By Tamar Jacoby
SENATORS, BOTH REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS, made an important start yesterday when they voted 67 to 32 to advance legislation that would free up $95 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. It was, to be sure, just a preliminary, procedural vote. The Senate still needs to pass the bill, and even then it faces long odds in the House of Representatives. But the Senate vote was an overdue step to stop the disastrous downhill slide in American power and influence in the world. The United States faces a choice: to resume its role as what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the “indispensable nation,” or to sit by and watch the world become more dangerous for us and our allies.
Opinions vary on when American global leadership began to wane. Some will point to the Vietnam era; others to the post-9/11 wars; still others to the Obama administration’s effort to “lead from behind.” Then there was Donald Trump’s “America first” approach, which actually meant “America alone.”
President Joe Biden got off on the wrong foot on foreign policy in 2021. Even those who felt it made sense to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan can now agree it was done too abruptly, leaving our Afghan allies at the mercy of a Taliban takeover. But then in 2022, the president changed course. Through 2022 and into 2023, the United States took the lead, inspiring and encouraging the world to support Ukraine as it fought off Vladimir Putin’s brutal, unprovoked invasion. Washington got the ball rolling with military aid and intelligence sharing, and soon our allies in Europe and elsewhere were following suit.
