some issues, China also joins and even leads the Illiberal International, but Beijing is strikingly not playing a central role in either the Russia-Ukraine or Hamas-Israel wars.) It’s time we start doing the same. A single vote on aid to Israel and Ukraine would signal that we understand how intertwined wars in Ukraine and Israel are, and that we are ready to articulate and execute a bi-partisan grand strategy to confront our adversaries. They, the Illiberal International, have a grand strategy to defeat us. We need our own grand strategy to repel them.

At the core of this axis of autocracy are Russia and Iran. Putin in Moscow and the mullahs in Tehran have long sought to weaken the United States and our allies. Their ideological projects are different but related. Both regimes seek to defend their own dictatorships, other autocrats, as well as those sympathetic to autocratic ideas. Both categorically reject liberal ideas as a threatening assault on their alleged traditional cultures and values, berating Western culture as decadent and evil. Some self-described progressives in Europe and the United States identify these actors as comrades in the struggle against imperialism. But the truth is, these terrorist organizations, theocrats, and Putin and his regime have nothing in common ideologically with actual progressive ideas, particularly when it comes to self-determination and sovereignty, or the rights of women, minorities, or anyone of non-traditional gender identity.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meeting with Head of HAMAS Politburo Khaled Meshaal, August 3, 2015. Photo Source: Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Not only does this rogue alliance embrace an illiberal, antidemocratic ideology, they also act in unison to advance their shared ideological agendas. Russia and Iran have joined forces with militant groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and others to deploy terrorism as a method to advance their interests. Like Iran, Russia long ago should have been designated a state sponsor of terrorism. (For the details of why and how, read this paper here.) I witnessed this first-hand when I served in the U.S. government at the outbreak of the tragic Syrian civil war. (The longest, saddest chapter of my book, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia is titled, “Chasing Russians, Failing Syrians.”) Hezbollah and Iran provided the ground forces to prop up Assad’s brutal autocratic regime; in 2015, Putin sent in his air force to help them. The slaughter of innocent civilians in that war, including the use of weapons of mass destruction, was on an industrial scale. These actors are all still there today. (For the details, read Anna Borshchevskaya’s Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence.)

After Putin launched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia and Iran’s military cooperation deepened substantially. Amazingly, it is Iran that is providing military assistance – especially drones – to Russia, not the other way around. Autocratic Iran is Russia’s most important military ally against democratic Ukraine. When I was in Kyiv in September, friends explained to me that they even knew the sound of the dreaded Iranian-made Shahed drone, used by Russian forces to conduct terrorist attacks against Ukrainian civilians.

Now, this Illiberal International has come together again to attack democratic Israel. While Iran directly supports Hamas and Hezbollah, Russia’s support of these groups is more veiled but still striking. Just this week, for instance, an article in The Wall Street Journal suggested that Russia’s Wagner Group has plans to send air defense systems to Hezbollah (though these rumors, originating from the U.S. intelligence community, remain unconfirmed). But even if this is untrue, Hamas leaders have traveled to Moscow for years and have always been embraced by the Kremlin as a legitimate national liberation movement, not as the terrorists that they are. Since Hamas launched their barbaric terrorist attack against Israel on October 7^th, Putin’s condemnation has been tepid. Honestly, I was surprised. For years, Putin has been courting Prime Minister Netanyahu, even winning the Israeli leader’s neutrality regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But after Hamas’s terrorist attack, Putin pivoted back to supporting his old friends quickly. His autocratic, ideological allies proved to be more important to him than rapprochement with Israel. Netanyahu’s embrace of Putin was a mistake. I hope Israeli citizens will take notice.

There is also good reason to believe that Putin would benefit from a larger, prolonged war in the Middle East, as it would divert the United States’ attention from Ukraine. Not without reason, Putin might think that less attention to Ukraine from the United States could open an opportunity for his army to make advances on the battlefield. The House's decision to delay a vote on a new aid package to Ukraine and vote on aid to Israel first was the first win for Putin from the war in the Middle East. Further delays on a vote on aid to Ukraine, especially if complicated by rider amendments about the IRS or immigration reform, would benefit Putin. And time is of the essence. We cannot allow Putin to terrorize Ukrainian citizens again this winter because we failed to provide Ukraine with air defenses this fall.

Speaker Johnson and his Republican colleagues in the House should not hand Putin and his autocratic allies this gift. Instead, the U.S. Congress should vote for assistance to Israel and Ukraine in one package to demonstrate that we understand how these wars are intertwined. The axis of autocrats has a sophisticated, coordinated grand strategy to defeat us. We need to develop our own sophisticated, coordinated grand strategy to defeat them. A single vote on aid to our friends and allies in their fight against autocratic allies would be an excellent first step towards that end.