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By Ilan Berman
Senior Vice President, American Foreign Policy Council
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The midterm elections were nothing short of a political earthquake, as voters soundly repudiated President Donald Trump’s second term agenda. The resulting “blue tsunami” saw Democrats take control of both Houses of Congress, capture key state houses and make major gains at the local level nationwide.
Clearly, big changes are afoot. The incoming Congress promises to be a far more contentious one for the White House, with Democrats now poised to challenge the president’s domestic priorities and scrutinize his handling of American foreign policy.
What could all this augur for the American approach to Ukraine? The answer is more complicated than the election results might suggest.
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On the one hand, the Republican rout swept away some of Kyiv’s most dependable allies on Capitol Hill. Conservative Ukraine stalwarts like New York’s Mike Lawler and Maine’s Susan Collins were shown the political door on election night. At the same time, Republican members who have been more sympathetic to Russia, like Florida’s Anna Paulina Luna, managed to survive the Democratic wave and eke out a win.
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On the other, the incoming Congress will also feature familiar faces with a demonstrated commitment to Ukraine’s defense. Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, the longtime co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus, secured her 23rd term in the House—and, because of her seniority, is now in line to chair the powerful Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a longtime advocate of support for Ukraine as a hedge against Russian expansionism, similarly held on to his seat in the Senate. Their ranks are bolstered by newly elected Democratic veterans such as Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Virginia’s Elaine Luria, who both supported Kyiv during their previous stints in Congress. And some newcomers in the party—including Rebecca Cooke of Wisconsin—have already gone on record as opposing Russian aggression.
The result is something of a mixed bag. The new Congress may be more favorably predisposed toward Ukraine overall, but it will also be missing some of the Republican lawmakers who helped make assistance a bipartisan mission. Such consensus, however, is essential. Ukraine’s long-term security cannot rest solely on Democratic enthusiasm. It requires the durability that only backing across party lines can provide.
Even so, there are ways that the incoming Congress can weigh in meaningfully. The legislative branch holds the power of the purse and can impose meaningful costs on the executive for policies it opposes. A Democratic majority could therefore seek to restore the military assistance to Ukraine that the Trump administration has progressively rolled back. Or it could, in keeping with the wishes of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, tighten economic sanctions on the Kremlin still further. Most of all, it might be willing take a less passive posture toward the president’s attempts to solve the conflict by catering to Russia.
Whether it will do any of those things, however, is another matter entirely. There is a big difference between condemning Russian aggression and agreeing to underwrite Ukraine’s defenses against it. Moreover, in order to maintain its credibility, the new Congress will need to focus on the domestic priorities, from delivering on economic issues to enforcing government accountability, that enabled the blue wave in the first place. And even if the new Congress does end up turning its attention to the defense of Ukraine and passes legislation restoring military assistance or tightening sanctions, President Trump still has the power to veto it, absent a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate.
For Kyiv, then, America’s new Congress represents an opportunity but hardly a guarantee. Ukraine may indeed find a more receptive audience on Capitol Hill in the months to come. But whether that translates into a more constructive American approach will depend on something that as yet isn’t guaranteed: a genuine consensus about the stakes of Russia’s war and of what the U.S. role should be in resolving it.
Ilan Berman is senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.
The views expressed in the article are the writer's own.
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