In deliberations recently held in the Senate, the chamber overwhelmingly rejected a proposed amendment sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) that would have threatened most of the U.S. aid being made available for Ukraine amid its defense against Russia.
Lee’s amendment would have blocked all but two percent of the aid being made available until countries in NATO not yet meeting the expectation of spending the equivalent of two percent of their GDP on their defense reached that threshold. The proposal, an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would’ve covered fiscal year 2024.
The purported gap between NATO members’ commitments and their actual spending has long been a point of contention for Republican politicians, and Donald Trump is known at this point for his jabs against the alliance, which creates much of the foundation for the so-called Western world’s military defense against threats like Putin’s violence. The mechanism for that collective defense is an expectation that member countries participate in the defense of another member if that other nation is attacked, an obligation that Trump has specifically questioned but that President Joe Biden has in word and deed upheld.
A full 71 Senators voted against Lee’s amendment, while only 13 voted in favor of it. Those in favor included Republicans like Missouri’s Josh Hawley and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson. On the floor of the Senate, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) shared his opposition to the Lee initiative, arguing it was putting the security of Ukraine — and related U.S. interests — at risk for fundamentally a separate concern, meaning that of how much other NATO members are spending on defense.
“This amendment is trying to incentivize our NATO partners to increase their efforts to 2 percent of GDP, and that is a goal that has been agreed to, but the practical, immediate effect would be to undermine the military posture of Ukraine at a time when they are desperately fighting for their survival,” Reed told his fellow Senators. “But more importantly, they are fighting our fight also, because if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, we will lose, as well as Ukrainians. It will incentivize the kind of autocratic behavior that is determined–at least in the case of Putin–to destroy democracies and destroy the international legal order. We have already expressed our not only desire but strong, strong imperative that NATO reach the 2 percent goal, but this is punishing the Ukrainians for the sins of others, and that would be terrible.”
