WHITE HOUSE
MEMO
For Harris, Promises to Ukraine Prove Harder to
Make Amid G.O.P. Resistance
Vice President Kamala Harris tried to reassure
European and Ukrainian leaders that America would come through with security
aid. But worries persist as House Republican leaders block the measure.
Peter Baker
By Peter
Baker
Peter Baker
traveled to Munich on Air Force Two with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Feb. 18,
2024, 12:21 p.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/18/us/politics/kamala-harris-ukraine-munich.html
When Vice
President Kamala Harris flew to Germany for the Munich Security Conference last
year, she made an unequivocal promise. “The United States,” she said, “will
continue to support Ukraine, and we will do so for as long as it takes.”
When Ms.
Harris returned to the same forum and took the same stage this past week, her
message sounded similar but there was one important difference. “You have made
clear that Europe will stand with Ukraine,” she told the gathered leaders, “and
I will make clear President Joe Biden and I will stand with Ukraine.”
Not the
United States this time, but she and Mr. Biden. It was a personal pledge that
she could make on behalf of herself and her president, but she could not be so
definitive about her country. For those watching for clues, it was a seemingly
subtle shift in wording that spoke volumes.
Neither Mr.
Biden nor Ms. Harris can promise with any degree of certainty anymore that
America really is in the fight with Ukraine for the long haul. House
Republicans are blocking $60 billion in security aid even as Ukrainian troops
short of ammunition and weaponry just have had to withdraw from the city of
Avdiivka. And an election less than nine months away could return to office
former President Donald J. Trump, no friend of Ukraine or NATO but an open
admirer of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Ms. Harris
was not trying to shirk from the fight during her trip to Munich — quite the
opposite, she was doing everything she could to reassure nervous Ukrainians and
Europeans of her administration’s resolve. But the reality is that the
political uncertainty back home has destabilized the multinational coalition
backing Ukraine just days from the second anniversary of Mr. Putin’s invasion.
President
Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine gave voice to the anxiety. “The key issue for us
now is the preservation of principal American support,” he said at a joint news
conference with Ms. Harris. “Ukraine and all our warriors need and await the
respective positive vote regarding the assistance package, and I think
everybody understands how much depends on this single voting procedure.”
Ms. Harris
told him that there were still bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress
in favor of Ukraine aid, even though House Republicans were not permitting a
vote. If the bill got to the House floor, she told him, she had no doubt it
would pass, just as it already had in the Senate.
“We must be
unwavering, and we cannot play political games,” she said. “Political
gamesmanship has no role to play in what is fundamentally about the
significance of standing with an ally as it endures an unprovoked aggression.”
She would
not entertain, at least in public, the notion that the administration may need
a Plan B. “There is only Plan A, which is to ensure that Ukraine receives what
it needs,” she said.
But few if
any in Munich had much confidence in Plan A anymore. The Europeans, who just
passed their own aid package, have heard American guarantees for months only to
find that nothing is so guaranteed after all.
On and off
the record, White House officials all the way back to last summer expressed
supreme confidence that the aid would be approved. As recently as December,
they brushed off doubters as modern-day Cassandras. As recently as a few days
ago, even, they still thought it was likely to pass.
But then
Mr. Trump intervened, and they seemed caught off guard. They still publicly
express optimism that the aid will eventually pass, as Mr. Biden did when he
called Mr. Zelensky from Delaware to reinforce Ms. Harris’s message and said
that “I’m confident we’re going to get that money,” as the president recounted
to reporters afterward. But privately, the cockiness of a few months ago has
turned into deep concern.
In her
speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Ms. Harris was more intent
on addressing the audience back home than the leaders and diplomats in the
room. She tried to make the case for why it was important to stick with Ukraine
and stand up to Mr. Putin as Mr. Trump talks about encouraging Russia to attack
NATO allies that do not pay their fair share.
“Imagine if
America turned our back on Ukraine and abandoned our NATO allies and abandoned
our treaty commitments,” she said. “Imagine if we went easy on Putin, let alone
encouraged him. History offers a clue. If we stand by while an aggressor
invades its neighbor with impunity, they will keep going.”
Her case
was bolstered by a stunning turn of events. Just before she took the stage,
word arrived that the Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny had died in one of
Mr. Putin’s prisons, news that rippled through the Bayerischer Hof hotel where
the conference was being held.
Nothing
could do more to remind the audience of Mr. Putin’s ruthless rule, and Ms.
Harris quickly added a condemnation to the top of her remarks. She was all but
rushed off the stage after her speech, though, so that Yulia Navalnaya, the
dissident’s wife, could make a dramatic surprise appearance condemning Mr.
Putin and vowing to bring him to justice.
The death
of Mr. Navalny prompted some hope among Biden administration officials that the
shock would wake up House Republicans and force them to take action on the aid.
They were heartened to hear that Speaker Mike Johnson had issued a statement
saying that the United States and its allies “must be using every means
available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine.”
Like many
in Washington, Ms. Harris has never met Mr. Johnson, the conservative
backbencher from Louisiana who was abruptly elevated to the speakership on the
back of a hard-line Republican rebellion a few months ago, and she was careful
not to single him out for criticism in her public comments on Saturday.
But some
officials, feeling burned by Republican flip-flopping on Ukraine, worried that
they were reading too much into Mr. Johnson’s statement, especially given that
the House has left Washington for a two-week recess. That means lawmakers will
not return until after the initial shock of Mr. Navalny’s death has faded.
Perhaps
less sanguine, Mr. Zelensky reminded the conference in his own speech that
“dictators do not go on vacation.”
Ms.
Harris’s meeting with Mr. Zelensky in Munich on Saturday brought the two back
to where it started for them. They sat down in the same room of the same bank
across the street from the conference hotel where they first met two years ago
almost to the day — five days before the Russians marched across the Ukrainian
border.
Back then,
Ms. Harris was trying to persuade Mr. Zelensky to take American warnings of
imminent Russian aggression seriously. This time she was left to deliver the
message that America was not abandoning the effort no matter what the politics
at home.
“You have
shown extraordinary courage and accomplishment on the battlefield,” she told
him on Saturday.
Mr.
Zelensky, wearing a black sweater, appeared worn, the exhaustion of two years
of war visible on his face. But he has learned since the early days to temper
his approach to American benefactors, who were irritated at first that he never
seemed grateful for all they had done and instead used meetings with the
president and vice president to go over lists of specific military hardware he
needed, the kind of details usually left to lower levels.
The Mr.
Zelensky who appeared in Munich this time was a leader who recognized that the
weapons flow was no longer a given, and he suffused his public and private
comments on Saturday with plenty of appreciation.
“We are
very thankful,” he said, “not only from me and my team, first of all, from all
our people, are thankful to you, to people of the United States, your society,
great society, and to President Biden, his team and of course bipartisan
support, we are thankful for this.”
“But,” he
quickly went on, “we need now your unity during such a challenging period for
us.”
“And of
course in the United States,” it too is a “challenging period,” he added. “We
understand everything.”
Peter Baker
is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last
five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents
and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker
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