Magic Mike: the US House Speaker who may have saved Ukraine

A $61 billion military aid package for Ukraine, approved by the US House of Representatives on Saturday, could be signed into law by President Biden tomorrow and bring urgently needed shells and rockets to the frontline within two weeks.

So what? The weapons could make the difference between defeat and survival for Ukraine; between enduring as a sovereign democracy and succumbing to Russian imperialism and bombs.

Equally, they could arrive too late.

• The White House requested the package last August.

• Congress dithered for eight months.
• In that time Russian forces have dug in, reinforced and started to advance.

Either way historians will ask: what took so long?

All the answers involve Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana lawyer and evangelical who, to judge by some of the weekend commentary, has come from nowhere to save the world.

In fact he spent six months declining to allow a vote on the Ukraine aid plan even though it was clear a large bipartisan majority would back it.

Distraction. Elevated to the speakership last October, Johnson wasted precious time searching for a deal that would give the isolationist wing of his party a draconian new anti-migrant regime on the US-Mexican border in return for their support for aid for Ukraine. In February, Trump effectively vetoed any such deal to avoid handing Biden a win.

Indecision. Considering the Speaker is third in line for the US presidency, Johnson arrived in post ill-prepared and loath to make big calls. According to the WaPo he had never 

• had a high-level intelligence briefing;
• met the Senate leaders of his own party or the Democrats; or
• met the president.

Education. Johnson’s world view on taking office revolved around his faith and Trump’s MAGA agenda, including opposition to aid for Ukraine and the fiction that the 2020 election was stolen. On his first day as Speaker three fellow Republicans took him to the White House for the start of what seems to have been a crash course in world affairs. Further Oval Office meetings and at least one private briefing with CIA chief William Burns followed. Later, Johnson would say: “I really do believe the intel.”

Other factors that helped change his mind reportedly include prayer and meetings with moderate Republicans, who persuaded him to ditch the ultras even though he knows they are conspiring to bring him down.

In fairness, Johnson has shown

• patience with the hard right;
• guile with Trump, whose tacit support for Ukraine aid he won by rebadging some of it as a loan;
• imagination with the legislative process, splitting an unmanageable bill into four separate ones; and
• courage, as he put it, “to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may”.

Rapid response. Stockpiles of Patriot anti-missile munitions and 155mm artillery shells had already been positioned in Germany and by one account in Poland in anticipation of the vote. HIMARS rockets and longer-range ATACMS missiles – which Biden should have sent long ago to bring the strategic Kerch Strait bridge within range – could follow.

Russian response. Putin’s spokesman said the aid would merely mean more Ukrainian deaths. Dmitry Medvedev, once the respectable face of the Kremlin, said it would prolong “our civil war”.

Russian reality. It’s not a civil war. Along with the US and the UK, Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty as a signatory to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. But it is an all-consuming war:

• Russia’s army is now 15 per cent bigger than when it invaded, with around 470,000 soldiers to Ukraine’s 200,000. 
• It has seized an area of Ukraine the size of Detroit since US aid stopped flowing earlier this year.
• It’s producing 250,000 artillery shells a month compared with a US total of 30,000 a month, and using between five and ten times as many as Ukraine on the battlefield.

What’s more… If Trump wins the White House or Johnson is replaced, US military aid could dry up again. In the meantime, a Speaker with little experience and no majority to speak of has secured a considerable legacy in six months flat. 

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