Destroyed Ukrainian armor. Reuters.
The Ukraine War continues, with hundreds of soldiers dying every day. Cracks are starting to form in the support for the war among Americans, many of whom are questioning why they are continuing to send billions of dollars of aid to the war. Those people generally have one thing in common, they are conservative or Republican.
To be fair, there are many on the right that support the Ukraine War. And the people there are levels of support for the war. Some people simply think we have spent to much, some think we never should have supported in the first place and some think we are supporting the wrong side. It is far from unanimous.
Regardless, it would be surprising for a person from 20 years ago to see how the opinions on war have changed. Back during the Iraq and Afghanistan war the support for those conflicts was almost universal on the right while Democrats were a lot more divided. Now the opinions have flipped with the Democrats almost universally supporting the war and Republicans are about the only ones questioning it.
So why did this happen? It is a major change. Democrats have become the warhawk party while the Republicans are now the peace party. I am less interested in why the Democrats changed, for me it seems pretty obvious that it's a combination of not wanting to criticizing their own party and a general hatred of Russia that predates the conflict. But why did Republicans switch?
First of all, Donald Trump has a lot to do with it. Trump was the first antiwar president we have had in my lifetime at least. Trump had always been critical of our armed conflicts and did not get us involved in any new wars. He also started the process to ending the war in Afghanistan and is one of a few higher ranking politicians that says the war should end.
This has allowed antiwar Republicans to become more outspoken. After all, some of this is monkey-see monkey-do. Trump is popular so that means many of his positions become popular as well. And it gives credibility to antiwar voices that were ignored in the party for a very long time. When people have that cover from the leader of the party they can speak out as well.
Second, neocons have been pretty much discredited by current events. They started four wars in the past 20 years and all of them have been failures. In Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya the wars ended with pain and misery and a lot of dead and wounded soldiers, many of them who had Republican family members.
Back during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars it was possible to still think that funding a major war is something that would work. It started to become clear that it wasn't going to work out that way before the end of George Bush's term and it got dramatically worse in Obama's. Iraq almost fell to ISIS and we never got even close to winning in Afghanistan. Libya failed almost immediately and went from a relatively safe country to a failed state that also almost fell to ISIS. And Syria? We never even managed to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, let alone accomplish any of our any goals. And it too, almost fell to ISIS.
With Neocons being so discredited and being largely removed from the party, thanks to Donald Trump, the biggest pro-war group in the Republican coalition has largely fallen from the limelight. There are still quite a few of them left in Congress and the media but they will be quickly replaced by other groups, like MAGA Republicans, who are a lot more skeptical of war entirely.
Third, Republicans tend to be a lot more resistant to the type of propaganda that Ukraine is putting out. It doesn't help that much of what Ukraine has claimed has been easily debunked or is laugh out loud ridiculous, like the Ghost of Kiev.
Ukrainian propaganda also is pretty obviously targeted to American leftists. They put a, rather deranged, transgender person as their spokesman for a reason. They are all about trying to portray themselves as the plucky rebels fighting against the evil empire, which is such a common them on the left that it's got to be intentional. But that kind of propaganda does not play well on the right since it's so obviously not targeted towards them.
It also makes it very clear which side of the culture war the Ukrainians have chosen, despite not being leftists themselves. Indeed, Ukraine is generally far-right and anti-democratic, but they are playing to the people that are willing to pay for them. Republicans know this and are turned off. Indeed, it's the main reason why I went from being neutral to honestly wanting Russia to win.
Fourth, Russia is generally seen as, well, just being another country. Unlike Democrats who appear to think that Russia is the evilest country in the world, many Republicans at least see that they are morally gray at worst and not that different from the United States. They are also generally against the worst excesses of the left.
Vladimir Putin is also a more sympathetic person among the right. Putin may be a brutal dictator, but given the choice of living under him or living under Joe Biden, another brutal dictator, I know what I would choose. I would rather live under Donald Trump but without that choice... Putin is also perceived as masculine and a Christian, which may or may not be accurate but doesn't engender the hate that Putin gets from the left.
Fifth, Zelensky himself is controversial among the right. He had a major role in the 2020 election and the first impeachment of Donald Trump. I have always felt that Zelensky could have saved us from the utter destruction of the Biden presidency if he had simply exposed his corruption. He did not and he got the war Democrats wanted for years with Russia.
But the most obvious reason why the GOP is more skeptical of the war? It's because they can more easily see that Russia is winning. The right has more military knowledge in general and anyone that has had any experience studying it knows whoever has the most manpower and industrial production will win. Russia certainly does in this war so it's clear to many on the right that it's a lost cause, regardless of their feelings on Russia or Ukraine.
They are also a lot more likely to seek out alternative sources of information about the war that isn't the mainstream media. Indeed, the media being all in on the war is probably another reason as well, they lie about everything else, why not the war? And if you read any source that isn't all in on Ukraine you can quickly see that things aren't going that well for the Ukrainians.
Regardless, these reasons aren't universal and it will take more time before more Americans are on board at ending the war. And I have zero idea how to reach the Democrats, they are all in on the war. When the war finally enters the endgame it's going to be really wild for them. But I do think that these reasons are a good explanation as to why the Republicans are more skeptical of the war than Democrats.
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