House Speaker Mike Johnson Faces Crucial Conundrum on Ukraine (ANALYSIS)

(CNN) — Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, holds the future of democracy and the people in his hands.

It is not the United States that will survive, even if the next general election results in another survival test for the constitutional system.

The country Johnson has the power to save is Ukraine, two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded it and has no right to exist.

Ukrainian soldiers, caught in the inferno of World War I-style trench warfare, are running out of bullets. There are signs that Russia may break the stalemate and tilt the war in its favor.

Macron raised the issue of sending Western troops to Ukraine, saying Europe would “do everything possible to prevent Russia from winning.”

Johnson, a representative who was the last choice to lead the rebel Republican majority in the House of Representatives last year, could ease Ukraine’s suffering and help ensure its survival as an independent nation in the coming days. He could allow a vote on a bill that includes $60 billion in aid that the Pentagon says is needed to allow Kiev to effectively continue fighting. It will likely pass with a comfortable bipartisan majority.

The Louisiana Republican’s reluctance to do so is a comment on the growing power of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, his party’s pro-globalist legacy and perhaps even costing him his own ambition to borrow Democratic votes to defend Ukraine. President him.

The Speaker of the Lower House is under enormous pressure on multiple fronts at home and abroad, as the coincidental crisis he has postponed for his young presidency boils over at the same time. Most immediately, without a budget deal with the Democratic Senate, the government could be headed for a partial shutdown over the weekend.

His position will be highlighted at a meeting of four key congressional leaders at the White House this Tuesday, to be called by President Joe Biden.

The quiet Louisianan has been besieged by increasingly vehement calls among Republicans opposed to more aid to Ukraine, particularly from the pro-Trump wing of his conference, as he seeks to stay in office longer than his hapless predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. But Johnson’s dilemma of isolation is sharpening as the administration chooses him as the only man who can thwart or enable Putin’s attempt to wipe Ukraine off the map. President Volodymyr Zelensky warned strongly in an interview with CNN’s Caitlan Collins that his country cannot repel Russia without help. Foreign governments fear that the Western coalition against Moscow could crumble without American money and influence, calling on the president to act. And pressure from Zelensky’s forces, facing defeat on the battlefield, threatens to place the blame on the Republicans if badly needed weapons do not reach the front lines soon.

That’s a dire prospect for a House speaker who emerged from obscurity a few months ago and who lacks the experience, vote-counting knowledge and clout needed to shape a Republican majority.

So far, Johnson has offered little evidence that he has the political savvy to extricate himself from his perilous situation. But even a master of parliamentary display of force can struggle with such a weak hand. Their small majorities mean they can only afford to lose a few votes among GOP members to pass a bill, a reality that gives extremist members enormous leverage. The fate of McCarthy, ousted from his own side last year, casts daily doubt over Johnson’s ability to survive. From a party that has become increasingly nationalist, populist and separatist since its transformation by Trump, the lower house president is under threat from the right. A $60 billion aid package for foreign democracies is inconsistent with the credo of the former president’s Make America Great Again movement and is strongly opposed by rank-and-file Republican voters.

So even if Johnson wants to bail out Ukraine, that may prove politically impossible. A divided Congress, with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, has rendered the United States nearly ungovernable and threatens its global leadership role.

A tense meeting is underway in the White House

Johnson will find himself outnumbered on Tuesday. Joining him on the Oval Office coach will be House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries; Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who support sending funds to Ukraine quickly and significantly.

“There is a strong bipartisan majority in the House ready to pass this bill if it reaches the floor,” Biden’s national security adviser Jack Sullivan said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And that decision falls on one person’s shoulders. And Speaker Johnson is looking to history to see if he will introduce that bill. If it does, it will pass and we will give Ukraine what it needs to succeed.” Sullivan added: “If it doesn’t, we won’t be able to give Ukraine the tools it needs to take on Russia, and Putin is its main beneficiary. will be.”

But the pressure Johnson faces in the White House will pale in comparison to the furor he would unleash on Capitol Hill if he conceded to Biden. For some Republicans, passing a new aid package to Ukraine would constitute another serious setback for a House majority that has angered its most right-wing lawmakers by repeatedly failing to implement spending cuts, despite the reality that Washington controls two-thirds of political power. by the Democrats.

Ukraine’s fate is also tied to Trump’s rising political fortunes. The former president is still angry over his first impeachment trial, which revolved around an attempt to force Zelensky’s government, and favor Putin over democracy, in the conflict. He has warned against sending more US aid as he focuses his campaign on the southern border crisis, though he has not ruled out aid to Ukraine entirely. For example, he said in a social media post on February 10 that a loan is possible, although Ukraine, with its shattered economy, will not be in a position to repay it anytime soon. Trump’s plan seemed more like a plan for profit than the defense of a nation under attack. “Never again should we give money without hope or ‘conditions’. The United States of America must no longer be “stupid!” Trump wrote in Truth Social.

House Republican leaders are clinging to the idea that there can be no help for Ukraine without a major new effort to secure the US southern border, following a record number of encounters with migrants late last year. There is no doubt that there is a border crisis. But Trump and House Republicans killed a bipartisan compromise in the Senate that would have produced the most conservative law enforcement reforms in years, apparently because the former president wanted to deprive Biden of a victory in a year. election.

But the GOP message is a unifying force in the party. “Many citizens are saying, ‘We’re going to send billions of dollars to protect Ukraine as long as our country stays open,'” Trump ally Florida Rep. Byron Donalds said on “Meet the Press” Sunday. NBC.

Heat from abroad

Johnson is coming under enormous pressure from Zelensky, who is increasingly desperate because of growing doubts about his ability to resist Putin’s forces in the long term. The Ukrainian president noted in an interview with CNN that Johnson had previously assured him of his support. “What can I do? I can’t force the speaker (of the House of Representatives). This is his decision. But I think he understands all the challenges we have,” Zelensky said.

“I have to believe. But we will see.”

Johnson also faces intense pressure from leading voices in the Western alliance. In the United States in December, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron met with him and told CNN that Washington was the linchpin of the entire war effort and that money would make a “huge difference.” He has since continued to defend the package, drawing the ire of one of Trump’s key supporters in the House, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, who said the British lord could “kiss my ass.”

Other friends of the United States warn Johnson that if the package is not approved, America’s prestige and power abroad will suffer a catastrophic blow. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski urged Johnson to consider the consequences of continuing to delay the US lifeline for Ukraine. “I would say, Mr. President, it is the fate of Ukraine, it is the tortured people of Ukraine who are begging you, but it is also the credibility of your country that is at stake,” Sikorsky told “Farid Zakaria.” GPS program on CNN on Sunday. The minister noted that Biden had traveled to Kiev last year and staked the credibility of the United States, adding: “The word of the United States has been spoken. It is necessary that the steps follow. “

Democratic Rep. of Massachusetts. Seth Moulton told CNN on Monday that, after returning from a trip to Asia, US allies were watching Johnson’s actions closely because what he does next will influence other US adversaries.

“It was unbelievable. Officials in both Taiwan and Japan were very focused on whether or not we would help Ukraine because it sends a message to Xi Jinping in China, someone, a dictator, who has said he wants to invade Taiwan,” he said. Moulton “on CNN News Central.”

If persuasion does not sway Johnson, events may force. Ukrainian and US officials are already warning that ammunition shortages are costing the region and increasing casualties. If the Ukrainians suffer a series of battlefield defeats (and Putin’s forces advance), the Speaker of the Lower House and his Republican majority could be blamed for a crisis that could threaten NATO and increase the chances of US troops being drawn into hostilities.

“If the United States does not provide military assistance, we will soon begin to see the Russians making significant advances,” Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said Monday. “If we don’t provide more help, it’s very possible that we’ll start to see the front line move westward very quickly later this year.”

Johnson’s conundrum has its roots in treacherous domestic politics, but has profound international implications. And there’s no sign that he knows how to fix it.