... The two votes on Monday were the latest sign of a dramatic reversal of America’s bipartisan policy since World War II of standing diplomatically and militarily with Europe to defend against the threat of Soviet and later Russian aggression.
It is a shift that congressional Republicans have, with very few exceptions, silently watched unfold.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, issued the most fulsome GOP dissent to date against President Donald Trump’s position on Ukraine.
McConnell, in a statement, called Trump’s unfolding policy reversal
“disgraceful” and “unseemly” and suggested it was a reprise of the
appeasement that led to World War II.
“‘Peace for our time’ is a noble end, but hope that appeasement will check the ambitions of this aggressor is as naïve today as it was in 1939,” McConnell said, referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s famous remark after signing the Munich Agreement and Germany’s subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia. “America is right to seek an end to this war, but an end that fails to constrain Russian ambition, ensure Ukrainian sovereignty, or strengthen American credibility with both allies and adversaries is no end at all.”
Such a “hollow peace,” he said, would “invite further aggression,” a reference primarily to the lesson China might take away from a demonstration of wilted U.S. resolve.
... virtually no GOP lawmakers besides McConnell have directly criticized Trump’s emerging plan . . ..
