Give ’Em Hell, Haley!
Alone among the remaining Republican contenders for the presidency, Nikki Haley is prepared to defend the West.
THE WESTERN ALLIANCE FACES a critical test in Ukraine.
Should Putin’s invasion of Ukraine prevail, Russia will be greatly strengthened both materially and technically. Its armed forces will be at the borders of NATO allies Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Its strategic weakness along its southwest border, which constrains its ability to invade the Baltic states, will be gone. If the United States allows such a strategic catastrophe to happen, it will completely discredit the policies of collective security and deterrence that have prevented the outbreak of general war for the past eighty years.
The threat of disaster is real. Although the conflict is often described in the press as having reached a stalemate, that’s wrong. It’s better understood as having entered a phase of positional fighting, which implies anything but a draw.1 Fred Kagan summed up the state of things in the title of a recent article: “If the West Cuts Aid to Ukraine, Russia Will Win. If the West Leans in, Ukraine Can Win.” The military situation has reached a condition of “unstable equilibrium,” which means that it is balanced like a ball sitting at the pinnacle of a hill. A small push either way could make it roll decisively downward on one side or the other. If the West abandons Ukraine, Russia will be able to outproduce and overpower Ukraine, wearing it down slowly until it can no longer fight. On the other hand, if the West supplies Ukraine with readily available airpower, sufficient quantities of standoff air-to-ground missiles and long-range ATACMS, and systems to nullify Russian GPS jamming, thereby making Ukraine’s drone army much more effective, Ukraine will be able to cut off from behind the supplies reaching the Russian front. Under those conditions, the Russians will need to abandon their extensive frontline defenses. Ukraine would then be able to advance to cut off the Kremlin’s land bridge to Crimea, putting within sight the recapturing of that vital peninsula.
We in the West have a choice between a victory that will secure Europe and restore global deterrence, or a defeat leading to the collapse of the Western-led world order, global chaos, and quite possibly world war.
The Biden administration has not met this test well. Yes, it has provided arms to Ukraine, and given strong vocal support to Ukraine’s president. But its policy of slow-rolling arms deliveries has kept Ukraine from repelling the invasion and now invites defeat.
Worse, most of the prospective Republican candidates for president would accept the invitation to catastrophe with open arms. Instead of criticizing Biden for being too weak on Ukraine, they denounce him for being too strong. Instead of taking a stand as Reagan Republicans, they are acting more like Putin Republicans. The Russian dictator currently has thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at the United States. Yet Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy would gladly allow him to radically improve his ability to wage war.
The only remaining exceptions to the Republican roll call of disgrace are former U.S Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and of the two, only Haley has proven viable as a candidate. She has irritated many anti-Trump Republicans with her refusal to criticize the former president directly—something that Christie has certainly not failed to do. But Haley’s apparent goal is different from Christie’s. His goal is to crusade against Trump; hers is to wrest the Republican nomination from him. Her clever plan of taking a clear stand on the most important policy issue facing the presidency while not going out her way to offend those who previously voted for Trump has enabled her star to rise.
Some anti-Trump Republicans had placed their hopes on Ron DeSantis. Alas, DeSantis stated early his campaign that he viewed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as merely a “territorial dispute” in which the United States has no interest, and he has stuck by that position. Indeed, as recently as the October debate, DeSantis rejected the need to send arms to Ukraine (while Ramaswamy, going even further, vigorously gave voice to Kremlin war propaganda).
The most essential role of an American president—indeed, the most essential role of the federal government itself—is to ensure the nation’s defense. No one willing to open the borders of the America-led free world to Russian military invasion can be remotely acceptable as commander in chief. That rules DeSantis out.
By contrast, Haley’s moral and strategic clarity on the need to defeat the Russian invasion has been strong and consistent. She said in June, “This is bigger than Ukraine. This is a war about freedom, and it’s one we have to win.” At the October debate, she refuted Ramaswamy in the harshest possible terms. “I’m telling you, Putin and President Xi are salivating at the thought that someone like that could become president. They would love to see that,” she said pointing at Ramaswamy.
Haley continued, “Here is a freedom loving, pro-American country that is fighting for its survival and its democracy. No, I don’t think we should give them cash, I think we should give them the equipment and the ammunition to win.”
Win. Not negotiate. Readers will recall Ronald Reagan’s goal for managing the Cold War: “We win, they lose.” That is Haley’s goal as well. It is the correct one. There is no substitute for victory.
Until 2016, America had, in the Republican party, a conservative alternative to the Democrats. Then that party was taken over by Trump, with the vigorous support of Kremlin-linked staff, funds, propaganda, black operations, and ideologists. No one should be surprised that, seven years later, Trump and his acolytes are shouting their support for Russian victory.
But now, with Haley on the rise, American conservatives have a chance to take back the Republican party.
Biden is a weak president. He is weak against Putin, and if the polls are any indication, he appears to be weakly positioned against Trump. If Trump gets the nomination, he has at least an even chance of winning the election. That would be a catastrophe, not just for Ukraine and Europe, but for America as well.
Putin must be defeated and Trump must be stopped. Haley is the only one capable of making the primaries a real fight. Now is no time to hold back supporting her over quibbles. The fate of the free world may well be decided in Iowa and New Hampshire over the next three months. Now is the time to rally.
Give ’em hell, Haley!
Robert Zubrin is an aerospace engineer. His next book, The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet, will be published in February 2024 by Diversion Books. Twitter: @robert_zubrin.
For the chess players out there, the positional fighting in Ukraine now is like a game fought using the style championed by the grandmaster Aron Nimzovich.
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